“The police cap’n turned around then and stared at him hard.  ‘Humph!’ says he, after a spell.  ’Go over there and set down till I want you.  No, you’ll go now and we’ll waste no breath on it.  Go on, do you hear!’

“So we went, and there we set for ha’f an hour, while the rest of the gang and the blackboards and the paper slips and the telephones and Big Mike and his chair was bein’ carted off to the wagon.  Once, when one of the constables was beatin’ acrost to get us, the police cap’n spoke to him.

“‘You can leave these two,’ he says.  ‘I’ll take care of them.’

“So, finally, when there was nothin’ left but the four walls and us and some of the police, he takes me and Jonadab by the elbows and heads for the door.

“‘Now,’ says he, ’walk along quiet and peaceable and tell me all about it.  Get out of this!’ he shouts to the crowd of small boys and loafers on the sidewalk, ‘or I’ll take you, too.’

“The outsiders fell astern, lookin’ heartbroke and disapp’inted that we wa’n’t hung on the spot, and the fat boss policeman and us two paraded along slow but grand.  I felt like the feller that was caught robbin’ the poorhouse, and I cal’late Jonadab felt the same, only he was so busy beggin’ and pleadin’ and explainin’ that he couldn’t stop to feel anything.

“He told it all, the whole fool yarn from one end to t’other.  How old Pat give him the message and how he went to the laundry, and about his ridiculous dream, every word.  And the fat policeman shook all over, like a barrel of cod livers.

“By and by we got to a corner of a street and hove to.  I could see the station house loomin’ up large ahead.  Fatty took a card from his pocketbook, wrote on it with a pencil, and then hailed a hack, one of them stern-first kind where the driver sits up aloft ’way aft.  He pushed back the cap with the gilt wreath on it, and I could see his red hair shinin’ like a sunset.

“‘Here,’ says he to the hack driver, ’take these—­this pair of salads to the—­what d’ye call it?—­the Golconda House, wherever on top of the pavement that is.  And mind you, deliver ’em safe and don’t let the truck horses get a bite at ’em.  And at half-past eight to-night you call for ’em and bring ’em here,’ handin’ up the card he’d written on.

“‘’Tis the address of my house, I’m givin’,’ he says, turnin’ to Jonadab.  ’I’ll be off duty then and we’ll have dinner and talk about old times.  To think of you landin’ in Silver Pete’s pool room!  Dear! dear!  Why, Cap’n Wixon, barrin’ that your whiskers are a bit longer and a taste grayer, I’d ‘a’ known you anywheres.  Many’s the time I’ve stole apples over your back fence.  I’m Jimmie Kelly,’ says he.”

“Well, by mighty!” exclaimed the depot master, slapping his knee.  “So he was the Kelly man!  Humph!”