"No wagon picked us up. We walked all the way. They didn't carry us to the city pen, but to the county jail."
"What!" cried the Mis', while Glenview appeared to regard it with incredulity.
And then all were silent, with a cold feeling creeping through their veins, as the grim reality came upon them. It would now be thirty-seven fifty, and not five dollars, for the county made no exception for Sunday.
All the day through, John Moore raised from his hard seat, and gazed out through the heavy bars that penned him in. "Will they never come, will they never come!" he cried to himself, but only the heat and multitudes of Negroes greeted his gaze, as it eagerly sought the door to freedom.
And all day Glenview walked from one bondman to another.
"No," said the wealthiest Negro doctor, who had bailed out many. "I've quit going anybody's bond. I don't think, from the experience I have had, that I would be justified in going my brother's hereafter." He had a few to jump them, and it cost him a pretty penny, he afterwards told Wyeth, to get them back.
"He's worthless," said the druggist, apparently amused, at least satisfied with his solution for the present. "He owes me two fifty for medicine I sold him, and trusted to my sorrow. But I'll tell you what I will do." He changed his tone to one of thought, then went on. "Now you tell the Mis' if she will come down here and give me seven fifty, five of this is going the bond that'll put the thief on the street, because it is he who has been doing that stealing up there, and all of you don't seem to know it, and the remainder, two fifty, is what he owes me. Tell her to bring it to me in cash, understand, the long green, and out he comes, to go back soon where he ought to be, for he has honestly no right to be free."
Of course, Mis' never had such an amount, so Moore, insofar as this source was concerned, was doomed to stay in the hot place for some time. Glenview went to another.
"That nigga! Hell! Why I wouldn't go his bond to stay in Heaven, he is so crooked and undependable."