Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/94

 before the cell doors of the upper tiers. A gong, strident, harsh, imperative from the central hall, would echo clamorously through the prison. Another gong and another—always the same—the locks along the cells would lift with a sharp, metallic click—the huge, steel gates at the end of the corridors swing back—and he would be one of the striped line that stood in sullen silence on the platform waiting the command to move. "Tier Number One—march! Tier Number Three—march!"—the bark of the guards' voices from the different wings would come rolling raucously to his ears. Then that dull, dead fall of feet in heartless unison, as a file moved forward—and another, and another—the routine of the day begun.

It never changed—that march to the prison yard in the morning, one hand on the next man's shoulder, carrying their night-buckets in the other—the first, deep-drawn intake of fresh air robbed of all its sweetness, for even here there were grey walls everywhere; and men, sharp-eyed and keen, leaning on grounded carbines, looked down on them from above.

They marched back; they filed by the kitchen and took their tin pans of food, and bread from the stacked slices—and as caged beasts ate it—their keepers watching from high stools between the long bare tables and against the walls. In lock-stepped files they went to their work—Varge across the yard again to the carpenter shop close to the centre of the rear wall. At noon again they ate their tins of food; at evening again they ate their tins of food—then the same huge, steel gates before the corridors closed behind them as they tramped through; each stopped before his cell, entered, pulled