We had disposed ourselves comfortably to sleep for the few hours till wide day, in the station, when the station master came. He poked the fire brighter, shook it down, then turned to us. "Boys," not unkindly, "sorry, but you can't sleep here ... it's the rules." We shuffled to our feet. "Do you mind if we stand about the stove till the sun's high enough to take the chill off things?" "No." But, standing, we fell to talking ... comparing notes.... "I've been through here once before," remarked my companion, whom I never knew otherwise than as "Bud." "There's a cotton seed mill up the tracks a way toward town, and we can sleep there, if you want ... to-day's Sunday, and no one will be around, working, 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."