and sings to us and we applaud. When one of us dies, she unchains the body, and throws it down a hole somewhere. She talks to us about that hole sometimes and brags that she is going to fill it up before she stops."

"But who is helping her?"

"I think it is the real-estate man. Of course, the old devils upstairs help. I think that they must drug us. Some of the men say that they went to sleep in their beds and woke, chained to their posts."

My voice trembled as I bent over and whispered in his ear, "What would you do, George, if she came and sang, and you found that you were not chained? You and the other men not chained? What would you men do, George?"

"Ask them," he snarled. "Ask them, one at a time. But I know what I would do. I know!"

And he started to cry, because he could not do it the next second; cried from rage and helplessness till the tears ran from his empty sockets.

"Does she always come at the same time?"

"As far as I know. But time is nothing to us. We just wait for death."

"Are the chains locked?"

"Yes. And she must have the key. But we could file the links if only we had files. If only each of us had a file, we could get free. Perhaps the man upstairs has a key, but I hardly think so."

"Did you write on that pretty wall upstairs, the whitewashed wall?"

"I did; I think we all did. One man wrote a sonnet to the woman, verses in her honor, telling about her beautiful eyes. He raved about that poem for hours while he was dying. Did you ever see it on the wall?"

"I did not see it. The old people whitewash the walls before each new master comes."

"I thought so."

"Are you sure you would know what to do, George, if she sang to you and you were loose?"

"Yes, we would know."

So I left him, promising an end to the matter as soon as I could arrange it.

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