After my five years in solitary, when they took me away from San Quentin for my trial, I saw Skysail Jack.  I could see little, for I was blinking in the sunshine like a bat, after five years of darkness; yet I saw enough of Skysail Jack to pain my heart.  It was in crossing the Prison Yard that I saw him.  His hair had turned white.  He was prematurely old.  His chest had caved in.  His cheeks were sunken.  His hands shook as with palsy.  He tottered as he walked.  And his eyes blurred with tears as he recognized me, for I, too, was a sad wreck of what had once been a man.  I weighed eighty-seven pounds.  My hair, streaked with gray, was a five-years’ growth, as were my beard and moustache.  And I, too, tottered as I walked, so that the guards helped to lead me across that sun-blinding patch of yard.  And Skysail Jack and I peered and knew each other under the wreckage.

Men such as he are privileged, even in a prison, so that he dared an infraction of the rules by speaking to me in a cracked and quavering voice.

“You’re a good one, Standing,” he cackled.  “You never squealed.”

“But I never knew, Jack,” I whispered back—­I was compelled to whisper, for five years of disuse had well-nigh lost me my voice.  “I don’t think there ever was any dynamite.”

“That’s right,” he cackled, nodding his head childishly.  “Stick with it.  Don’t ever let’m know.  You’re a good one.  I take my hat off to you, Standing.  You never squealed.”

And the guards led me on, and that was the last I saw of Skysail Jack.  It was plain that even he had become a believer in the dynamite myth.

* * * * *

Twice they had me before the full Board of Directors.  I was alternately bullied and cajoled.  Their attitude resolved itself into two propositions.  If I delivered up the dynamite, they would give me a nominal punishment of thirty days in the dungeon and then make me a trusty in the prison library.  If I persisted in my stubbornness and did not yield up the dynamite, then they would put me in solitary for the rest of my sentence.  In my case, being a life prisoner, this was tantamount to condemning me to solitary confinement for life.

Oh, no; California is civilized.  There is no such law on the statute books.  It is a cruel and unusual punishment, and no modern state would be guilty of such a law.  Nevertheless, in the history of California I am the third man who has been condemned for life to solitary confinement.  The other two were Jake Oppenheimer and Ed Morrell.  I shall tell you about them soon, for I rotted with them for years in the cells of silence.

Oh, another thing.  They are going to take me out and hang me in a little while—­no, not for killing Professor Haskell.  I got life-imprisonment for that.  They are going to take me out and hang me because I was found guilty of assault and battery.  And this is not prison discipline.  It is law, and as law it will be found in the criminal statutes.