A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you hear the mayor offer the services of the police force to the firemen to protect them, at any time during the fire on Saturday night or Sunday?
A. I will just state, as brief as I can. On Sunday morning I was sent by the chief to the Twelfth ward station to take charge of the telegraph office, and I met the mayor coming down. He asked me if I was going down. He told me to remain at the station there until I was relieved. In an hour and a half the mayor came back again in a buggy and asked if any squad of police had come up. He left his buggy there, and went to Twenty-eighth street. The station-house is at Twenty-sixth street. We went up street and came back again, and about the time we came back the squad of police was there. They brought in some prisoners. They had their arms full of goods. The mayor gave them orders to string along on Liberty street and protect the firemen, and arrest anybody that would interfere with them, and they started. I stood there all day, until seven o'clock in the evening.
Q. Do I understand you went with those men to Liberty street?
A. No, sir.
Q. You stayed at the station-house?
A. I stayed until I was relieved by the night captain. There were one hundred and fifteen men taken out. I think there are seven different station-houses that have a police wire in, and you have to have a man to attend to it; but in daylight they have none.
Q. There is no man left in the station-house at that time?
A. Nobody to do that. When we had the one hundred and sixteen men on, the lieutenant was always on duty more or less, and it was understood he could operate, and if there was anything wrong in the district, he could telegraph to head-quarters. We have one in East Liberty, one at Lawrenceville, one in the Twelfth ward, one at Centre avenue, one at the Fourteenth ward, and three on the south side. I came down in the evening at seven o'clock. Some parties threatened they would be around in the evening to burn the water-works, and the citizens of those two blocks surrounding that and edging on the Fort Wayne sheds considered if any of those places got started it would be liable to burn them out. I went down to the mayor's office and reported this danger, and I thought we ought to have a squad of police, fifteen or twenty. I reported to the chief and also to the mayor, and said I would start back and get together what citizens I could; and it was not an hour until there was twenty-five police there. We surrounded these water-works and stayed there until daylight.
Q. The morning of——