"What is the matter?"
"That bloody Smith snores so that we can't sleep!"
"Where is she? I will go down and wake her."
"On the third division, south side, almost to the foot."
I put my feet into my slippers, wrapped a shawl around me, and ran down
to Smith's door.
"Smith, turn over! You are snoring so loud that the other women can't
sleep."
"O! how you scared me."
"Do you know that you are snoring so loud that the women can't sleep?
Turn over on your side!"
"Yes, ma'am."
I went back to my bed, but no sooner had I settled myself to sleep than
the clamor of complaint was renewed.
"That bloody Smith is at her snoring again!"
Again I started for the second division, south side.
"Smith! you are snoring again!"
"I can't help it, ma'am! don't have me punished."
Punished! How the idea haunted them, even in their sleep. "I know you
can't help it, only by turning over. Turn on your face, and try that.
The women must sleep, they are tired, and they are obliged to work
to-morrow."
"I'll try not to snore, ma'am!" She turned on her face as I directed
her.
At last I attained to that state of repose which the renowned Sancho
Panza has so felicitously eulogized, and successfully immortalized; but
my enjoyment was not of long duration.
It was but a short distance that reached into the middle of the dark,
dismal night, and time had travelled it when I slowly awoke. Shivers of
terror, from some undefined cause, crept over me. Gradually I came to a
knowledge of what was passing. My hair, which was thrown loosely over
the pillow, was moving as though trodden by some nocturnal agent of
locomotion. What moved it? there was no draft of air in the room.
I put my hand to the "crowning ornament by Nature given" to my head, and
imprisoned a mammoth mouse, or scarce grown rat.
I was fast getting initiated into the mysteries of prison life, and
inured to its peculiarities. Unmoved, I might allow my hair to become a
bed for rats and mice; but I could not spare the sleep.
I threw the creature from me, in a fret at being disturbed, and issued a
peremptory order, independent of the Master, and without the approval of
the Board, for all rats and mice to pay respect to my person, and my
apartments, and trouble me no more. Then I turned over, and went to
sleep again.
Adverse fate, or some other mysterious personage was on my track that
night. Before I had time to close my eyes, a shrill shriek of horror
resounded through the building, starting the echoes from every side.
It sounded in my ears like the despairing cry of one doomed to eternal
death. Imagination supplied the cause, and brought me to my feet with
one bound.
Some pent up prisoner was dying alone in his cell. I sprang to the rail
and called,--
"What is the matter?"
"I think I had the nightmare. I do have it sometimes."
"Was that you, Mary McCullum?"
"I think it was, ma'am. I'm sorry I waked you! Never mind me, ma'am!"
Poor Mary McCullum! In a moment I remembered all about her. They had
told me a sad tale about her incarceration for the murder of her rival.
Mary's husband had left her, taking her three little girls away, and
married another woman. Mary, in a fit of jealous madness, had ground up
a knife, enticed the woman to drink with her, and murdered her in her
cellar. A policeman had detected her in the act. God pity, and judge
her! She had been sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the
Penitentiary for the crime.
Five years had been worked out. Her health was gone, her nervous system
had become a wreck. The damp rooms, the chilling stones, the ceaseless
toil, were the slow torture that had undermined her constitution, and
consumed her vitality.
Her narrow cell had become, to her imagination, the home of demons who
haunted her with her crime.
The other women had told me that the ghost of the murdered woman came to
Mary McCullum every night, all in her bloody garments, and set her
shrieking in her dreams.
Should such a criminal go unpunished? The halter could bring no surer
death than what was slowly creeping upon her. Restrained of her liberty
she should be, and from the power to do further harm. Labor for her own
support should be required of her. Connected with it, a sufficient
amount of rest to secure health, a place to sleep free from the damp and
noisome air of a stone prison.
A plenty of wholesome food should be allowed her; time and space for
repentance given, time to think upon the error of her ways, and
instruction that would teach her how to do it.
That worrisome night was to meet with one more "thrilling adventure"
before it passed away into the light of the following day.
I lay, tossing from side to side, after I returned to my bed. Sleep was
out of the question. I lay, tossing thoughts about the circumstances
that surrounded me to and fro in my mind, trying to analyze, to
distinctness, the mixed up conclusions that arose from them.
Another unearthly cry rung out on the air, and startled me from my
perplexed meditations. It was more like the shriek of an animal in
distress, than a human sound.
Wail followed wail, in quick succession. Can it be a human being? I
asked myself, as I hurried on some clothing. It must be, there is
nothing else here that can make such a noise.
I stopped to listen, as I went to search it out. It came from one
quarter, and then, from another. If it were made in one cell, it
possessed a wonderful power of ventriloquism.
I remembered the hooting and whistling of the night before, and
immediately inferred that the same mischievous girls, who made the
disturbance in the evening, had set up this cry and echoed it around
from division to division, in order to make a night of it.
Quick as the thought entered my mind, my patience gave way. I vowed, in
my heart, that I would have them punished if I could catch them. My own
aroused temper certainly suggested the punishment that I contemplated.
Even with the thought which suggested punishment arose the query--Is it
not a just indignation that I feel, and do they not deserve punishment
for willfully making this unreasonable disturbance? Is it my anger that
seeks revenge for the annoyance they are inflicting?
Although half way down into the prison, I ran back to my room, and left
my slippers, in order to avoid the tap, tapping of the leather soles on
the walks, which would announce my approach to the culprits, and warn
them in season to avoid detection.
Again I traversed flat after flat in my stockings. Quickly, and
noiselessly, I threaded the walks towards the spot from whence the sound
appeared to proceed. But when I reached it, all was silent there, and
the wail came shrieking around another corner.
I grew more and more angry as chills crept up my limbs, and set my
teeth chattering. I raised my thinly clad feet from the cold stones only
to set them down in a still colder track--a practical test, it now
occurs to me, of the experience of the woman on the stones "in
solitary,"--but my determination to ferret out the offenders never
faltered.
I was benumbed; but I persevered till I had traversed the five flats,
and listened at the door of nearly a hundred cells. The wails had grown
to howls, and filled the prison with their noise as the thunder fills
the air with its reverberations, but eluded my search.
I gathered my shawl around me, and sat down by the stove to listen; and
determine my future course. When I became stationary, the sounds changed
their course, and instead of receding approached me. Nearer, and nearer
they came. In a moment they were issuing from the floor at my side. I
shook with a vague dread. Were those shrieking wails from some prisoner
confined in the dungeon vaults below the prison, insane or dying?
Involuntarily I looked down. There stood the cat, uttering piteous cries
on account of separation from her kittens in the kitchen, and pleading
to be let out to them.
Quickly I ran over the stairs to get my keys, nor did I feel the chill
of the cold stone walks, as I ran back to appease the distress of the
mother cat by opening the way to her little ones.
I did not regret that I lost the opportunity to execute the mentally
threatened punishment of my women.