"I ain't got no spoons! I tell you I was at the camp all night, and I don't know nothin' about this thing."
"Very well, very well. Can you furnish a thousand-dollar bond?"
"Thousand-dollar bond!" and the gypsy shifted uneasily. "I guess not, judge."
"Then here comes the man to attend to your case. Constable Cummings, take this man to the station again and lock him up. Here, Tony, you can walk all right. Don't play off that way."
But Tony did not move. He sat there defiant.
Officer Cummings was a big man and accustomed to handling prisoners as rough and as ugly as this one. The two steel cells back of the fire house were often occupied by rough fishermen and clammers who forgot the law at the seaside place, and it was always Tom Cummings who put them in "the pen."
"Come, Tony," he said, with a flourish of his stick. "I never like to hit a gypsy; it's bad luck."
The prisoner looked up at big Tom. Then he shuffled to his feet and shambled out of the room.
As he passed down the stone steps he brushed past Cora. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the man shoved the girl so that she was obliged to jump down at the side of the step. Jack saw it and so did Ed, but big Tom winked at them and merely hurried the prisoner along. Cora only smiled. Why should the man not be rude when her evidence had accused him of a serious crime—that of breaking and entering?
"I didn't tell you about the bottle," she said to the boys as they walked along. "I found this bottle in the fields."