While the condemned man talked and the preacher listened, the Great State of Louisiana prepared to exact its penalty in the form of the life of Willie Malone because “he did feloniously, wilfully, and of his deliberately premeditated malice aforethought, make an assault on one Thurston Gibbs, and a certain gun which then and there was loaded with gunpowder and buckshot and was by him, the said Willie Malone, had and held in both hands, he, the said Willie Malone, did then and there feloniously and of malice aforethought shoot off and discharge at and upon the said Thurston Gibbs thereby, and by thus striking the said Thurston Gibbs with the buckshots inflicting on and in the body one mortal wound of which said mortal wound the said Thurston Gibbs then and there instantly died. And so the said Willie Malone did in the manner and form aforesaid, feloniously and of deliberately premeditated malice aforethought, kill and murder the said Thurston Gibbs in the Parish of Wilton aforesaid, against the peace and dignity of the Great State of Louisiana.” It all came out at the trial. Hogs had been running in Willie’s cornfield. The hogs belonged to Mr. Gibbs. And when Willie asked him to keep them home Mr. Gibbs had cursed him. Willie then bought a shotgun and some buckshot. Everybody agreed upon that much of it. Willie said he aimed to shoot the hogs and that when he heard something rustling the long blades he fired, thinking it was a hog. The district attorney pointed out that it was impossible to get a witness who could say what was in a man’s mind and, therefore, he’d leave it to the jury as to whether Willie was hog hunting or man hunting. The jury was divided upon the point, but all agreed that no nigger had any right to shoot a white man’s hogs, anyway, much less shoot a white man. So they found him guilty as charged. Willie had rather enjoyed his stay in jail. Two or three times his lawyer came and talked to him in a low voice and had him make his cross mark on many important-looking pieces of paper. It all gave him a feeling of importance hitherto not experienced. He liked “Cap’m Archie,” too--Cap’m Archie was always making jokes, and didn’t make him do any work around the jail except a little sweeping. And during the long cool spring evenings, when the stars twinkled in the sky and the fiddling of the katydids out in the weed patch back of the jail floated in between the long iron-barred windows, Cap’m Archie would have one of the short-time prisoners drag his chair back to Willie’s own private cage and Willie would sing for him. Willie did like to sing--church songs, mostly. But sometimes when he felt sad and lonesome he’d sing the one that began: “Thirty days in jail, Baby, don’t soun’ so long, But de las’ frien’ I got in dis worl’, Done shuck her laig an’ gone.”