soaked the seams of our
clothes in vile-smelling creosote to kill off the lice and nits. We had
no chance to bathe, and were given but little water to wash our face and
hands.

* * * * *

"I wonder what they are going to do with us?"

"Anything they please," answered Bud gloomily.

"From thirty to ninety days on the county farm, I suppose?"

"We'll be lucky if we don't get from four to ten years in the pen."

"What for?"

"Burglary--didn't we break into that warehouse?"

* * * * *

Our meals were passed in to us through an open space near the level of
the floor, at the upper end of the cage, where a bar had been removed
for that purpose. We'd line up and the tin plates would be handed in,
one after the other ... two meals a day. For breakfast a corn pone of
coarse, white corn meal, and a bit of fried sow-belly. For dinner, all
the water we could drink. For supper, breakfast all over again, with
the addition of a dab of greens. On rare occasions the sheriff's son or
the jailer went hunting ... and then we'd have rabbit. The sheriff had
the contract, at so much per head, for feeding the prisoners.

Each morning I used to ask the jailer for the occasional newspaper with
which he covered the basket in which he brought our food to us. One
morning my eyes fell upon an interesting item:

The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse
beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the
tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night
watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was
conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for
they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we
were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary.

Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a
heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour,
hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to
despair.

My reaction was a strange one. I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance
... I was in the midst of adventure and romance. I was a Count of Monte
Cristo, a Baron von Trenck. I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic
studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master
of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to
wealth and power, afterwards, so