During my absence a new and securer cell had been built in the jail because of our escape. It adjoined the jailer’s office, and its barred door was directly in front of his desk, not six feet away. He moved a camp cot into his office and slept where he could watch me. Day after day and night after night he drank his whisky, smoked his pipe, and rustled his paper under my nose.

Chew Chee, the Chinese boy, had stolen two thousand dollars cash from his employer. He told me he gambled it away before he got arrested. At any rate, the money was never recovered. My jailer spread the report around that I took the Chinese boy with me so I could get the two thousand, after which I had murdered him and secreted his body. Whether he believed it or only pretended to, I never knew. He never questioned me about Chew Chee, and now when he got drunk instead of calling me just plain “damned Yank,” he chucked in another adjective, “murderous.” To get even with him I began sleeping in the daytime and walking up and down the cell all night, clanking the leg irons to keep him awake. He retaliated by prodding me with a long stick every time he caught me sleeping in the daytime, and I gave it up.

He took my Bible away and when the Salvation Army came on Sunday I reported it to them. Somebody regulated him, and he grudgingly returned it.

I had some thought of taking a jury trial. One never can tell what a small-town jury will do. Sometimes they carry their neighborhood feuds into the jury room and the defendant gets a disagreement. But after my jailer spread his story about my murdering the China boy, I dismissed the jury from my mind and decided to go before the court under the Speedy Trials Act. A defendant electing for a speedy trial dispenses with a jury and saves time and money for the community. A speedy trial is almost equivalent to a plea of guilty, but when the defendant is found guilty the court, in passing sentence, considers the fact that there has been no expensive jury trial and is more lenient.

The Crown counsel called at the jail to ask what I wanted in the way of a trial. I told him, and he had the witnesses subpoenaed for a certain day. I could have got a young lawyer of the town with the money I brought from Victoria, but it looked to me like a willful waste, and I held it.