rking, to disturb us. In the South it's all right for a tramp to sleep
among cotton seed, provided he doesn't smoke there."

"Come on, then, let's find a place. I can hardly hold my head up."

We slumped along the track. A cinder cut into my foot through the broken
sole of one shoe. It made me wince and limp.

Soon we came to the cotton seed house and looked it over from the
outside. It was a four-square building, each side having a door. All the
doors but one were locked. That one, when pushed against, tottered over.
We climbed in over the heavy sacks, seemingly full of cement, with which
the unlocked door had been propped to. It also was unhinged.

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