During the two weeks in which Cowperwood was in the “manners squad,” in care of Chapin, he learned nearly as much as he ever learned of the general nature of prison life; for this was not an ordinary penitentiary in the sense that the prison yard, the prison squad, the prison lock-step, the prison dining-room, and prison associated labor make the ordinary penitentiary.  There was, for him and for most of those confined there, no general prison life whatsoever.  The large majority were supposed to work silently in their cells at the particular tasks assigned them, and not to know anything of the remainder of the life which went on around them, the rule of this prison being solitary confinement, and few being permitted to work at the limited number of outside menial tasks provided.  Indeed, as he sensed and as old Chapin soon informed him, not more than seventy-five of the four hundred prisoners confined here were so employed, and not all of these regularly—­cooking, gardening in season, milling, and general cleaning being the only avenues of escape from solitude.  Even those who so worked were strictly forbidden to talk, and although they did not have to wear the objectionable hood when actually employed, they were supposed to wear it in going to and from their work.  Cowperwood saw them occasionally tramping by his cell door, and it struck him as strange, uncanny, grim.  He wished sincerely at times since old Chapin was so genial and talkative that he were to be under him permanently; but it was not to be.

His two weeks soon passed—­drearily enough in all conscience but they passed, interlaced with his few commonplace tasks of bed-making, floor-sweeping, dressing, eating, undressing, rising at five-thirty, and retiring at nine, washing his several dishes after each meal, etc.  He thought he would never get used to the food.  Breakfast, as has been said, was at six-thirty, and consisted of coarse black bread made of bran and some white flour, and served with black coffee.  Dinner was at eleven-thirty, and consisted of bean or vegetable soup, with some coarse meat in it, and the same bread.  Supper was at six, of tea and bread, very strong tea and the same bread—­no butter, no milk, no sugar.  Cowperwood did not smoke, so the small allowance of tobacco which was permitted was without value to him.  Steger called in every day for two or three weeks, and after the second day, Stephen Wingate, as his new business associate, was permitted to see him also—­once every day, if he wished, Desmas stated, though the latter felt he was stretching a point in permitting this so soon.  Both of these visits rarely occupied more than an hour, or an hour and a half, and after that the day was long.  He was taken out on several days on a court order, between nine and five, to testify in the bankruptcy proceedings against him, which caused the time in the beginning to pass quickly.