It was broad day. Jack Gravesend awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and looked curiously about him. Where was he? Strange! He couldn't have turned in _here_. He got up, and shook himself wide awake. Two villanous-looking men, having risen from two neighbouring beds, were doing likewise. "Hullo, shipmates!" said Jack, now fairly on his feet; "lend a hand here, and tell me where I am."
The two burglars--for such they were--being well-posted in the leading particulars of his arrest, glanced knowingly at each other, and smirked with sinister significance peculiarly aggravating to Jack, and burglar number one remarked to his associate, "Golly, Bill; he _is_ a green one! Wants to know _where he is_! do you twig, Bill? Why, my fine tar, you're in the lock-up, to be sure."
"In the _lock-up_!" said Jack; "and how in thunder _came_ I here?"
"_Brung_ here, of course," responded his informant, "'t ain't a road folks gin'ally travels on their own account, eh, Bill?" Bill assenting, with a prodigious wink, Jack propounded a third query: "And what the deuce may I be here _for_?"
"_Here_ for?" responded the garrulous ruffian. "Thunderin' black job, my cove! Got drunk last night, and _killed_ a man!"
"_Killed_ a man!" groaned Jack, his eyes dilating, and his flesh creeping with sudden horror. "Killed a _man_! My God! what will Will Ferguson say?"
"Ferguson? Bill--Bill Ferguson," growled the other burglar. "By jiminy, Tom! he wants to know what Bill Ferguson'll say! Precious _little_, _I'm_ thinkin'; he's about said _his_ say! Why, grampus, Bill Ferguson's the very indentercal chap you've done for!"
Officer L---- long remembered a cry that woke the echoes of the lock-up on that May morning. It might have been the yell of a hunted thing at bay, the outcry of a mortal in fierce extremity, the despairing wail of a hell-tormented soul.
Turning the key in the lock of No. 17, he hastily entered that apartment. On the floor, face downward, lay a man.
"Cove in a fit," explained the facetious Tom. "Bill, here, jes' let on 'bout the killin', an' he gin a howl an' went off in a jiffy."
Officer L---- was humane. Good men, thank God! fill many of these humble places of authority. Silencing the bold ruffian, he bade the pair help raise the senseless form and adjust it on the rude cot. This done, he smoothed the tossed hair, wiped the foam from the purple lips, and chafed the great brown hands as helpfully as if they had been little "May's," the dear sick lamb of his own pretty flock. At length, the convulsive throes ceased, and consciousness returned to the stricken man.