Ned shut the gate and walked away.
His account of the day's proceedings seemed a wild, terrible story to the panic-stricken woman who sat cowering in the little room that opened on the vistas of chimney-pots and clouds and stars. He found her in tears. She had just learned of his arrest through a message from the managing editor of the paper, who sent to say that he had arranged to have Ned's wages paid to her during the boy's imprisonment as regularly as if he were still at work. The editor had some charitable hobbies which thus liberally expressed themselves, aided in this instance by his confrères of the various departments of the paper. For although the editorial force deemed Ned the tool of the incendiaries and thieves, and thought that his obstinate silence was strangely incriminating, they still had faith enough in him to believe him the victim of a deception, and innocent of all intentional wrong-doing; that he was somehow the dupe of an over-reaching craft, and the forlorn scapegoat of the real criminals. Even thus, the situation was discreditable to the last degree, and well calculated to alienate whatever friends the little lad had been able to make for himself. But when the "dude reporter," who had hied himself straightway to the office, detailed the strange disasters that had befallen the printer's devil, the editorial force remembered a thousand trifling benefactions received at his small, willing, ink-smirched hands, and a subscription, circulated among the desks, aggregated a sum sufficient to justify a promise of the continuance of the payment of his weekly wages for the indefinite time of his incarceration, till his trial should set the question of his guilt or innocence at rest.
Ned's presence at liberty once more could not reassure his mother. Long after he had gone to announce his release to his employers and resume his work she crouched pale and chill beside the monkey-stove, although the air was warm and languorous. Her mind was filled with terror for the future and with those ever unavailing regrets for the past and the simple country home of her youth.
As Ned reached the newspaper building and looked up at the brilliantly illuminated windows flaring against the dark sky, he had a renewed sense of the blessedness of liberty and the privilege of labor, and once more the singular manner in which bail had come to him recurred to his mind.
His surprise, however, at the sensation which the story of his release produced in the sensation-seasoned composing-room soon effaced every other impression.
"Hold on a minute," said the foreman, interrupting the recital in its midst.
He stepped into the office of the managing editor, and presently that magnate came out, looking alert and inquisitive and catechistic, as a newspaper man will when there is a mystery in the air.
From some subtle instinct Ned knew that the foreman had made representations which the managing editor had pronounced preposterous, and had refused to believe.
"So you were bailed, were you?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied Ned.