I piped the lay on the instant.  He was a “fly-cop” and the two hoboes were his prisoners.  John Law was up and out after the early worm.  I was a worm.  Had I been richer by the experiences that were to befall me in the next several months, I should have turned and run like the very devil.  He might have shot at me, but he’d have had to hit me to get me.  He’d have never run after me, for two hoboes in the hand are worth more than one on the get-away.  But like a dummy I stood still when he halted me.  Our conversation was brief.

“What hotel are you stopping at?” he queried.

He had me.  I wasn’t stopping at any hotel, and, since I did not know the name of a hotel in the place, I could not claim residence in any of them.  Also, I was up too early in the morning.  Everything was against me.

“I just arrived,” I said.

“Well, you turn around and walk in front of me, and not too far in front.  There’s somebody wants to see you.”

I was “pinched.”  I knew who wanted to see me.  With that “fly-cop” and the two hoboes at my heels, and under the direction of the former, I led the way to the city jail.  There we were searched and our names registered.  I have forgotten, now, under which name I was registered.  I gave the name of Jack Drake, but when they searched me, they found letters addressed to Jack London.  This caused trouble and required explanation, all of which has passed from my mind, and to this day I do not know whether I was pinched as Jack Drake or Jack London.  But one or the other, it should be there to-day in the prison register of Niagara Falls.  Reference can bring it to light.  The time was somewhere in the latter part of June, 1894.  It was only a few days after my arrest that the great railroad strike began.

From the office we were led to the “Hobo” and locked in.  The “Hobo” is that part of a prison where the minor offenders are confined together in a large iron cage.  Since hoboes constitute the principal division of the minor offenders, the aforesaid iron cage is called the Hobo.  Here we met several hoboes who had already been pinched that morning, and every little while the door was unlocked and two or three more were thrust in on us.  At last, when we totalled sixteen, we were led upstairs into the court-room.  And now I shall faithfully describe what took place in that court-room, for know that my patriotic American citizenship there received a shock from which it has never fully recovered.

In the court-room were the sixteen prisoners, the judge, and two bailiffs.  The judge seemed to act as his own clerk.  There were no witnesses.  There were no citizens of Niagara Falls present to look on and see how justice was administered in their community.  The judge glanced at the list of cases before him and called out a name.  A hobo stood up.  The judge glanced at a bailiff.  “Vagrancy, your Honor,” said the bailiff.  “Thirty days,” said his Honor.  The hobo sat down, and the judge was calling another name and another hobo was rising to his feet.