The dark outlook, the blind future, the hopeless cell, the disordered table, the lazy life that deadened all activity but that of the imagination, the lack of vigorous air, the lounging companionship, but, above all things, the thought of his mother and Abbie, and the brooding over what he dared to call an outrage perpetrated, in the name of the law, upon himself—­these things made a turmoil of Isaac’s brain.  There was a daily conflict between the Christian and the criminal way of looking at his irreparable misfortune which he was surprised to find that even the possession of his father’s Bible could not control.

There were times when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest.  Then there were hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot.  At such a time he wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect that it started from a prison.

“DEAR MOTHER”—­it ran—­“I have not written to you for three weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick.  I am now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well.  I clear my food and board and seventy-five cents a day.  I have not been paid yet.  I think you had better not write to me until I can give you a permanent address.  I read my Bible every day and love you more dearly than ever.  I have tried to do my duty as you would have me.  Give my love to Abbie.  I will write soon again.

    “Ever your affectionate son,

    “ISAAC.”

The simpleton!  Could he not suspect that country papers copy from city columns all that is of special local interest, and more?  And did he not know that it is one of the disgraces of modern journalism that no department is so copiously edited, annotated, and illustrated as that of criminal intelligence?

Could he not surmise that on the Saturday following his incarceration the very mountains rang with the news?  That it should be mangled and turned topsy-turvy, and that in the eyes of his simple-minded neighbors he should be thought of as the murderer, by reason of his great strength?  For how could it come into the intelligence of law-abiding citizens and law-respecting people, that a man should be shut up in prison, no matter what the newspapers said, unless he had done something to deserve it?  What did the mountaineers know about the laws of bail, and habeas corpus?  And could such news, gossiped by one neighbor, repeated by another, confirmed by a third, fail to reach the desolate farm-house in which a woman, feeble, old and faint of heart, lay trembling between life and death?

The grand jury meets on the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained.  The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived.  In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery prolonged, trial was postponed.