ck into your cells!" he growled.

The long bar was thrown over our closed doors.

The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole.

"Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights. It's good
we caught them in time or they'd of been a hell of a big jail-delivery
... do you mean to tell me," turning to the jailer, "you never noticed
this before?" and with one finger he raked out the blackened corn bread.

"You see, I'm a little near-sighted, Mistah Jenkins."

"Too damned near-sighted, an' too damned stupid, too."

The big iron door of the cage was locked again, the long bar thrown off
our cell doors.

"Now, you sons of b---- can come out into the cage again; but, mind you,
if any of you try such a thing again, I'll take you out one by one and
give you all a rawhiding."

We received the abuse in sullen silence. For three days our rations
lacked cornpone, for punishment.

We decided among ourselves that the negro preacher, to stand in well
with the authorities, had given us away....

And if he had not, panic-stricken, pleaded with the sheriff to be taken
out and put in a separate cell, I believe we would have killed him.

* * * * *

There was one more way. It was so simple a way that we had not thought
of it before. The mulatto girl, who slept by the big stove, on a cot,
just outside the cage ... a trusty and the jailer's unwilling concubine
... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the lusty young
farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And
it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the
keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they
hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house for the
jailer.

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. On