“Then it was this Dory that robbed me of my money!” exclaimed the prisoner savagely.
“Robbed you of my money, you mean, Lingerwell. Dory has returned to me the money he took from the pocket-book you hid under the ceiling of the launch. Lingerwell, to the crime of robbery you add the meanness and the baseness of charging it upon an innocent person,”
said the merchant sternly. “Yesterday I would have trusted you with all I had in the world. To-day I find you are a thief and a villain. Here comes the officer with a warrant for you.”
Lingerwell subsided at once; in fact, he broke down like a child, and cried like a baby. He had not supposed he could be discovered so readily, but rogues are very apt to make blunders. The officer marched him to the lockup; and we may as well add here, that he was sentenced, in due time, to the State prison for three years.
“I suppose I shall be wanted in the store, Mr. Longbrook?” asked Bolingbroke, when the culprit had been marched off.
“If you had not run away, you would have been all right, young man,” replied the merchant. “Yesterday I engaged two experienced men at very low wages, and they were to come this morning. I shall not need you.”
“If it is a fair question, Mr. Longbrook, how much do you pay the two men?” asked Captain Gildrock.
“One five, and the other six, dollars a week.”
The captain nodded his head, but made no reply.
“The fact is, there are three times as many clerks as there are places,” added the storekeeper.