In "Civil Disobedience," what happens right after the townspeople “locked the door on [Thoreau’s] meditations”?

Thoreau says his meditations “followed them out again without let or hindrance” after the townspeople locked him in. In other words, the jailers could confine his body, but they could not stop his thoughts from going free. This matches the choice that his meditations symbolically follow the jailers out of the door.

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