“From thirty to ninety days on the county farm, I suppose?”

“We’ll be lucky if we don’t get from four to ten years in the pen.”

“What for?”

“Burglary—­didn’t we break into that warehouse?”

* * * * *

Our meals were passed in to us through an open space near the level of the floor, at the upper end of the cage, where a bar had been removed for that purpose.  We’d line up and the tin plates would be handed in, one after the other ... two meals a day.  For breakfast a corn pone of coarse, white corn meal, and a bit of fried sow-belly.  For dinner, all the water we could drink.  For supper, breakfast all over again, with the addition of a dab of greens.  On rare occasions the sheriff’s son or the jailer went hunting ... and then we’d have rabbit.  The sheriff had the contract, at so much per head, for feeding the prisoners.

Each morning I used to ask the jailer for the occasional newspaper with which he covered the basket in which he brought our food to us.  One morning my eyes fell upon an interesting item: 

The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary.

Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a heap.  He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour, hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to despair.

My reaction was a strange one.  I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance ...  I was in the midst of adventure and romance.  I was a Count of Monte Cristo, a Baron von Trenck.  I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to wealth and power, afterwards, so that I would be pardoned and could come back and magnanimously shame with my forgiveness the community that had sent me up.

Bud stopped his pacing to and fro to stand in our cell-doorway.  I was sitting on a stool, thinking hard.

“We can’t do a thing,” said Bud, “we’re in for it, good and proper.”

“—­tell you what I’ll do,” I responded, “I’ll write a letter to the owner of the warehouse and appeal to his humanity.”

“You romantic jack-ass,” yelled Bud, his nerves on edge.  He walked away angry.  He came back calmer.

“Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst—­but you are a fool.  This is real life we’re up against now.  You’re not reading about this in a book.”