"Yes,' I replied. 'I shook hands with it.'
"'Let me shaak dthot hand,' he said, his voice trembling with emotion, and then he whispered in my ear: 'Oi belave yez to be innoshunt; but av yez ain't, for the love of Dan, oi'll let yez _esh_cape.'
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"'Thanks, old fellow,' I replied. 'But I am innocent of wrong-doing, as I can prove.'
"Alas!" sighed the convict, "it was not to be so. When I arrived at the station-house, I was dumfounded to learn that the spoons were all too real. I told my story to the sergeant, and pointed to the monogram, 'G.C.,' on the spoons as evidence that my story was correct; but even that told against me, for the alleged owner's initials were G.C.—his name I withhold—and the monogram only served to substantiate his claim to the spoons. Worst of all, he claimed that he had been robbed on several occasions before this, and by midnight I found myself locked up in a dirty cell to await trial.
"I got a lawyer, and, as I said before, even he declined to believe my story, and suggested the insanity dodge. Of course I wouldn't agree to that. I tried to get him to subpoena Ferdinand and Isabella and Euripides and Hawley Hicks in my behalf, and all he'd do was to sit there and shake his head at me. Then I suggested going up to the Metropolitan Opera-house some fearful night as the clock struck twelve, and try to serve papers on Wagner's spook—all of which he treated as unworthy of a moment's consideration. Then I was tried, convicted, and sentenced to live in this beastly hole; but I have one strong hope to buoy me up, and if that is realized, I'll be free to-morrow morning."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Why," he answered, with a sigh, as the bell rang summoning him to his supper—"why, the whole horrid business has been so weird and uncanny that I'm beginning to believe it's all a dream. If it is, why, I'll wake up, and find myself at home in bed; that's all. I've clung to that hope for nearly a year now, but it's getting weaker every minute."
"Yes, 5010," I answered, rising and shaking him by the hand in parting; "that's a mighty forlorn hope, because I'm pretty wide awake myself at this moment, and can't be a part of your dream. The great pity is you didn't try the insanity dodge."
"Tut!" he answered. "That is the last resource of a weak mind."