He told me that Cousin Willie had stabbed a man, or at least a boy, that was in charge of a jewelry shop, and that the boy might die.  Cousin Willie, Mr. Peters says, has been stealing jewelry nearly ever since we came here and the police have been watching him but he did not know this and so he had grown quite foolhardy, and this morning in broad daylight he went into some sort of jewelry or pawn shop where there was only a boy watching the shop, and the boy was a cripple.  Cousin Willie had planned to hide the things under his coat and to sneak out but the boy saw what he was doing and cried out, and when Cousin Willie tried to break out of the shop he hobbled to the door and threw himself in the way.  And then it was that Cousin Willie stabbed him with his sheath-knife,—­the one that I had seen in his room,—­and ran.  But already there was a great outcry and the people followed on his tracks and shouted to the police, and so they easily ran him down.

All of this Mr. Peters told me, but he couldn’t stay very long and had to go again.  He says he is going to see what can be done for Cousin Willie but I am afraid that he doesn’t feel very sorry for him; but after Mr. Peters had gone I could not help going on thinking about it all and it seemed to me as if Cousin Willie had not altogether had a fair chance in life.  Common people are brought up in fear of prison and punishment and they learn to do what they should.  But Cousin Willie was brought up as a prince and was above imprisonment and things like that.  And in any case he seemed, when the big men seized hold of him, such a paltry and miserable thing.

Later on in the day Uncle William came home and I had to tell him all about Cousin Willie.  I had feared that he would be dreadfully upset, but he was much less disturbed than I had thought.  Indeed it is quite wonderful the way in which Uncle can detach his mind from things.

I told him that Mr. Peters had said that Cousin Willie must go to Sing-Sing, and Uncle said, “Ha! a fortress?” So I told him that I thought it was.  After that he asked if Cousin Willie was in his uniform at the time, and when I said that he was not, Uncle said “That may make it more difficult.”  Of course Cousin Willie has no uniform here in America and doesn’t wear any, but I notice that Uncle William begins to mix up our old life with our life here and seems sometimes quite confused and wandering; at least other people would think him so.  He went on talking quite a long time about what had happened and he said that there is an almost exact precedent for the “incident” (that’s what he calls it) in the Zabern Case.  I don’t remember much about that, as it was years ago, before the war, but Uncle William said that it was a similar case of an officer finding himself compelled to pass his sword once through a cripple (only once, Uncle says) in order to clear himself a way on the sidewalk.  Uncle quoted a good many other precedents for passing swords through civilians, but he says that this is the best one.