fe-sentence
gave me my status under this law which had not yet been written on the
books. And it is because of my status of lifetimer that I am to be
hanged for battery committed on the guard Thurston. It is clearly _ex
post facto_, and, therefore, unconstitutional.

But what bearing has the Constitution on constitutional lawyers when they
want to put the notorious Professor Darrell Standing out of the way? Nor
do I even establish the precedent with my execution. A year ago, as
everybody who reads the newspapers knows, they hanged Jake Oppenheimer,
right here in Folsom, for a precisely similar offence . . . only, in his
case of battery, he was not guilty of making a guard's nose bleed. He
cut a convict unintentionally with a bread-knife.

It is strange--life and men's ways and laws and tangled paths. I am
writing these lines in the very cell in Murderers' Row that Jake
Oppenheimer occupied ere they took him out and did to him what they are
going to do to me.

I warned you I had many things to write about. I shall now return to my
narrative. The Board of Prison Directors gave me my choice: a prison
trustyship and surcease from the jute-looms if I gave up the non-existent
dynamite; life imprisonment in solitary if I refused to give up the non-
existent dynamite.

They gave me twenty-four hours in the jacket to think it over. Then I
was brought before the Board a second time. What could I do? I could
not lead them to the dynamite that was not. I told them so, and they
told me I was a liar. They told me I was a hard case, a dangerous man, a
moral degenerate, the criminal of the century. They told me many other
things, and then they carried me away to the solitary cells. I was put
into Number One cell. In Number Five lay Ed Morrell. In Number Twelve
lay Jake Oppenheimer. And he had been there for ten years. Ed Morrell
had been in his cell only one year. He was serving a fifty-years'
sentence. Jake Oppenheimer was a lifer. And so was I a lifer. Wherefore
the outlook was that the three of us would remain there for a long time.
And yet, six years only are past, and not one of us is in solitary. Jake
Oppenheimer was swung off. Ed Morrell was made head trusty of San
Quentin and then pardoned out only the other day. And here I am in
Folsom waiting the day duly set by Judge Morgan, which will be my last
day.

The fools! As if they could throttle my immortality with their clumsy
device of rope and sc