It was dark inside.  There were no windows.

We struck matches and explored.  We found articles of heavier hardware scattered and piled about, some sacks of guano, and about a dozen wired bales of hay.

“I thought this was a cotton seed mill,” commented Bud, “because I saw so many niggers working around it, when I passed by, the other time.”

“Well, and what is it, then?”

“Evidently a warehouse—­where they store heavier articles of hardware.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Twist the wires off a couple of these bales of hay, use it for bedding, and have a good sleep anyhow.”

“But—­suppose we’re caught in here?”

“No chance.  It’s Sunday morning, no one will be here to work to-day, and we’ll be let alone.”

With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable beds from the hay.

It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare.  I dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the centre of my forehead.  I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was true.

There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his courage up.  He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a “forty-four-seventy” into my forehead.

“Come on!  Get up, you ——­ ——­ ——!  Come on out of here, or I’ll blow your ——­ ——­ ——­ brains out, do you hear?”

Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and composed, and in English that was almost academic—­“my dear man, put up your gun and I will go with you quietly.  I am only a tramp and not a desperado.”

This both puzzled and at the same time reassured my captor ... and made him swear all the louder,—­this time, with a note of brave certainty in his tone.

His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit.  I stepped out at the open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes.  I saw waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.

“Good work, McAndrews,” commended one of them, deep-voiced.  The others murmured gruff approval.

McAndrews, from conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards.  He had one red-rimmed eye.  The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet visual powers.

“Now go on in an’ fetch out the other bum,” commanded the deep-voiced member of the posse, speaking with authority.

“There wasn’t but only this ’un,” McAndrews replied, with renewed timidity in his voice, scarcely concealed, and jerking his thumb toward me.

“But the little nigger said they was—­ain’t that so, nigger?”

“Yassir, boss—­I done seen two o’ dem go in dar!” replied a wisp of a negro boy, rolling wide eye-whites in fright, and wedged in among the hulking posse.

“Well, this ‘un’s all I seen!” protested the night watchman, “an’ you betcher I looked about mighty keerful ... wot time did you see ’um break in?” turning to the negro child.