"Boy," he said gravely, "now that ye're sorter sober I want ye ter tell that story again that ye told las' night about that burned theatre."
Pete started up in his bunk,—his headache forgotten. He had not before thought of this chance. Although Ned could not be caught in the active perpetration of the misdeed, he could still be accused of having climbed into the window of the theatre with nefarious designs.
"Maybe I'll make it lively fur him yet," Pete reflected with satisfaction.
Then he drawled with an affectation of indifference, "I never said nothin' 'bout no burned theaytre sence I wuz born."
As he thus corrected the policeman his broad face was ornamented with an expression of importance and extreme rectitude. His narrow eyes were downcast as if in reflection, and his manner intimated that he was willing, but did not seek to impart information. He noticed, however, that a man in citizen's dress, a thin, genteel, unobtrusive person, had entered too, and closed the door, but he did not see that upon the mention of the burned theatre this man slyly touched with the toe of his boot the broad, burly foot of the tall policeman, as an admonition not to put that clumsy member into Pete's explanation.
"Well,—what did you say, then?" the policeman asked.
"I said that a boy had clomb inter the back winder o' Gorham's Theaytre. An' I begged an' plead with him ter come out, 'cause I knowed he wuz goin' ter steal outer the star's dressin'-room."
"What was he going to steal?" demanded the man in citizen's dress.
Pete hesitated. He was not quite sure as to what kind of portable property was most likely to be found in the orbit of "stars."
"Di'monds wuz what he had set his head fur," he replied at last, quite recklessly.