“No more out of you!” snarled the captain to the kindly officer, as the latter again tried to speak; “you get back to your beat!”
“An' say!” cried the red-faced man, slowly rousing from his position by the desk; “before you go, let me give you a word. You're a sight too gabby; you had better think more and say less, or you won't last long enough as a copper to wear out that new uniform. An' if anybody asks, tell him it was Big Kennedy that told you.”
They led me to a cell, while poor Apple Cheek, almost fainting, was carried to another. As I was being taken away, Anne came rushing in. Bad news is a creature of wings, and Anne had been told my adventures by a small urchin who ran himself nearly to death in defeating two fellow urchins for the privilege before I had reached the station.
Anne did not observe me as she came in, for I stood somewhat to the rear, with several turnkeys and officers between. I could see the white face of her, and how the lamps of a great alarm were lighted in her eyes. Her voice was so low with terror I could not hear her words. Evidently she was pleading, girl-fashion, for my liberty. The tones of the captain, however, rose clear and high.
“That'll do ye now,” said he in a manner of lordly insolence, looking up from the desk to which he had returned. “If we put a prisoner on the pavement every time a good-looking girl rushed in with a yarn about bein' his sister, we wouldn't need no cells at all. This boy stays till the judge takes a look at him in the mornin'. Meanwhile, you had better get back to your window, or all the men will have left the street.”
At this, a mighty anger flamed up in my heart. I tore away from the officer who had me by the shoulders, and, save that three others as practiced in the sleight of it as football players instantly seized me, I should have gone straight at the captain's neck like a bulldog.
“I'll have his life!” I foamed.
The next moment I was thrown into a cell. The door slammed; the lock shot home; with that, my heart seemed to turn to water in my bosom and I sank upon the stone floor of my cage.