But Ben slaps him on the back and tells him he’s a good sport and he’ll give him a couple of these rails to take to his old New York home; he says they can be crossed over the mantel and will look very quaint.  The lad kind of shivered under Ben’s hearty blow and seemed to struggle out of his trance for a minute.  His eyes unglazed and he looks around and says how did he get here and where is it?  Ben tells him he’s among friends and that they two are the only born New Yorkers left in the world, and so on, when the lad reaches into the pocket of his natty topcoat for a handkerchief and pulls out with it a string of funny little tickets—­about two feet of ’em.  Ben grabs these up with a strange look in his eyes.

“Bridge tickets!” he yells.  Then he grabs his born New Yorker by the shoulders and shakes him still further out of dreamland.

“What street in New York is your old home on?” he demands savagely.  The lad blinks his fishy eyes and fixes his hat on that Ben has shook loose.

“Cranberry Street,” says he.

“Cranberry Street!  Hell, that’s Brooklyn, and you claimed New York,” says Ben, shaking the hat loose again.

“Greater New York,” says the lad pathetically, and pulls his hat firmly down over his ears.

Ben looked at the imposter with horror in his eyes.  “Brooklyn!” he muttered—­“the city of the unburied dead!  So that was the secret of your strange behaviour?  And me warming you in my bosom, you viper!”

But the crook couldn’t hear him again, haying lapsed into his trance and become entirely rigid and foolish.  In the cold light of day his face now looked like a plaster cast of itself.  Ben turned to us with a hunted look.  “Blow after blow has fallen upon me to-night,” he says tearfully, “but this is the most cruel of all.  I can’t believe in anything after this.  I can’t even believe them street-car rails are the originals.  Probably they were put down last week.”

“Then let’s get out of this quick,” I says to him.  “We been exposing ourselves to arrest here long enough for a bit of false sentiment on your part.”

“I gladly go,” says Ben, “but wait one second.”  He stealthily approaches the Greater New Yorker and shivers him to wakefulness with another hearty wallop on the back.  “Listen carefully,” says Ben as the lad struggles out of the dense fog.  “Do you see those workmen tearing up that car-track?”

“Yes, I see it,” says the lad distinctly.  “I’ve often seen it.”

“Very well.  Listen to me and remember your life may hang on it.  You go over there and stand right by them till they get that track up and don’t you let any one stop them.  Do you hear?  Stand right there and make them work, and if a policeman or any one tries to make trouble you soak him.  Remember!  I’m leaving those men in your charge.  I shall hold you personally responsible for them.”