The sergeant went out, promising to “look into it right away.” Our cell⁠—it was more like a room⁠—was in a small corridor set apart for the women prisoners’ quarters. Down the hall I could hear them calling to each other and chatting back and forth from their cells. Somewhere a colored woman was singing a mournful dirge about “That Bad Stackalee.” The verses were endless. The point of the song seemed to be that the negro bully, Stackalee, had been killed with “a big forty-four gun over a damned old Stetson hat.” In the most harrowing tones at the end of every verse the singer moaned the sad refrain, “That ba‑a‑d Stackalee.”

Later I came to know that this song is a favorite among negroes when in great trouble, such as being locked in jail, being double-crossed by a friend, or parting with their money in a dice game. At such times thirty or forty verses of “Stackalee” invariably restores the laughing good humor and childlike confidence of the wronged one.

We heard a rattling of keys and a door opening. George put the side of his face against the cell door, so he could see down the hall.