The next morning, at half-past five, the prison bell rang for the officers to rise, and at six a turnkey unlocked Robinson’s door, and delivered the following in an imperious key, all in one note and without any rests:  “Prisoner to open and shake bedding, wash face, hands and neck on pain of punishment, and roll up hammocks and clean cells and be ready to clean corridors if required.”  So chanting—­ slammed door—­vanished.

Robinson set to work with alacrity upon the little arrangements; he soon finished them, and then he would not have been sorry to turn out and clean the corridor for a change, but it was not his turn.  He sat, dull and lonely, till eight o’clock, when suddenly a key was inserted into a small lock in the center of his door, but outside; the effect of this was to open a small trap in the door, through this aperture a turnkey shoved in the man’s breakfast without a word, “like one flinging guts to a bear” (Scott); and on the sociable Tom attempting to say a civil word to him, drew the trap sharply back, and hermetically sealed the aperture with a snap.  The breakfast was in a round tin, with two compartments; one pint of gruel and six ounces of bread.  These two phases of farina were familiar to Mr. Robinson.  He ate the bread and drank the gruel, adding a good deal of salt.

At nine the chapel bell rang.  Robinson was glad.  Not that he admired the Liturgy, but he said to himself, “Now I shall see a face or two, perhaps some old pals.”

To his dismay, the warder who opened his cell bade him at the same time put on the prison cap, with the peak down; and when he and the other male prisoners were mustered in the corridor, he found them all like himself, vizor down, eyes glittering like basilisks’ or cats’ through two holes, features undistinguishable.  The word was given to march in perfect silence, five paces apart, to the chapel.

The sullen pageant started.

“I’ve heard of this, but who’d have thought they carried the game so far?  Well, I must wait till we are in chapel and pick up a pal by the voice, while the parson is doing his patter.”

On reaching the chapel he found, to his dismay, that the chapel was as cellular as any other part of the prison; it was an agglomeration of one hundred sentry-boxes, open only on the side facing the clergyman, and even there only from the prisoner’s third button upward.  Warders stood on raised platforms and pointed out his sentry-box to each prisoner with very long slender wands; the prisoner went into it and pulled the door (it shut with a spring), and next took his badge or number from his neck and hung it up on a nail above his head in the sentry-box.  Between the reading-desk and the male prisoners was a small area where the debtors sat together.

The female prisoners were behind a thick veil of close lattice-work.