no one but the guards and her miserable companion who had come for Cribben. Joan Daisy did not realize that she had reached the visiting screen and that, on the other side, was a "bull pen"; but Cribben's friend had visited before, so she did not hold back with an air of expectancy. Immediately she pressed her nose against the grating, matched two of the little holes to her eyes and looked in.
Joan Daisy watched her with surprise and glanced at the guard, who took her look for question as to whether she might do the same. "Go ahead," bid the guard, smiling; and Joan Daisy pressed her nose to the grating, gazed through two holes and gasped.
A second grating, identical to that which pressed hard and cool against her brow, paralleled the first. It was pierced by identical holes placed opposite so that Joan Daisy, by staring straight ahead, could see through both screens, and after her pupils became adjusted to the dimness beyond, she discerned the outlines of the bull-pen and the figures of some of the prisoners. A yellow flare attracted her as some one struck a match; she heard separate voices and the shuffling of feet on the cement floor.
The enclosure, into which she looked, and in which the match-flare burned brightly, was long and low and narrow. She could not see clearly enough to discern the precise plan of the place; she saw, merely, that immediately beyond the second screen was an open space, at present occupied only by a guard; beyond him were bars again and beyond these bars, and leaning against them, were prisoners; for these bars formed the end of the "bull-pen."
The ceiling of the pen was so low that a tall man easily could touch it with raised arm; the walls of the pen stood five or six paces apart, and were sheer and straight, of solid steel.
