“Lit go av ye, then, is it!” he repeated, giving his prisoner another shake; “it’s in the cells I’ll lit go av ye, an’ not before, ye young thafe. Yer caught in de act, an I’ll run yer in.”
“I am no thief,” said the boy, “and you have no business to poke me with your club or shake me. If you want to arrest me, I will go with you peaceably; but I have done nothing to be arrested for.”
“Done nothin’!” the policeman exclaimed, letting go of the boy’s collar and taking him by the sleeve; “didn’t I ketch ye stealin’?”
“What was I stealing?” the boy asked.
“Hemp, av coorse,” said the officer.
Indignant as he was, the boy could hardly help laughing at the idea of his stealing five hundred pound bales of hemp.
“I was sleeping there,” the boy answered, “because I had nowhere else to sleep.”
“Thin I’ll give yer a safe place ter slape!” the policeman declared. “You come wid me;” and he started toward the archway, still holding his prisoner by the sleeve.
They were just about to turn from the outer end of the arch into the almost deserted street when they nearly ran into a man who came along the sidewalk at a swinging gait and turned short about to enter the dark tunnel.
“Hello, officer; what’s this?” said the man, stopping to look at the young prisoner under the gas lamp.