The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York. Alfred Henry Lewis

me give you a word. You're a sight too gabby; you had better think more and say less, or you won't last long enough as a copper to wear out that new uniform. An' if anybody asks, tell him it was Big Kennedy that told you.”

      They led me to a cell, while poor Apple Cheek, almost fainting, was carried to another. As I was being taken away, Anne came rushing in. Bad news is a creature of wings, and Anne had been told my adventures by a small urchin who ran himself nearly to death in defeating two fellow urchins for the privilege before I had reached the station.

      Anne did not observe me as she came in, for I stood somewhat to the rear, with several turnkeys and officers between. I could see the white face of her, and how the lamps of a great alarm were lighted in her eyes. Her voice was so low with terror I could not hear her words. Evidently she was pleading, girl-fashion, for my liberty. The tones of the captain, however, rose clear and high.

      “That'll do ye now,” said he in a manner of lordly insolence, looking up from the desk to which he had returned. “If we put a prisoner on the pavement every time a good-looking girl rushed in with a yarn about bein' his sister, we wouldn't need no cells at all. This boy stays till the judge takes a look at him in the mornin'. Meanwhile, you had better get back to your window, or all the men will have left the street.”

      At this, a mighty anger flamed up in my heart. I tore away from the officer who had me by the shoulders, and, save that three others as practiced in the sleight of it as football players instantly seized me, I should have gone straight at the captain's neck like a bulldog.

      “I'll have his life!” I foamed.

      The next moment I was thrown into a cell. The door slammed; the lock shot home; with that, my heart seemed to turn to water in my bosom and I sank upon the stone floor of my cage.

CHAPTER III—THE BOSS SEES THE POWER OF TAMMANY

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      THAT night under lock and key was a night of laughed and screamed like bedlam. Once I heard the low click of sobs, and thought it might be poor unhappy Apple Cheek. The surmise went wide, for she was held in another part of the prison.

      It was in the first streaks of the morning before I slept. My slumbers did not last long; it seemed as though I had but shut my eyes when a loud rap of iron on iron brought me up, and there stood one armed of a key so large it might have done for the gate of a giant's castle. It was this man hammering with his weapon on the grate of my cell that roused me.

      “Now then, young gallows-bird,” said the functionary, “be you ready for court?”

      The man, while rough, gave me no hard impression, for he wore a tolerant grin and had eyes of friendly brown. These amiable signs endowed me with courage to ask a question.

      “What will they do with me?” I queried. I was long delirium. Drunken men babbled and cursed and shouted; while a lunatic creature anxious, for I had no experience to be my guide. “What will they do? Will they let me go?”

      “Sure! they'll let you go.” My hopes gained their feet. “To Blackwell's.” My hopes lay prone again.

      The turnkey, for such was the man's station, had but humored me with one of the stock jokes of the place. On seeing my distress, and perhaps remembering that I should be something tender if years were to count, and no frequent tenant of the cells with sensibilities trained to the safe consistency of leather, he made me further reply.

      “No, I'll tell you the truth, youngster. If you plead guilty, an' there's no one there but the cop, it'll be about ten dollars or twenty days on the Island. But if Sheeny Joe comes 'round to exhibit his nose, or Big Kennedy shows up to stall ag'inst you, why I should say you might take six months and call yourself in luck.”

      There was nothing to brighten the eye in the story, and my ribs seemed to inclose a heart of wood.

      With a vile dozen to be my companions, frowsy, bleary creatures, some shaking with the dumb ague of drink whose fires had died out, I was driven along a narrow corridor, up a pair of stairs, and into a room of respectable size! Its dimensions, however, would be its only claim to respectability, for the walls and ceiling were smoke-blackened, while the floor might have come the better off for a pailful of soap and water.

      Once within the room I found myself in a railed pen. Against the wall, with a desk before him and raised above the herd by a platform, sat the magistrate. There was a fence which divided the big room, and beyond and leaning on it lolled the public, leering and listening, as hard an array as one might wish to see. One might have sentenced the entire roomful to the workhouse and made few mistakes.

      Inside this fence, and gathered for the most part about the magistrate, were those who had business with the court; officers, witnesses, friends and enemies of the accused, with last although not least a collection of the talent of the bar. Many of these latter were brisk Jews, and all of them were marked by soiled linen, frayed elbows, greasy collars, and an evident carelessness as to the state of their hands and faces. There were boys to wait on these folk of law, a boy to each I should say. None of these urchins was older than was I, and some no more than twelve. They carried baize bags, chatted gravely while waiting the call of their masters, and gave themselves strutting airs and brows of consequence. These engaging children, in a spirit of loyalty, doubtless, showed themselves as untainted of water as were their betters.

      While I rehearse these sordid appearances as developed in the dim lights which through the grimy windows fell across the scene, you are not to suppose the notice of them preyed upon me. I was, in that hour, neither so squeamish nor so observant as to make particular note of them, nor was I to that degree the slave of soap in my own roving person, as to justify the risk of strictures which might provoke retort. Besides, I was thinking dolefully on that trip to Blackwell's Island whereof the future seemed so full, and my eyes scanned the judge on the bench rather than lesser folk who were not so important in my affairs.

      While in the mills of great misery, still I was steady enough. I turned my gaze upon the magistrate, and sought in his looks and words, as he went about the sorry destinies of other delinquents, some slant of what I might look forward to for myself. The dignitary in question showed lean and sallow and bald, with a sly face and an eye whereof the great expression was one of sleepless self-interest. He did not come upon you as either brave or good, but he had nothing brutal or vindictive, and his timid mealy voice was shaken by a quaver that seemed a perpetual apology for what judgments he from time to time would pass. His sentences were invariably light, except in instances where some strong influence from the outside, generally a politician or the agent of a big company, arose to demand severity.

      While within the railed pen with those other unfortunates whom the dragnets of the police had brought to these mean shores, and in an interval when my fascinated eyes were off the magistrate, I caught sight of Anne and my father. They had seats inside the fence. The latter's face was clouded with simple trouble; he wore his Sunday coat, and his hands, hard and showing the stains of his forge, roved in uneasy alternation from his pockets to his lapels and back again. Anne's young eyes were worn and tired, for she had slept as little as had I and wept much more the night before. I could not discover Apple Cheek, although I looked about the room for her more than once. I had it in my hopes that they had given Apple Cheek her freedom, and the thought was a half-relief. Nothing of such decent sort had come to pass, however; Apple Cheek was waiting with two or three harridans, her comrades of the cells, in an adjoining room.

      When my name was called, an officer of the court opened a gate in the prisoner's pen and motioned me to come forth.

      “Hurry up!” said the officer, who was for expedition. “W'at's the trouble with your heels? You aint got no ball an' chain on yet, you know.”

      Then he gave me a chair in front of the magistrate, where the man of power might run me up and down with his shifty deprecatory eye.

      “There was a girl brought in with him,