up and away; but when, after deceiving it by gazing at the ground for a time, you looked up at it again, there it was, back in the same place. Vaguely 9009 enjoyed all this; but all the time he was moving from group to group, trying to evade as long as possible the guard who had begun already to collect the passes.
There was noise in the yard, the noise of men’s voices lifted unrestrained, like the voices of boys in a school-yard. The convicts had thrown themselves into play with violence.
Two sides were busy in a ball game. A ring of stripes-clad spectators pressed close about the home-plate where “Shorty,” the shock-headed, square-bodied little safe-cracker, was standing, swinging his bat in circles, bringing it down upon the plate resoundingly. He was jeering the pitcher, a long pale-faced sneak-thief who, winding himself up ostentatiously for his delivery, looked in his stripes like a snake upright on its tail. And behind this one and to the right, a short wiry pickpocket bent his body and straightened it nervously, and rubbed his
