"Well—you've put your foot in it this time, I'm afraid. I've been away for a week or two—only got back to-day and heard of this. They have you straight enough on the draft, but that's nothing—only a few years. The other is 'life,' or worse.
"Why, don't you know they've got it down for murder now? Oh! you are in for it I'm afraid, as soon as Jaggers gives up. They haven't found the body yet, but, of course, that's pretty near certain to come to light. It's only a matter of time."
Sanders was no fool—at any rate not fool enough to engage in any affair involving murder, and in spite of himself became interested.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded.
"About the finding of the body of the man you took the draft from. The draft itself, of course, amounts to only a few years, but the other——Here! I've got to see a friend of mine almost as bad off as yourself. Take this paper—it will tell you as much as I can!" and Mr. Blount hurried away to the end of the corridor, and then sat down and talked to the turnkey for half an hour.
Sanders was an educated man and came of good family. Drink had been the primary cause of this and his previous troubles, but he had never been involved in anything even approaching murder, and when Blount had gone he seized the paper and read a long story of the crime supposed to be connected with his possession of the draft. News had not been too plentiful, and the editor had given full scope to the reporter's imagination. The police were close on the heels of the missing murderer, so the paper asserted, and he or the one in custody, it was expected, would divulge the story of the crime.
Sanders read the story eagerly and looked considerably worried by it, Blount's little story fitted in so nicely.
Suddenly Blount appeared at the door of the cell.
"Well, through with the paper, Sanders?" he asked, and as it was handed back: "You were a most infernal fool to put your hand into anything with blood in it. Such fellows as Jaggers and 'The Knifer' (Sanders started) take chances of that kind right along, and are bound to come to the rope in the end—but they are little better than brutes, while you are a man of education. But I must be off! May see you again in a day or two—Good-bye."
And having left Sanders with plenty of food for reflection, Blount left the prison in high glee.