"Queer lookin' bloke, aint he ?"--"How long's he doin' ?"--"A stretch," which in prison language means twelve months, and having served that term, I know that it _is_ a stretch.

"What's he in for ?"--"Dunno, but I hear he put somethin' in a paper they didn't like."-- "What, a stretch for that!"-- And I venture to assert that, although the prisoner who uttered this ejaculation was on the wrong side of a gaol, his unsophisticated common sense on this point was infinitely superior to the bigotry of Giffard, Harcourt, and North, and of the jury who assisted in sending us to gaol for "putting something in a paper they didn't like." During my first week's residence in Holloway Gaol, owing to the bad weather, I exercised in the corridor with the other inmates of the A wing.

There is little more room between the cell doors and the railing overlooking the well than suffices for the passage of a single person.
The prisoners therefore walked in Indian file, and as they were practically beyond supervision except when they came abreast of one of the three or four officers in charge, a great deal of conversation went on, and I wondered why the chief warder below did not hear the loud hum of so many voices.

I afterwards discovered the reason.

When you stand under the procession you can hear nothing but the trampling of dozens of feet, which reverberates through the wing, and drowns every other sound.
At first I marched as stiff as a poker, drawing myself together, as it were, into the smallest compass, to avoid the contamination of the company, most of whom were poor, repulsive specimens of humanity, survivals in our civilised age of the lower types of barbarous or savage times.