“Enough of what?” the Captain demanded.

“Dynamite and detonators,” the fool rattled on.  “Thirty-five pounds of it.  Your stool saw Summerface pass it over to me.”

And right there the Captain of the Yard must have nearly died.  I can actually sympathize with him—­thirty-five pounds of dynamite loose in the prison.

They say that Captain Jamie—­that was his nickname—­sat down and held his head in his hands.

“Where is it now?” he cried.  “I want it.  Take me to it at once.”

And right there Cecil Winwood saw his mistake.

“I planted it,” he lied—­for he was compelled to lie because, being merely tobacco in small packages, it was long since distributed among the convicts along the customary channels.

“Very well,” said Captain Jamie, getting himself in hand.  “Lead me to it at once.”

But there was no plant of high explosives to lead him to.  The thing did not exist, had never existed save in the imagination of the wretched Winwood.

In a large prison like San Quentin there are always hiding-places for things.  And as Cecil Winwood led Captain Jamie he must have done some rapid thinking.

As Captain Jamie testified before the Board of Directors, and as Winwood also so testified, on the way to the hiding-place Winwood said that he and I had planted the powder together.

And I, just released from five days in the dungeons and eighty hours in the jacket; I, whom even the stupid guards could see was too weak to work in the loom-room; I, who had been given the day off to recuperate—­from too terrible punishment—­I was named as the one who had helped hide the non-existent thirty-five pounds of high explosive!

Winwood led Captain Jamie to the alleged hiding-place.  Of course they found no dynamite in it.

“My God!” Winwood lied.  “Standing has given me the cross.  He’s lifted the plant and stowed it somewhere else.”

The Captain of the Yard said more emphatic things than “My God!” Also, on the spur of the moment but cold-bloodedly, he took Winwood into his own private office, looked the doors, and beat him up frightfully—­all of which came out before the Board of Directors.  But that was afterward.  In the meantime, even while he took his beating, Winwood swore by the truth of what he had told.

What was Captain Jamie to do?  He was convinced that thirty-five pounds of dynamite were loose in the prison and that forty desperate lifers were ready for a break.  Oh, he had Summerface in on the carpet, and, although Summerface insisted the package contained tobacco, Winwood swore it was dynamite and was believed.

At this stage I enter or, rather, I depart, for they took me away out of the sunshine and the light of day to the dungeons, and in the dungeons and in the solitary cells, out of the sunshine and the light of day, I rotted for five years.

I was puzzled.  I had only just been released from the dungeons, and was lying pain-racked in my customary cell, when they took me back to the dungeon.