“Don’t you try to teach me no law,” he shouted; “I know what I can do.  Ef my darter went gallivantin’ around nights in one of them automobiles, it would serve her right to get locked up.  Maybe this young woman will learn to stay at home nights with her folks.  She ain’t goin’ to take no harm here.  The constable sits up all night downstairs in the fire engine room, and that sofa’s as good a place to sleep as the hotel.  If you want me to let her go to the hotel, why don’t you send to your folks and bail her out?”

“You know damn well why I don’t,” returned Winthrop.  “I don’t intend to give the newspapers and you and these other idiots the chance to annoy her further.  This young lady’s brother has been with us all day; he left us only by accident, and by forcing her to remain here alone you are acting outrageously.  If you knew anything of decency, or law, you’d——­”

“I know this much!” roared the justice triumphantly, pointing his spectacle-case at Miss Forbes.  “I know her name ain’t Lizzie Borden and yours ain’t Charley Ross.”

Winthrop crossed to where Miss Forbes stood in a corner.  She still wore her veil, but through it, though her face was pale, she smiled at him.

His own distress was undisguised.

“I can never forgive myself,” he said.

“Nonsense!” replied Miss Forbes briskly.  “You were perfectly right.  If we had sent for any one, it would have had to come out.  Now, we’ll pay the fine in the morning and get home, and no one will know anything of it excepting the family and Mr. Peabody, and they’ll understand.  But if I ever lay hands on my brother Sam!”—­she clasped her fingers together helplessly.  “To think of his leaving you to spend the night in a cell——­”

Winthrop interrupted her.

“I will get one of these men to send his wife or sister over to stay with you,” he said.

But Miss Forbes protested that she did not want a companion.  The constable would protect her, she said, and she would sit up all night and read.  She nodded at the periodicals on the club table.

“This is the only chance I may ever have,” she said, “to read the `Police Gazette’!”

“You ready there?” called the constable.

“Good-night,” said Winthrop.

Under the eyes of the grinning yokels, they shook hands.

“Good-night,” said the girl.

“Where’s your young man?” demanded the chief of police.

“My what?” inquired Winthrop.

“The young fellow that was with you when we held you up that first time.”

The constable, or the chief of police as he called himself, on the principle that if there were only one policeman he must necessarily be the chief, glanced hastily over the heads of the crowd.

“Any of you holding that shoffer?” he called.

No one was holding the chauffeur.

The chauffeur had vanished.