ler, that Womber, the owner of the warehouse, had
himself gone before the grand jury and informed them that he did not
wish to press the charge of burglary against us....

Womber, Jacklin said, had received my letter and at first had tossed it
aside ... even thrown it contemptuously into the wastebasket. But his
wife and daughter had raked it out and read it and had, day and night,
given him no peace till he had promised to "go easy on the poor boys."

This was my triumph over Bud--the triumph of romance over realism.

"I'm glad we're getting out, but there's more damn fools in the world
than I thought," he remarked, with a sour smile of gratification.

* * * * *

And now, with new, trembling eagerness, we two began waiting for the
hour of our release. That very afternoon it would be surely, we thought
... that night ... then the next morning ... then ... the next day....

But until a week more had flown, the sheriff did not let us go. In order
to make a little more profit on his feeding contract, averred our
prisoners.

But on Saturday morning he came to turn us loose. By this time we seemed
blood brothers to the others in the cage ... negro ... mulatto ... white
... criminal and vicious ... weak, and victims of circumstance ...
everything sloughed away. Genuine tears stood in our eyes as with strong
hand-grips we wished the poor lads good luck!

We stumbled down the jail stairway up which, three months before, we had
been conducted to our long incarceration in the cage. The light of free
day stormed in on our prison-inured eyes in a blinding deluge of white
and gold ... we stepped out into what seemed not an ordinary world, but
a madness and tumult of birds, a delirious green of trees too beautiful
for any place outside the garden of Paradise.

"Come on," said Bud, "let's go on down the main street and thank Womber
for not pressing the case--"

"To hell with Womber!"

"Well, then, I'm going to thank him."

"I'm grateful enough.... I might write him a letter thanking him ...
but I'm not anxious to linger in this neighbourhood."

So Bud and I parted company, shaking hands good-bye; he headed west ...
to China and the East, finally, he said ... I never knew his real name
... neither of us gave his right name to the town's officials....

As I sought the railroad tracks again, the good air and my unwonted
freedom made me stagger, so that several negroes laughed at me heartily,