Next Day

To-day a dreadful thing has happened.  The police have come into the house and have taken Cousin Willie away.  He is now in a place called The Tombs, and Mr. Peters says that he will be sent to the great prison at Sing-Sing.  He is to be tried for robbery and for stabbing with intent to kill.

It was very dreadful when they came to take him.  I was so glad that Uncle William was not here to see it all.  But it was in the morning and he had gone out to see a steamship company about being president of it, and I was tidying up our rooms, because Mrs. O’Halloran won’t tidy them up any more or let the coloured servant tidy them up until we pay her more money.  She said that to me, but I think she is afraid to say it to Uncle William.  So I mean to do the work now while Uncle is out and not let him know.

This morning, in the middle of the morning, while I was working, all of a sudden I heard the street door open and slam and some one rushing up the stairway:  and then Cousin Willie broke into the room, all panting and excited, and his face grey with fright and gasping out, “Hide me, hide me!” He ran from room to room whining and hysterical, and his breath coming in a sort of sob, but he seemed incapable of deciding what to do.  I would have hidden him if I could, but at the very next moment I heard the policemen coming in below, and the voice of the landlady.  Then they came upstairs, big strong-looking men in blue, any one of whom could have choked Cousin Willie with one hand.  Cousin Willie ran to and fro like a cornered rat, and two of the men seized him and then I think he must have been beside himself with fear for I saw his teeth bite into the man’s hand that held him, and one of the policemen struck him hard with his wooden club across the head and he fell limp to the floor.  They dragged him down the stairway like that and I followed them down, but there was nothing that I could do.  I saw them lift Cousin Willie into a closed black wagon that stood at the street door with quite a little crowd of people gathered about it already, all excited and leering as if it were a show.  And then they drove away with him and I came in and went upstairs and sat down in Uncle’s room but I could not work any more.  A little later on Mr. Peters came to the house,—­I don’t know why, because it was not for the ice as he had his other clothes on,—­and he came upstairs and sat down and told me about what had happened.  It seemed a strange thing to receive him upstairs in Uncle’s bedroom like that, but I was so upset that I did not think about it at the time.  Mr. Peters had been on our street with his ice wagon when the police came, though I did not see him.  But he saw me, he said, standing at the door.  And I think he must have gone home and changed his things and come back again, but I did not ask him.