"Bridge tickets!" he yells. Then he grabs his born New Yorker by the shoulders and shakes him still further out of dreamland.
"What street in New York is your old home on?" he demands savagely. The lad blinks his fishy eyes and fixes his hat on that Ben has shook loose.
"Cranberry Street," says he.
"Cranberry Street! Hell, that's Brooklyn, and you claimed New York," says Ben, shaking the hat loose again.
"Greater New York," says the lad pathetically, and pulls his hat firmly down over his ears.
Ben looked at the imposter with horror in his eyes. "Brooklyn!" he muttered—"the city of the unburied dead! So that was the secret of your strange behaviour? And me warming you in my bosom, you viper!"
But the crook couldn't hear him again, haying lapsed into his trance and become entirely rigid and foolish. In the cold light of day his face now looked like a plaster cast of itself. Ben turned to us with a hunted look. "Blow after blow has fallen upon me to-night," he says tearfully, "but this is the most cruel of all. I can't believe in anything after this. I can't even believe them street-car rails are the originals. Probably they were put down last week."
"Then let's get out of this quick," I says to him. "We been exposing ourselves to arrest here long enough for a bit of false sentiment on your part."
"I gladly go," says Ben, "but wait one second." He stealthily approaches the Greater New Yorker and shivers him to wakefulness with another hearty wallop on the back. "Listen carefully," says Ben as the lad struggles out of the dense fog. "Do you see those workmen tearing up that car-track?"
"Yes, I see it," says the lad distinctly. "I've often seen it."