nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with; there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d ’a’ wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would ’a’ been all right.

So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw