The indignant Captain demanded the name of the next prisoner, who confessed to the eccentric Scriptural cognomen of 'Numbers Clapp.'
'I know him, too,' again whispered the under-official—'he is a common and notorious thief, but he is useful to us as a stool pigeon,[3] and you must let him go.'
'Clapp, you can go,' said the Captain; and Mr. Numbers Clapp lost no time in conveying himself from the dangerous vicinity of justice; though such justice as we here record, was not very dangerous to him.
'Now, fellow, what's your name?' asked the Captain of a shabbily dressed man, whose appearance strongly indicated both abject poverty and extreme ill health.
'Dionysus Wheezlecroft,' answered the man, with a consumptive cough.
'Do you know him?' inquired the Captain, addressing the under-official, in a whisper.
'Perfectly well,' replied the other—'he is a poor devil, utterly harmless and inoffensive, and is both sick and friendless. He was formerly a political stump orator of some celebrity; he worked hard for his party, and when that party got into power, it kicked him to the devil, and he has been flat on his back ever since.'
'What party did he belong to?—ours?' asked the Captain.
'No,' was the reply; and that brief monosyllable of two letters, sealed the doom of Dionysus Wheezlecroft.
'Lock him up,' cried the Captain—'he will be sent over for six months in the morning.' And so he was—not for any crime, but because he did not belong to our party.