A guard opened the cell in the afternoon the first day and put in a quart tin cup of water but no bread. As he was closing the cell, he said, not unkindly: “You’re a damned fool, kid. You’d better weaken and promise to go on the pump. I’ll tell the captain now, if you want, and you won’t have to freeze in here tonight.”

“No, I won’t weaken,” I declared.

“All right, but if you change your mind just rap on the door with that tin cup.”

My teeth were chattering before nine o’clock that night, it was so cold. I could not sleep on the cold steel floor and walked up and down in my stocking feet all night. The next morning it became warmer and I slept in fits till noon when the guard came with my bread and a fresh cup of water. The bread was about half eaten when something got between my teeth that made me stop chewing, hungry as I was.

I examined it, lying on my belly at the bottom of the door, where there was a crack of light. It was a piece of chicken quill about an inch long. I couldn’t imagine how it got into the bread, and out of curiosity and having nothing else to do, I broke it apart. There was a tightly rolled piece of paper inside, on which was written: “Stick. We’ll feed you tonight.” There was no name, no explanation. I knew it was from my cellmates, and put in the balance of the day trying to figure how they would manage to get food into that tight cell in plain view of a guard all day and night.

The cell above me was part of the prison proper, and was occupied by two prisoners doing time. That afternoon I heard unusual noises in it, and they indicated that someone was moving out or in. Immediately after lockup in the evening there was another new noise. Prisoners in dungeons rely almost entirely on sounds to tell them what is going on about them. Every sound has its meaning. No sound escapes them, and any new or unusual sound must be thought out and classified at once.