THE FOURTH DIMENSION
his hat, and was at last dragged into the guard's van and set down breathless.
He had pressed money upon the man, and very foolishly had explained everything but his name. This he clung to, for he had a vision of tall head-lines in the New York papers, and well knew no son of Merton Sargent could expect mercy that side the water. The guard, to Wilton's amazement, refused the money on the grounds that this was a matter for the Company to attend to. Wilton insisted on his incognito, and, therefore, found two policemen waiting for him at St. Botolph terminus. When he expressed a wish to buy a new hat and telegraph to his friends, both policemen with one voice warned him that whatever he said would be used as evidence against him; and this had impressed Wilton tremendously.
"They were so infernally polite," he said. "If they had clubbed me I would n't have cared; but it was, 'Step this way, sir,' and, 'Up those stairs, please, sir,' till they jailed me—jailed me like a common drunk, and I had to stay in a filthy little cubby-hole of a cell all night."
"That comes of not giving your name and not wiring your lawyer," I replied. "What did you get?"
"Forty shillings, or a month," said Wilton, promptly,—"next morning bright and early. They were working us off, three a minute. A girl in a pink hat—she was brought in at three in the morning—got ten days. I suppose I was lucky. I must have knocked his senses out of the guard. He told the old duck on the bench that I had told him I was a sergeant in the army, and
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