“Good-morning, sheriff,” he said, and sat up, yawning.

The sun was shining brightly.  Mr. Johnson reached for his trousers and yawned again.

The scandalized sheriff was unable to reply.  He had been summoned by passers-by, who, hearing the turbulent clamor for breakfast made by the neglected prisoners, had hastened to give the alarm.  He had found the jailer tightly bound, almost choked by his gag, suffering so cruelly from cramps that he could not get up when released, and barely able to utter the word “Johnson.”

Acting on that hint, Barton had rushed up-stairs, ignoring the shouts of his mutinous prisoners as he went through the second-floor corridor, to find on the third floor an opened cell, with a bunch of keys hanging in the door, the rope and saw upon the table, Mr. Johnson’s neatly folded clothing on the chair, and Mr. Johnson peacefully asleep.  The sheriff pointed to the rope and saw, and choked, spluttering inarticulate noises.  Mr. Johnson suspended dressing operations and patted him on the back.

“There, there!” he crooned benevolently.  “Take it easy.  What’s the trouble?  I hate to see you all worked up like this, for you was sure mighty white to me yesterday.  Nicest jail I ever was in.  But there was a thundering racket downstairs last night.  I ain’t complainin’ none—­I wouldn’t be that ungrateful, after all you done for me.  But I didn’t get a good night’s rest.  Wish you’d put me in another cell to-night.  There was folks droppin’ in here at all hours of the night, pesterin’ me.  I didn’t sleep good at all.”

“Dropping in?  What in hell do you mean?” gurgled the sheriff, still pointing to rope and saw.

“Why, sheriff, what’s the matter?  Aren’t you a little mite petulant this A.M.?  What have I done that you should be so short to me?”

“That’s what I want to know.  What have you been doing here?”

“I ain’t been doing nothin’, I tell you—­except stayin’ here, where I belong,” said Pete virtuously.

His eye followed the sheriff’s pointing finger, and rested, without a qualm, on the evidence.  The sheriff laid a trembling hand on the coiled rope.  “How’d you get this in, damn you?”

“That rope?  Oh, a fellow shoved it through the bars.  Wanted me to saw my way out and go with him, I reckon.  I didn’t want to argue with him, so I just took it and didn’t let on I wasn’t comin’.  Wasn’t that right?  Why, I thought you’d be pleased!  I couldn’t have any way of knowin’ that you’d take it like this.”

“Shoved it in through a third-story window?”

Pete’s ingenuous face took on an injured look.  “I reckon maybe he stood on his tip-toes,” he admitted.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” said Pete truthfully.  “He didn’t speak and I didn’t see him.  Maybe he didn’t want me to break jail; but I thought, seein’ the saw and all, he had some such idea in mind.”

“Did he bring the keys, too?”