"Oh, Tom—Tom—" I cried.
But Obermuller got in front of me.
"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think it will amount to about that for cab-hire. I guess the cars aren't any too safe for you, or it might be less. It may amount to something more before I get you shipped before the mast on the first foreign-bound boat. But what's more important," he added, bringing his fist down with a mighty thump on the table, "you have just ten seconds to make up your mind. At the end of that time I'll ring for the police."
I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning. No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was there. It was to say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him, Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he didn't. Men don't pull down the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for me he wouldn't have made a thief of me. If he'd cared, the last place on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his track, would have been just the first place he made for. If he'd cared, he—
But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap—that's what he is, this Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad—a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter. Oh—
The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring partner has gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan—the real one, poor fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan—he died. Yes, he died, Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard. A hard lot for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him. He might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before the mast this morning.
X.
There I was seated in a box all alone—Miss Nancy Olden, by courtesy of the management, come to listen to the leading lady sing coon-songs, that I might add her to my collection of take-offs.