There were three separate locks on the great cage door. One, two of them went back with an easy click. For the third we could find no key. There was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing again. Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey. Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.
"Now it's shore either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs for th' sheriff's son foh lawyah fees ... an' the footprints in de flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan mine."
The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys. Panic-stricken, the mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for fear she'd be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!
That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little, shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big room. It was easy to see what they wanted. They wanted the keys and they were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to come at them.
"Martha, we want them keys! Show us where they is, like a good girl!"
"'Deed, Ah don' know where dey is a-tall, Marse Sheriff!"
"Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin' Jacklin heah!" pointing to the jailer.
The jailer nodded his head asseveratingly.
"Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air," urged the latter, with caressing softness and fright in his voice. He didn't want his mistress whipped.