He shook my hand again and thanked me. He was so downright decent and charming that an outsider, observing our interview, would have thought he had come to ask a favor of me, and was departing under a heavy obligation. I was ashamed of going into his house and would have taken a pledge not to rob any more Englishmen but it didn’t seem necessary. From what I could see, there was a judge waiting in the jurisdiction I escaped who would attend to that.
The Scotchman loaded me with irons, put me on a boat to Vancouver, then on a train, and finally landed me back safely in his jail. He took the Englishman’s book from me on the train and never gave it back. I had no chance to read the story till I got out of his clutches. Later I got it, read it, and was fascinated and read every other book by the author that I could lay hands on.
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 subpœnaed 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.
In due time the judge arrived at the town. My irons were struck off, and I went into court. I got a brief, dignified, orderly trial. The train conductor appeared and identified me and the fatal twenty-dollar bill I gave him. All the other witnesses testified, word for word, as they did at my examination. I removed any doubts there might have been as to my guilt by declining to go on the witness stand. This trial consumed almost an hour.
Then I was tried for escaping from Her Majesty’s jail. That consumed fifteen minutes.
Having no lawyer, the judge asked me if I wanted to go over the points in the case. I thanked him and said I could not presume to instruct His Lordship on law points. He gave his verdict then, “Guilty, both charges.”