“I have something to say to you,” pleaded Hal. “I have read in a book--I forget where, but it was written by some doctor--that white bread does not contain the elements necessary to the sustaining of the human body.” “Go on!” growled the jailer. “What yer givin’ us?” “I mean,” explained Hal, “a diet of bread and water is not what I’d choose to live on.” “What would yer choose?” The tone suggested that the question was a rhetorical one; but Hal took it in good faith. “If I could have some beefsteak and mashed potatoes--” The door of the cell closed with a slam whose echoes drowned out the rest of that imaginary menu. And so once more Hal sat on the hard bench, and munched his hunk of bread, and thought jail-thoughts. When the quitting-whistle blew, he stood at the window, and saw the groups of his friends once again, and got their covert signals of encouragement. Then darkness fell, and another long vigil began. It was late; Hal had no means of telling how late, save that all the lights in the camps were out. He made up his mind that he was in for the night, and had settled himself on the floor with his arm for a pillow, and had dozed off to sleep, when suddenly there came a scraping sound against the bars of his window. He sat up with a start, and heard another sound, unmistakably the rustling of paper. He sprang to the window, where by the faint light of the stars he could make out something dangling. He caught at it; it seemed to be an ordinary note-book, such as stenographers use, tied on the end of a pole. Hal looked out, but could see no one. He caught hold of the pole and jerked it, as a signal; and then he heard a whisper which he recognised instantly as Rovetta’s. “Hello! Listen. Write your name hundred times in book. I come back. Understand?” The command was a sufficiently puzzling one, but Hal realised that this was no time for explanations. He answered, “Yes,” and broke the string and took the notebook. There was a pencil attached, with a piece of cloth wrapped round the point to protect it. The pole was withdrawn, and Hal sat on the bench, and began to write, three or four times on a page, “Joe Smith--Joe Smith--Joe Smith.” It is not hard to write “Joe Smith,” even in darkness, and so, while his hand moved, Hal’s mind was busy with this mystery. It was fairly to be assumed that his committee did not want his autograph to distribute for a souvenir; they must want it for some vital purpose, to meet some new move of the bosses. The answer to this riddle was not slow in coming: having failed in their effort to find money on him, the bosses had framed up a letter, which they were exhibiting as having been written by the would-be check-weigh-man. His friends wanted his signature to disprove the authenticity of the letter.