The preference of a hearing was given to the conductor and brakeman. Both had now secured legal assistance, and a charge of assault and battery was preferred by each against the other. Their cases were set for a future hearing, and both released on their own recognizance; when they immediately withdrew accompanied by their friends, entirely neglecting Ben, much to his gratification. All the officer who had arrested him could charge him with was being a vagrant caught in the vicinity of railroad property; which same is a serious enough petty offence along the line of the Central road.
The little judge asked him if he had any thing to say for himself, and immediately thereafter told him to "shut up!" He then went into a lengthy diatribe against tramps in general, and wound up by giving Ben sixty days in the workhouse.
Our traveller stood aghast! There was no provision in his wager about forcible detention, and he felt himself lost. Here then was an end to all his hopes and ambitions. From a tramp he was about to descend to the deeper degradation of a workhouse experience. The little justice must have noticed his consternation, for he smiled gleefully.
"Oye, that shuits yez too well, don't it?" he exclaimed. "Sixty days boord, lodgin' and washin' at the ixpinse av the county! Egad sor, it ud be foin! Chur foin, me lad, chur foin! Yez hid bate yer way an hundrid moils for the loike; so yez would! We'd have all the thramps in the country to kape, so we would, be gorra! Pater, is the walkin' good?" this last to a policeman.
"Yes, your Honor," answered Peter.
"Thin furnish this gintleman wid a good map av the county, and the coort will suspind sintince for wan hour! Nixt!"
An officer accompanied our friend to the door of the hall of justice, and bade him leave the city immediately; and the little judge shouted after him:
"Moind yez thramp, if yez air found in the city of Horrisbug sixty minutes from the prisint momint, Oil set yez chu studyin' geology wid a hammer for the binefit of the city strates for the remainder av the year. Now moind!"
Ben was so overjoyed with his freedom that the terrible words of this terrible little man were music in his ears. His first thought on regaining the street was to get out of town. His next one was to get on the railroad track and strike westward. He wondered what could have become of Tommy, and sadly missed his little companion.
To retrace our steps and account for his having been left alone in the car will not necessitate much of a digression. While Ben placidly slept the three tramps continued their game of "old-sledge" and their application to the bottle. They at last became so primed with the evil spirits in the latter, as to awake belligerent spirits of their own, and as the train drew into Harrisburg were engaged in a loud wrangle that was heard by employees in the yard, and they were consequently routed out of the car, and Tommy along with them. Ben, however, was overlooked, and his little friend viewing it as a stroke of good fortune in the sleeper's favor, thought to allow him to remain and ride through so far as he could alone. But the train had received orders to sidetrack in Harrisburg and await instructions, and while on the side track, Ben's snoring had attracted the attention of the conductor with the results already known to the reader.