The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary. Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour, hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to despair. My reaction was a strange one. I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance ... I was in the midst of adventure and romance. I was a Count of Monte Cristo, a Baron von Trenck. I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to wealth and power, afterwards, so that I would be pardoned and could come back and magnanimously shame with my forgiveness the community that had sent me up. Bud stopped his pacing to and fro to stand in our cell-doorway. I was sitting on a stool, thinking hard. "We can't do a thing," said Bud, "we're in for it, good and proper." "--tell you what _I'll_ do," I responded, "I'll write a letter to the owner of the warehouse and appeal to his humanity." "You romantic jack-ass," yelled Bud, his nerves on edge. He walked away angry. He came back calmer. "Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst--but you _are_ a fool. This is _real life_ we're up against now. You're not reading about this in a book." "We'll see what can be done," I returned. * * * * * At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a certain Mr. Womber.... In it I pointed out the enormity of sending to the penitentiary two young men, on a merely technical charge of burglary. For if we had gone into the place to rob, why had we so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay, sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the face of it.