The prosecuting attorney, certain that Samuel J. Coggswell was behind the conspiracy against Owen Sheridan, which had landed Jake in the toils, and anxious to get the bigger fish in his net, if possible, offered to deal leniently with Hines if he would make a confession involving the boss. But Jake stubbornly refused.

“No,” he said, “I ain’t convicted yet, and while Boss[Pg 45] Coggswell’s my friend I won’t give up hope of beatin’ this case. But if the worst comes to worst, and I have to go up—well, I’ll be the goat. You won’t get a squeal out of me!”

Coggswell made every effort to keep his subordinate from going to jail; that is to say, every effort which it was possible to make in secret. He got a bondsman for Jake, even though the latter’s bail was set at a very high figure, and arranged for the young man to skip his bail and escape beyond the jurisdiction of the courts before the case came up for trial.

But this plan was defeated by the vigilance of the prosecuting attorney, who, anticipating such a move, had Hines watched so closely by detectives that it was impossible for him to get away.

Failing in this attempt, Coggswell retained the very best lawyers obtainable to defend his faithful follower; and when this array of legal talent met with defeat, and Hines was found guilty by a jury, the politician exerted all his powerful influence to save the convicted man from a jail sentence. But this attempt also failed, and Jake Hines had to go to prison.

CHAPTER XXIV.
A SAD FAREWELL.

The young politician took his medicine with a stoicism worthy of a better cause. There was actually a broad grin on his beefy face as he heard the judge utter the words which condemned him to several years behind prison bars. But it was not wholly stoicism. His attitude was partly due to the fact that even at that desperate stage of the game he had not quite lost faith in the power of his master and mentor to aid him.

“I won’t be in the jug long,” he declared confidently to the deputy sheriff who led him, shackled, out of the courtroom. “Boss Coggswell will get me out. His pull will win me a pardon, all right. So long as he’s my friend I’m not worryin’. And not only will he get me free,” he added, a glint coming into his beady eyes, “but you can bet he’ll make it hot for everybody that’s had a hand in sending me up. That judge’ll get his for handing me such a stiff sentence; the district attorney will be made to regret that he wouldn’t let up when the boss gave him the hint; and as for that big stiff of a Sheridan—well, I’m willing to bet a thousand to a hundred that he won’t be holding that inspector’s job very long. They’ll all be made to feel that it ain’t healthy to defy a man like Samuel J. Coggswell.”

Just as the train which was to carry him off to prison was about to pull out of the station, Jake received a visit from the man in whom he had such faith. Coggswell rarely yielded to sentiment when it was against his interest to do so, but in this instance, although he realized that he could ill afford to be seen shaking hands with the convicted man, he decided that the latter’s loyalty in refusing to “squeal” was deserving of this tribute; so he was there to say farewell to his faithful henchman.

“I need scarcely say,” he explained unctuously to the group of newspaper men who were on the platform to see Hines depart, “that there is no man who condemns and deplores more than I the atrocious crime for which that wretched young man is about to pay the penalty. Still, I cannot quite forget the time when poor, misguided Jake Hines was an honest man, who enjoyed my esteem[Pg 46] and friendship. It is in memory of those days, gentlemen, that I am here now to give him a parting handclasp. Who knows,” he added, raising his eyes piously toward the ceiling of the train shed, “but what the lingering recollection of that last touch of an old friend’s hand may soften his heart and cause his feet to seek once more the straight and narrow path after he emerges from his gloomy prison cell?”