Swatty went up to a house about supper time and asked for some bread and butter, and he got it and brought part of it to us. Then he made us go on, because he said we ought to get as far from that house as we could after we'd been seen there. So we went until I was ready to die, and we found a hayrick in a field and we were just going to hide in it when three men on horseback and some in a buggy—two more—came up the road and saw us and shouted at us.
Well, we knew it was all up. The men started to climb over the fence, and we walked toward them because we knew we couldn't get away, and it was just as well to be hung as to be shot trying to run away. I guess it was the most awful feeling I ever had in my life.
When we got up to them one of the men was Swatty's father and another was my minister. As soon as Swatty got there his father took him by the collar of his coat, and shook him and hit him on the side of the head and told him what he thought of him for running away and making so much trouble; but when he let go of him Swatty just dropped down on the grass and shut his eyes, because he was so played out that all he had to be was shook, and he went unconscious. So Bony started to cry and the minister said, “Shame!” and then Swatty's father got red in the face, and dropped on his knees beside Swatty and picked him up and kissed him. He cried. It was the first time I ever saw a man cry.
So then I guessed I'd confess the whole thing to my minister, and I did. The other men were all trying to get Swatty to open his eyes and my minister listened to me. He listened to all of it—all about the murder and all. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “You poor boy! And you thought I was hunting you down?” And I said, “How long will it be before they hang us?” And he said, “George, I hope you will never be hung, because that man wasn't murdered. He was a suicide, and he wrote a letter about it before he went to do it.” So I started to say how glad I was and, when I come to, I was at a farmhouse and my minister was trying to get me to drink some milk.
So after while we went home. Father wasn't there, because he was out with some other folks hunting for us, but Mother and Fan and a lot of people were, and my minister told them all about it, and the women all cried to think of us three all alone with a murder on our minds and our legs tired, I guess, and not much to eat. But I was so tired I didn't care. I was so tired I didn't care who was there. I was so tired I was n't even glad I wasn't a murderer. Then somebody came out from behind the women where she had been, where they wouldn't notice her much, and she didn't look at me or anybody. She just said:
“Well, I guess I'll go home now.”
“Why, Mamie Little, have you been waiting up all this while?” my mother said. “You should be in bed, child.”
So she didn't look at me, and I didn't look at her. She just went home. But then I knew I was glad I wasn't a murderer. Because I knew that Mamie Little wouldn't have thought I'd got religion very good if all I'd got let me go around murdering men in shanty boats. And I didn't want Mamie Little to think that about me, because—well, I didn't know why, I just thought it.