into the yard for a few hours’ recess; and twice a month, alternating, came chapel.
The chapel was a long bare room with whitewashed walls and a low ceiling supported by yellow posts. One of these posts, near the doors, had stapled into it, a little more than man-height from the ground, a single big iron ring. Just above this ring, the yellow paint was soiled with an oily smudge, spreading fan-wise, in which showed vague imprints of fingers and thumbs; and the floor immediately below was white and smooth, as if from many scrubbings. This post, on week days, was the prison’s whipping-post.
The convicts might see visitors, on chapel-days, in a space set apart for this, near the office of the captain of the yard. But no one came to see 9009. And he did not care. He was becoming more and more absorbed in the earning of his copper, absorbed like a miser hoarding gold piece by piece. At times he thought of Nell—but without expectation, in a detached manner. His experience led him to expect nothing of her
