Jerry’s fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply: 

“Is there anything coming on the ticket?” she asked.

A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it to the man at the entrance.  This man took it, and called the number.  Only three hansoms stood in line.  The driver of one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab.  He swore deeply, climbed to the captain’s bridge and steered his craft to the pier.  His fare entered, and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward cuts.

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry’s beclouded mind.  One or two things occurred to him.  He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice, like a lead plummet, through the aperture: 

“I want to see four dollars before goin’ any further on th’ thrip.  Have ye got th’ dough?”

“Four dollars!” laughed the fare, softly, “dear me, no.  I’ve only got a few pennies and a dime or two.”

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse.  The clatter of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity.  He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed.  But he knew his recourse, and made for it at a gallop.

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up.  He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground.

“Come on, you,” he said, roughly.

His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain face.  Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station.  A gray-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk.  He and the cabby were no strangers.

“Sargeant,” began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones of complaint.  “I’ve got a fare here that—­”

Jerry paused.  He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow.  The fog set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.

“A fare, sargeant,” he continued, with a grin, “that I want to inthroduce to ye.  It’s me wife that I married at ould man Walsh’s this avening.  And a divil of a time we had, ‘tis thrue.  Shake hands wid th’ sargeant, Norah, and we’ll be off to home.”

Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.

“I’ve had such a nice time, Jerry,” said she.

AN UNFINISHED STORY

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned.  For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction.  This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.