“No, Mr. Chapin, I wouldn’t, exactly,” said Cowperwood, truly enough, “though I believed I was right in everything I did.  I don’t think legal justice has really been done me.”

“Well, that’s the way,” continued Chapin, meditatively, scratching his grizzled head and looking genially about.  “Sometimes, as I allers says to some of these here young fellers that comes in here, we don’t know as much as we thinks we does.  We forget that others are just as smart as we are, and that there are allers people that are watchin’ us all the time.  These here courts and jails and detectives—­they’re here all the time, and they get us.  I gad”—­Chapin’s moral version of “by God”—­“they do, if we don’t behave.”

“Yes,” Cowperwood replied, “that’s true enough, Mr. Chapin.”

“Well,” continued the old man after a time, after he had made a few more solemn, owl-like, and yet well-intentioned remarks, “now here’s your bed, and there’s your chair, and there’s your wash-stand, and there’s your water-closet.  Now keep ’em all clean and use ’em right.” (You would have thought he was making Cowperwood a present of a fortune.) “You’re the one’s got to make up your bed every mornin’ and keep your floor swept and your toilet flushed and your cell clean.  There hain’t anybody here’ll do that for yuh.  You want to do all them things the first thing in the mornin’ when you get up, and afterward you’ll get sumpin’ to eat, about six-thirty.  You’re supposed to get up at five-thirty.”

“Yes, Mr. Chapin,” Cowperwood said, politely.  “You can depend on me to do all those things promptly.”

“There hain’t so much more,” added Chapin.  “You’re supposed to wash yourself all over once a week an’ I’ll give you a clean towel for that.  Next you gotta wash this floor up every Friday mornin’.”  Cowperwood winced at that.  “You kin have hot water for that if you want it.  I’ll have one of the runners bring it to you.  An’ as for your friends and relations”—­he got up and shook himself like a big Newfoundland dog.  “You gotta wife, hain’t you?”

“Yes,” replied Cowperwood.

“Well, the rules here are that your wife or your friends kin come to see you once in three months, and your lawyer—­you gotta lawyer hain’t yuh?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Cowperwood, amused.

“Well, he kin come every week or so if he likes—­every day, I guess—­there hain’t no rules about lawyers.  But you kin only write one letter once in three months yourself, an’ if you want anything like tobaccer or the like o’ that, from the store-room, you gotta sign an order for it, if you got any money with the warden, an’ then I can git it for you.”

The old man was really above taking small tips in the shape of money.  He was a hold-over from a much more severe and honest regime, but subsequent presents or constant flattery were not amiss in making him kindly and generous.  Cowperwood read him accurately.

“Very well, Mr. Chapin; I understand,” he said, getting up as the old man did.