e ... the prevailing atmosphere was one of
hope.

* * * * *

The negro who had murdered his wife and her sweetheart with a shotgun
had already had his trial. He was--and had been--but waiting the arrival
of the prison contractor, as the latter went from county jail to county
jail, gathering in his flock, and taking them away, chained together, to
the penitentiary and the cane brakes ... "where only a big buck nigger
can live," the little pickpocket had told me, with fear in his voice....

He came ... the contractor ... to our jail at midnight. All of us leaped
from our mattresses to witness the dreary procession of neck-chained and
be-manacled convicted men. In the light of the swinging lanterns, a
lurid spectacle. Our man was taken out and chained in with the gang.
They clanked away down the stairs, leaving us who remained with heavy
chains on our hope instead of on our necks and hands and legs ...
because of the sight we had just seen. For the passing day or so we were
so depressed that we wandered about saying nothing to each other, like
dumb men.

* * * * *

One after the other the men had true bills found against them, and
little slips of folded paper were thrust in to them through the bars of
their cells. And shyster lawyers who fatten on the misfortunes of the
prison-held being, began to hold whispered conversations (and
conferences) from without, mainly to find out just how much each
prisoner could raise for fees for defence....

Bud and I were the only ones left. All the others had had true bills
found against them.

* * * * *

But there came an afternoon when the big, hulky sheriff, with the cruel,
quizzical eyes, came to the back bars of our cell and summoned us up
with a mysterious air....

"Well, boys," he began, pausing to squirt a long, brown stream of
tobacco juice, "well, boys--" and he paused again.

My nerves were so on edge that I controlled with difficulty a mad
impulse to curse at the sheriff for holding us in such needless
suspense....

Taking another deliberate chew off his plug, he told us that after
mature deliberation the grand jury had decided that there was not enough
grounds for finding a true bill against us, and, as a consequence, we
were to be let go free.

* * * * *

The following morning I had the satisfaction of hearing from old
Jacklin, the jai