“What kind of a law?” asked Ned, quickly.
“In regard to vagrants. It’s three months on the stone pile, or with ball and chain. No getting out of it, unless the prisoner has money enough to buy a ticket that will take him fifty miles away, on one road or the other.”
“Why! that is barbarous!” exclaimed Dorothy.
“Dunno about that, Ma’am; but it’s the municipal ordinance.”
“Oh! the judge of the court must have some power,” cried Dorothy. “Do let me talk to him.”
The magistrate’s court was not far distant. Ned felt rather peculiar as he climbed the stairs in company with the prisoner and officers, holding Dorothy’s hand in the crook of his arm. There were some pretty rough looking characters on the stairs and hanging about the door of the magistrate’s court. But Ned and Dorothy pushed on in the wake of the railroad police and their prisoner.
Dorothy sympathized so deeply with the old man who had escaped from the discipline and routine of the Soldiers’ Home, that she paid little attention to her surroundings.
The courtroom was long, and ugly, and bare. The man sitting at the high desk at the end of the room, Dorothy knew, must be the magistrate. He was a young, smoothly shaven man, dressed very fashionably, and with a flower in his buttonhole. That flower was the single bright spot in all the somber place.
The railroad policeman looked knowingly at Dorothy, and she went forward with Ned. They were both allowed inside the railing. One of the officers spoke in a low tone to the magistrate, and the latter glanced interestedly at Dorothy.
Although Dorothy Dale had been traveling night and day for some time, she was too attractive a girl to lose all her bonny appearance under any circumstances.