Indeed, between the captain and the denizens of “The Avenue,” only the most friendly, amicable, and delightful personal relations prevailed.  To the habitual criminal, the sneak-thief, and the hold-up, he might be a mailed despot swinging a mailed fist, but to the occasional “Monday drunk,” or the man who had had the best or the worst of it in a fight, or to one like Mike who was the victim of an unavoidable accident, he was only a heathen idol of justice behind which sat a big-waisted, tightly belted man whose wife and daughters everybody knew as he himself knew everybody in return; who belonged to the same lodge, played poker in the same up-stairs room when off duty, and was as tender-hearted in time of trouble as any one of their other acquaintances.  Not to have allowed Mike, a man he knew, a man who had been Kitty and John’s driver for years, to hunt up his own bond, would have been as unwise and impossible as his releasing a burglar on straw bail, or a murderer because the dead man could not make a complaint.

When, therefore, Mike burst into the kitchen with the additional information that “the cap” had let him go to bring back the wagon and somebody with “cash” enough to go bail, a general movement, headed by Tim Kelsey, who happened to be passing at the time, was immediately organized—­Tim to proceed at once to the station-house, take the captain on one side, and so end the matter.  Locking up Mike, even threatening him, was, as the captain knew, an invasion of the rights of “The Avenue.”  Nobody within its confines had ever been entangled in the meshes of the law—­simply because nobody had wanted to break it.  It was the howling boy who should have been locked up for getting under Mike’s wheels, or his father who ought to have kept his son off the street.

Mike listened impatiently to the discussion and, watching his chance, beckoned to Kitty, shut the door upon the two, and poured into her ear a full account of what he had seen and heard at the station-house.

“Well, what’s that got to do with it?” Kitty demanded.  “What did she have to do with the boy?”

“Nothing, don’t I tell ye—­she’s been swipin’ a department store, and they got her dead to rights.”

“Who’s been swipin’?  What are ye talkin’ about, Mike?  Stop it now—­I’ve got a lot to do, and—­”

“The woman ye put to bed that night.  The one ye picked up near St. Barnabas, and brought in here and dried her off.  She skipped in the mornin’ without sayin’ ’thank ye’—­why, ye must remember her!  She was—­”

Kitty clapped her two palms to her face, framing her bulging eyes—­a favorite gesture when she was taken completely by surprise.

“That woman!” she cried, staring at Mike.  “Where is she now?  Tell me—­”

“I don’t know—­but she—­”

“Ye don’t know, and ye come down here with this yarn?  Don’t ye try and fool me, Mike, or I’ll break every bone in yer skin.  Go on, now!  How do ye know it’s the same woman?”