The clock on the mantel struck midnight.  “A strange night,” he mused.  “There is one sweet and one bitter thing about it.  I have done her a service, and she did not care.”

He went to the door to speak to Kendall.  “I think our work is over for to-night.  Have our prisoners taken down to the Refrigerator and turned over to the ordinary police.  I will make charges to-morrow.  Then divide the men into watches and make yourself as comfortable as you can.  If anything happens, call me.  If nothing happens, good-night.”

He returned to his library, turned down the gas, threw himself on the sofa, and was soon asleep; even before Alice, who sat, unhappy, as youth is unhappy, by an open window, her eyes full of tears, her heart full of remorse.  “It is too wretched to think of,” she bemoaned herself.  “He is the only man in the world I could ever care for, and I have driven him away.  It never can be made right again; I am punished justly.  If I thought he would take me, I believe I could go this minute and throw myself at his feet.  But he would smile, and raise me up, and make some pretty speech, very gentle, and very dreadful, and bring me back to mamma, and then I should die.”

But at nineteen well-nourished maidens do not pass the night in mourning, however heavy their hearts may be, and Alice slept at last, and perhaps was happier in her innocent dreams.

The night passed without further incident, and the next day, though it may have shown favorable signs to practised eyes, seemed very much, to the public, like the day which had preceded it.  There were fewer shops closed in the back streets; there were not so many parties of wandering apostles of plunder going about to warn laborers away from their work.  But in the principal avenues and in the public squares there were the same dense crowds of idlers, some listless and some excited, ready to believe the wildest rumors and to applaud the craziest oratory.  Speakers were not lacking; besides the agitators of the town, several had come in from neighboring places, and they were preaching, with fervor and perspiration, from street corners and from barrel-heads in the beer-houses, the dignity of manhood and the overthrow of tyrants.

Bott, who had quite distinguished himself during the last few days, was not to be seen.  He had passed the night in the station-house, and, on brief examination before a police-justice at an early hour of the morning, on complaint of Farnham and Temple, had been, together with the man captured in Mrs. Belding’s drawing-room, bound over to stand his trial for house-breaking at the next term of court.  He displayed the most abject terror before his trial, and would have made a full confession of the whole affair had Offitt not had the address to convey to him the assurance that, if he stood firm, the Brotherhood of Bread-winners would attend to his case and be responsible for his safety.  Relying upon this, he plucked up his