The Minister's Charge. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ to see now.”

      Lemuel knew the voice, and turning quickly, he knew the impudent face it belonged to. He did not mind the laugh raised at his expense, but launched himself across the intervening spectators, and tried to seize the scamp who had got his money from him. The scamp had recognised Lemuel too, and he fell back beyond his grasp, and then lunged through the crowd, and tore round the corner and up the street. Lemuel followed as fast as he could. In spite of the weakness he had felt before, wrath and the sense of wrong lent him speed, and he was gaining in the chase when he heard a girl's voice, “There goes one of them now!” and then a man seemed to be calling after him, “Stop, there!” He turned round, and a policeman, looking gigantic in his belted blue flannel blouse and his straw helmet, bore down upon the country boy with his club drawn, and seized him by the collar.

      “You come along,” he said.

      “I haven't done anything,” said Lemuel, submitting, as he must, and in his surprise and terror losing the strength his wrath had given him. He could scarcely drag his feet over the pavement, and the policeman had almost to carry him at arm's length.

      A crowd had gathered about them, and was following Lemuel and his captor, but they fell back when they reached the steps of the police-station, and Lemuel was pulled up alone, and pushed in at the door. He was pushed through another door, and found himself in a kind of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer, looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. “What have you got there?” he asked.

      “Assaulting a girl down here, and grabbing her satchel,” said the officer who had arrested Lemuel, releasing his collar and going to the door, whence he called, “You come in here, lady,” and a young girl, her face red with weeping and her hair disordered, came back with him. She held a crumpled straw hat with the brim torn loose, and in spite of her disordered looks she was very pretty, with blue eyes flung very wide open, and rough brown hair, wavy and cut short, almost like a boy's. This Lemuel saw in the frightened glance they exchanged.

      “This the fellow that assaulted you?” asked the man at the desk, nodding his head toward Lemuel, who tried to speak; but it was like a nightmare; he could not make any sound.

      “There were three of them,” said the girl with hysterical volubility. “One of them pulled my hat down over my eyes and tore it, and one of them held me by the elbows behind, and they grabbed my satchel away that had a book in it that I had just got out of the library. I hadn't got it more than——”

      “What name?” asked the man at the desk.

      “A Young Man's Darling,” said the girl, after a bashful hesitation. Lemuel had read that book just before he left home; he had not thought it was much of a book.

      “The captain wants to know your name,” said the officer in charge of Lemuel.

      “Oh,” said the girl, with mortification. “Statira Dudley.”

      “What age?” asked the captain.

      “Nineteen last June,” replied the girl with eager promptness, that must have come from shame from the blunder she had made. Lemuel was twenty, the 4th of July.

      “Weight?” pursued the captain.

      “Well, I hain't been weighed very lately,” answered the girl, with increasing interest. “I don't know as I been weighed since I left home.”

      The captain looked at her judicially.

      “That so? Well, you look pretty solid. Guess I'll put you down at a hundred and twenty.”

      “Well, I guess it's full as much as that,” said the girl, with a flattered laugh.

      “Dunno how high you are?” suggested the captain, glancing at her again.

      “Well, yes, I do. I am just five feet two inches and a half.”

      “You don't look it,” said the captain critically.

      “Well, I am,” insisted the girl, with a returning gaiety.

      The captain apparently checked himself and put on a professional severity.

      “What business—occupation?”

      “Sales-lady,” said the girl.

      “Residence?”

      “No. 2334 Pleasant Avenue.”

      The captain leaned back in his arm-chair, and turned his toothpick between his lips, as he stared hard at the girl.

      “Well, now,” he said, after a moment, “you know you've got to come into court and testify to-morrow morning.”

      “Yes,” said the girl, rather falteringly, with a sidelong glance at Lemuel.

      “You've got to promise to do it, or else it will be my duty to have you locked up overnight.”

      “Have me locked up?” gasped the girl, her wide blue eyes filling with astonishment.

      “Detain you as a witness,” the captain explained. “Of course, we shouldn't put you in a cell; we should give you a good room, and if you ain't sure you'll appear in the morning——”

      The girl was not of the sort whose tongues are paralysed by terror. “Oh, I'll be sure to appear, captain! Indeed I will, captain! You needn't lock me up, captain! Lock me up!” she broke off indignantly. “It would be a pretty idea if I was first to be robbed of my satchel and then put in prison for it overnight! A great kind of law that would be! Why, I never heard of such a thing! I think it's a perfect shame! I want to know if that's the way you do with poor things that you don't know about?”

      “That's about the size of it,” said the captain, permitting himself a smile, in which the officer joined.

      “Well, it's a shame!” cried the girl, now carried far beyond her personal interest in the matter.

      The captain laughed outright. “It is pretty rough. But what you going to do?”

      “Do? Why, I'd——” But here she stopped for want of science, and added from emotion, “I'd do anything before I'd do that.”

      “Well,” said the captain, “then I understand you'll come round to the police court and give your testimony in the morning?”

      “Yes,” said the girl, with a vague, compassionate glance at Lemuel, who had stood there dumb throughout the colloquy.

      “If you don't, I shall have to send for you,” said the captain.

      “Oh, I'll come,” replied the girl, in a sort of disgust, and her eyes still dwelt upon Lemuel.

      “That's all,” returned the captain, and the girl, accepting her dismissal, went out.

      Now that it was too late, Lemuel could break from his nightmare. “Oh, don't СКАЧАТЬ