Toward the middle of the morning, Hal heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and a man whom he did not know opened the barred door and set down a pitcher of water and a tin plate with a hunk of bread on it. When he started to leave, Hal spoke: “Just a minute, please.” The other frowned at him.
“Can you give me any idea how long I am to stay in here?”
“I cannot,” said the man.
“If I'm to be locked up,” said Hal, “I've certainly a right to know what is the charge against me.”
“Go to blazes!” said the other, and slammed the door and went down the corridor.
Hal went to the window again, and passed the time watching the people who went by. Groups of ragged children gathered, looking up at him, grinning and making signs—until some one appeared below and ordered them away.
As time passed, Hal became hungry. The taste of bread, eaten alone, becomes speedily monotonous, and the taste of water does not relieve it; nevertheless, Hal munched the bread, and drank the water, and wished for more.
The day dragged by; and late in the afternoon the keeper came again, with another hunk of bread and another pitcher of water. “Listen a moment,” said Hal, as the man was turning away.
“I got nothin' to say to you,” said the other.
“I have something to say to you,” pleaded Hal. “I have read in a book—I forget where, but it was written by some doctor—that white bread does not contain the elements necessary to the sustaining of the human body.”
“Go on!” growled the jailer. “What yer givin' us?”
“I mean,” explained Hal, “a diet of bread and water is not what I'd choose to live on.”
“What would yer choose?”
The tone suggested that the question was a rhetorical one; but Hal took it in good faith. “If I could have some beefsteak and mashed potatoes—”
The door of the cell closed with a slam whose echoes drowned out the rest of that imaginary menu. And so once more Hal sat on the hard bench, and munched his hunk of bread, and thought jail-thoughts.
When the quitting-whistle blew, he stood at the window, and saw the groups of his friends once again, and got their covert signals of encouragement. Then darkness fell, and another long vigil began.
It was late; Hal had no means of telling how late, save that all the lights in the camp............