The train was moving fast now, but with a tremendous effort I clutched one of the handbars and the momentum threw me up on the rear steps. Just as I landed, one of the trainmen opened the rear door and saw me. He had his mouth open to say something when he saw the constable crawling out of the ditch, firing his pistol in the air and making signs to him. He pulled the bell cord.

As the train slowed down two more trainmen appeared and the three began kicking me. I jumped off and fell into the hands of the constable, who came up reinforced by some natives from the depot. They all fell on me and gave me an unmerciful skull dragging. After they got done scruffing me around, two of them took me by each arm and the constable fastened both hands in my coat collar from behind. The ones that couldn’t find a place to lay hold on me surrounded us, a tribe of small boys appeared from nowhere, and I was dragged, pushed, and bumped across the fields to the village and thrown into the jail.

When I was safely locked in, the constable mopped his forehead with his sleeve, and, shaking his fist at me, said: “Sure as God made little apples I’ll see that you get ten days.” They all went away then except the small boys. They lingered around all afternoon peeping in at the windows.

It was a mail-order jail⁠—two steel cells on a concrete foundation. A cheap wooden shack had been built around the cells to keep the weather out. The door of the shack was always open and there was plenty of light. The cell they put me in was clean, and there was a roll of new blankets in it. I was the only prisoner.

I unrolled the blankets and, stretching out on the floor, tried to figure out what had happened. I couldn’t understand the constable’s threat to get me ten days, and concluded he was so excited that he said ten days when he meant ten years.