imm's limbs all relaxed
and he went to sleep straightway.

After a while, when the woods were black and still, the half-grown moon
came up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above,
shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouth
open, and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlight
struck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look like
quicksilver.

Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which had
been a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and green
in another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the sun
came up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes between
the tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing for
the first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy of
leaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he remembered
everything; he haunched his shoulders against the tree roots and
wriggled himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while,
letting his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought him
where he was and taking inventory of the situation.

Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him before
now; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be better
for him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like an
animal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought of
enduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of being
tagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with a
nausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store for
him could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knew
that. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimm
desperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hide
his face and his chained hands.

But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captors
in some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to him
before! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two hands
apart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before.

The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforced
companionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost him
some painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to
get his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather case