"Bail me out! Good heavens! De ye think I’m a leaky old boat, or a tub, an’ need to be baled out?"
"It’s not that kind I mean," the magistrate explained. He would have another good story to tell his wife.
"Well, then, ye must think I’ve got water on the brain, or I’m a bloomin’ watered-stock company."
"I guess you know what I mean," and the magistrate smiled. "You’re not so thick-headed as you try to make out."
"I ought to be pretty thick-headed, ye’r Honor. Wouldn’t anyone be that way with more’n a dozen heads on his shoulders?"
"Sure. Sometimes I’m Abner Andrews, of Ash Pint, an’ agin I’m old Baron Rothschild, the Dook of Wellington, or some other guy. I guess I was the Dook all right when I walked over Joe Preston, though now I feel like old Boney Part when he was on that Island."
The magistrate looked curiously at the prisoner.
"Don’t you often get mixed up?" he asked.
"Should say so. I’m never jist sure who I am. It gives me a lot of trouble."
"Well, if that’s the way you feel, Mr. Andrews, I think the proper place for you to be is the lunatic asylum and not here. Anyway, we’ve got you now, and so must keep you for a while. Sergeant, you may take the prisoner down," he added, turning to the officer who had been standing quietly by during this interview.
During the rest of the morning Abner paced up and down the room adjoining his cell. He knew very well how people would regard his imprisonment and how most of them would say it served him right. He wondered how long he would have to stay in that hole. He had not the remotest hope of getting out on bail, for he knew of no one interested in his welfare who was able to put up the money whatever it might be. He thought, too, of Joe Preston. Suppose the man should die, what then? He would be tried for murder, perhaps convicted, and he would be either hung or given a life-sentence in the penitentiary. The perspiration stood out in beads on his forehead as he thought of this, and it was a relief when the jailer brought him his dinner of bread and water.
"Is that the best this hotel kin afford?" he demanded, as he took the mean meal.
"Hotel! This is no hotel," was the curt reply. "This is the Klink, and that’s the food fer birds that come here. It’s more’n they deserve, too."