"As quickly as you can, please, boy. And report to your manager in case the lieutenant, or any other policeman attempts to hinder or bother you on this work. We shall want your report as evidence if you are interfered with."
"Say, that kid corporal downstairs knows all his rights," declared the house policeman admiringly to the lieutenant, after the messenger had departed unmolested.
"He'll forget a large part of what he knows, after he's been before the judge in the morning," replied the lieutenant, lighting a cigar. "Soldiers, as well as citizens, can be punished, and Johnson has a clear case against that pair of soldier kids."
For the next two hours Hal and Noll took turns pacing back and forth within the narrow confines of the cell in which they had been thrust.
"I guess we're not going to hear anything to-night," muttered Hal disappointedly at last. "Noll, we may as well get some of the sleep that's coming to us."
Young soldiers accustomed to sleeping on the ground did not find it extremely hard to get to sleep on the hard wooden benches. More than that, they contrived to get a pretty fair rest before they were awakened in the morning by a station-house trusty who thrust two chunks of bread and two tin cups of coffee into the cell.
"Get that down and be ready to go to court," called the trusty as he passed along.
Breakfast eaten, the two young corporals had a lot more time on their hands before a squad of policemen came downstairs and began to busy themselves with marshaling the prisoners and driving them toward a basement door.
Here, mingled with the scum of the city, in the persons of other prisoners, two unoffending young soldiers of the United States Army were forced to enter the dark interior of a covered wagon. A steel door was slammed into place and locked and the ride began.
In a few minutes they were let out, superintended by a guard of other policemen, and driven into another basement. Here, in a dark, dingy, foul-smelling room, this batch of prisoners was herded with those from other police stations.