It was not a difficult matter to procure them.  She would bring them up to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, “so them bastards won’t even think of sawing out again,” as the jailer had expressed it.

The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to have “Whip the Devil” played again for our singing and dancing.  But this might have once more awakened suspicion.  Before, we had raised such a row as to have caused pedestrians to stop and listen in groups, wondering what made the men inside so happy....

There were three separate locks on the great cage door.  One, two of them went back with an easy click.  For the third we could find no key.  There was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing again.  Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken.  It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey.  Finally, we gave up in despair.  The big negro collapsed with a wail.  The first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.

“Now it’s shore either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs for th’ sheriff’s son foh lawyah fees ... an’ the footprints in de flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan mine.”

* * * * *

The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys.  Panic-stricken, the mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for fear she’d be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!

That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little, shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big room.  It was easy to see what they wanted.  They wanted the keys and they were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to come at them.

“Martha, we want them keys!  Show us where they is, like a good girl!”

“‘Deed, Ah don’ know where dey is a-tall, Marse Sheriff!”

“Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin’ Jacklin heah!” pointing to the jailer.

The jailer nodded his head asseveratingly.

“Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air,” urged the latter, with caressing softness and fright in his voice.  He didn’t want his mistress whipped.

“If you don’t, by God, I’ll whup the nigger hide clean off yore back,” and the sheriff reached for the braided whip which his son Jimmy handed him.

“I sweah Ah don’ know where dey is!”