“Yes, I’ll admit Ah’ve done sech things.  But this taime they was sure wrong.  Ef I git framed up,” he added, “I mean tuh study law ... pull foh a job in th’ prison libery an’ read up ... an’ take up practice when I serve my term.”

Beside the hog-stealing parson and the little grey-faced pickpocket there were also: 

A big negro youth, black as shiny coal, who was being held over on appeal.  He’d been sentenced to ninety-nine years for rape of a negro girl ... if it had been a white girl he would have been burned long ago, he said ... as it was, the sheriff’s son, who was handling his case, would finally procure his release—­and exact, in return, about ten years’ of serfdom as payment.  And there was a young, hard-drinking quarrelsome tenant-farmer, who was charged with having sold two bales of cotton not belonging to him, to get money for drinking....

There was another negro, hanging-handed, simous-faced, who had, in a fit of jealousy, blown two heads off by letting loose both barrels at once of his heavily charged shotgun ... the heads were his wife’s ... and her lover’s.  He caught them when their faces were close together ... and they were kissing.  But he seemed a gentle creature, tractable and harmless.

On the outside of the cage in which we were cooped like menagerie animals, a negro girl had her cot.  She slept and lived out there by the big stove which heated the place.  She was a girl of palish yellow colour.  She was a trusty.  She had been caught watching outside of a house while two grown-up negro women went within to rob.

* * * * *

Monday morning “kangaroo court” was called ... that court which prisoners hold, mimicking the legal procedure to which they grow so accustomed during their lives.  We were arraigned for trial—­the charge against us, that of “Breaking Into Jail.”

The cotton thief served as prosecuting attorney.  The negro youth in for rape of one of his own colour,—­the sergeant-at-arms; while the negro preacher in for hog-stealing defended us ... and he did it so well that we were let off with ten blows of the strap a-piece.  We had no money to be mulcted of, nor were we able to procure from friends, as the custom is, funds for the buying of whiskey and tobacco.

* * * * *

In a few days Bud and I had settled down into the routine of jail-life.  Every morning we swept our cells, and all the prisoners took turns sweeping the corridor.  The fine for spitting on the floor was ten lashes laid on hard.  And each day before breakfast we soaked the seams of our clothes in vile-smelling creosote to kill off the lice and nits.  We had no chance to bathe, and were given but little water to wash our face and hands.

* * * * *

“I wonder what they are going to do with us?”

“Anything they please,” answered Bud gloomily.