This time we spent fourteen days in the dungeon for our pains.

And now comes an extraordinary disclosure with regard to my
imprisonment. A few days after my removal from the dungeon to the
old quarters again, the Deputy, in one of his rare periods of what,
with him, passed for good humor, informed me that Sarah had been
confined, and had given birth to a fine boy; that she was crying for
my release; that Lawyer Sitgreave was interceding for me; but that
the old man Scheimer was still obstinate and would not let me out.
Passing over my feelings with regard to the birth of my son, here
was a revelation indeed! It will be remembered that I had only been
told that I was under indictment for bigamy. I had never been
brought before, a justice for a preliminary examination; never bound
over for trial; and now it transpired that old Scheimer, a
Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, had the power to put me in jail, put me
in irons, and subject me to long months, perhaps years of
imprisonment. I had something to occupy my thoughts now, and for
the remaining period of my jail life.

Next came a new dodge of the Scheimers, the object of which was to
show that Sarah's marriage to me was no marriage at all, thus
leaving her free to marry any other man her family might force upon
her. When I had been in jail seven months, one day the Deputy came
in and said that he was going to take off my irons. I told him I
wouldn't trouble him to do that, for though I had worn them when he
and his subordinates were around till the irons had nearly killed
me, yet at other times I had been in a habit of taking them off at
pleasure; and to prove it, I sat down and in a few minutes handed
him the irons. The man was amazed; but saying nothing about the
irons, he approached me on another subject. He said he thought if I