"Pretty good supper, after all," he said. "Cheap, too; but my money's leaking away! Well, it isn't dark yet. I must see all I can before I go to the hotel."
He followed the woman's directions, and he was glad he had done so. He had studied his guide-book faithfully as to all that end of New York, and in spite of his recent blunder did not now need to ask anybody which was the starting place of the elevated railways and which was Castle Garden, where the immigrants were landed. There were little groups of these foreigners scattered over the great open space before him.
"They've come from all over the world," he said, looking at group after group. "Some of those men will have a harder time than I have had trying to get started in New York."
It occurred to him, nevertheless, that he was a long way from Crofield, and that he was not yet at all at home in the city.
"I know some things that they don't know, anyway—if I am green!" he was thinking. "I'll cut across and take a nearer look at Castle Garden—"
"Stop there! Stop, you fellow in the light hat! Hold on!" Jack heard some one cry out, as he started to cross the turfed inclosures.
"What do you want of me?" Jack asked, as he turned around.
"Don't you see the sign there, 'Keep off the grass'? Look! You're on the grass now! Come off! Anyway, I'll fine you fifty cents!"
Jack looked as the man pointed, and saw a little board on a short post; and there was the sign, in plain letters; and here before him was a tall, thin, sharp-eyed, lantern-jawed young man, looking him fiercely in the face and holding out his hand.
"Fifty cents! Quick, now,—or go with me to the police station."