"To the pen for life, kid; that's what I mean."
"Well, say, I tell you, if they give you the other," said the friendly thief, lifting his naturally high voice to make it carry along the echoing passage, "you'll git plenty to eat, and three times a day, too. When they put a feller in the death-cell they pass in the finest chuck in the land. You know, if a feller's got a smart lawyer he can keep up that line of eatin' for maybe two or three years by appealin' his case and dodges like that."
"Oh, all right, kid," said the thief flippantly. Then he rattled his grated door to draw Joe's attention.
"But, 'y God, kid, the day's comin' to you when you will want to talk, and when you'd give the teeth out of your mouth, and nearly the eyes out of your head, for the sound of a friendly human voice aimed at you. Let 'em take you off down the river to Jeff' City and put you behind them tall walls once, where the best you hear's a cuss from a guard, and where you march along with your hands on the shoulders of the man in front of you; and another one behind you does the same to you, and their eyes all down and their faces the color of corpses, and _then_ you'll know!
"You'll hear them old fellers, them long-timers, whisperin' in the night, talkin' to theirselves, and it'll sound to you like wind in the grass. And you'll think of grass and trees and things like that on the outside, and you'll feel like you want to ram your head ag'in' the wall and yell. Maybe you'll do it--plenty of 'em does--and then they'll give you the water-cure, they'll force it down you with a hose till you think you'll bust. I tell you, kid, I _know_, 'y God! I've been there--but not for no double-nine like they'll give you."
The man's voice seemed to be hanging and sounding yet in the corridor, even after he was silent, his cruel picture standing in distorted fancy before Joe's eyes. Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead, breathing through his open mouth.
"Well, maybe they won't, though," said the fellow, resuming as if after considering it, "maybe they'll give you the quick and painless, I don't know."
Joe had been standing at his cell door, drawn to listen to the lecture of his fellow prisoner, terrible, hopeless, as it sounded in his ears. Now he sat on his bedside again, feeling that this was indeed a true forecast of his own doom. The sun seemed already shut out from him in the morning of his day, the prison silence settling, never to be broken again in those shadows where shuffling men filed by, with eyes downcast and faces gray, like the faces of the dead.