Nalla, his trunk hanging down despondently, and giving vent to groanings that strongly resembled sobs, followed in the rear, apparently understanding and sharing in the overwhelming trouble of his young owners.
The sous-préfet was a stern old man, having a high sense of his own importance, and of the dignity of the law which he represented.
He listened gravely to the report of the brigadier, who added many embellishments to the actual facts in making it, and, deciding that the case was one which would require careful investigation, directed that the children should be kept in confinement until he was at leisure to give their matter due attention.
And so behold the three of them without having done the slightest harm, but on the contrary been the victims of the cruelest wrong, put in prison just as if they were malefactors!
Poor old Nalla, sorely perplexed at the whole proceeding, followed them to the prison, and would have liked to enter with them. But as that, of course, was not possible, he took up his station beside the door, swaying his trunk and groaning in a piteous fashion.
Thus it came about, through the irony of fate, that the money which the well-meaning Madame Pradère had, in the goodness of her heart, given the Tamby children to be a help to them at some critical time, had only served to add to their trouble. Because of its possession they were imprisoned as thieves.
The brigadier, on finding such an amount as two hundred francs in the hands of Nadine after the girl had complained to him of having been robbed of all her money, suspected that there was something wrong. Her explanation that it was a gift from a charitable lady seemed to him very fishy, to say the least.
"These young vagabonds," he reasoned, "have stolen that money, and we shall presently find out the truth about it. When the sous-préfet examines them they will be made to tell everything."
It is needless to say that that was a dreadful night for the poor young Tambys. They spent it in weeping and lamenting their cruel fate, which they could not understand that they had in any way deserved, although Nadine, the dear innocent, seemed to think that she was in some way to blame.