Marrying a Pickpocket

RALPH will persist — most mischievously, as I say — in telling the children all sorts of nonsensical stories about it; never the simple truth, but always some absurd fable or other, full of extravagance, which only stimulates their curiosity. No sooner is he out of the house than Edgar or Belle, or both together, will march up to me with the gravest of little faces, and the solemn inquiry, “ Did you really pick somebody’s pocket, mamma?” or, “Did papa really find you in the old ugly Black Maria wagon?” and of course they are not old enough to understand the actual story, or to remember it rightly if I were to tell them a dozen times over. So I think, as I have thought many times before, that I will write it all down just as it happened. nothing extenuate,” as Mr. Booth says at the theatre; and then the dear boy and girl will never get a wrong fancy in their heads; for I might lose, in time, the vivid remembrance of every incident of it which I have now; and as to Ralph, I think he has made so many fanciful additions from time to time, all in fun, that he might almost begin to believe some of them were true.

We read almost every day in the newspapers of worthy old ladies and gentlemen, who, at threescore and ten, take their first ride by railroad, after living all their lives within hearing of the locomotive whistle ; or who die without ever having tried the experiment, or even seeing a train of cars. So I suppose it is not altogether incredible, and perhaps not so very discreditable, that I, Mary Gilman, had grown to be a woman at the foot of a mountain from whose summit the dome of Boston State House can be seen in a clear day, and yet had never taken a nearer view of it, nor, indeed, set foot in any city whatever. I had no business to take me from home; journeys for pleasure were rare with the hard-working residents of our neighborhood, busy as they were through the summer, and snowbound in winter; and my mother had always said, “Another time, child,” when I had teased to be allowed to go with Uncle John on his quarterly trips to replenish the stock of his little store. Now I was alone in the world; my mourning-clothes were almost worn out ; the school term was over, and the money for teaching ten weeks — thirty dollars—was in my pocket; and I had answered an advertisement in the Journal, and secured a position as an assistant, at a much better salary, in a high-school in a large manufacturing town in Maine. To get there I must pass through Boston ; and I had studied myself into a headache over a railroad guide, and had ascertained that, by taking an early morning train, I could reach that city in time to leave it at noon on an Eastward train, and be at my destination before dark.

So I had all my worldly goods in my trunk twenty-four hours in advance ; spent the last day in bidding good-by to old family friends, as well as to the little people to whose education I had devoted my last year, and the pleasant households with which I had boarded in rapid succession during the last term ; and in the gray winter morning I took my seat in the “jumper,” which replaced the lumbering stage-coach of summer, and was driven across the creaking snow to the station. I was not sorry that there was not a person I knew waiting there for the same train ; for I was old-fashioned enough in those days to like to enjoy first sensations alone, and I felt quite in the mood of a daring discoverer at the thought of making my way to Boston and through it on my own responsibility.

“ I suppose I have plenty of time to take the 12.20 train from the Maine station,” said I, when the urbane conductor vouchsafed me ten seconds or so of his precious time, to take the ticket I held in readiness for him.

“12.20 train taken off, ma’am,” said he ; “ change of time last week.”

I almost felt my courage taking wing at this first obstacle to the easy programme I had marked out; but I retained enough of it to snatch at this hurried official the next time he passed me, with the query when the next train would start for Portland.

“2.45, ma’am,” said he, as placidly as before.

After a brisk resort to the mental arithmetic which had lately filled so large a share in my daily life, I felt reassured. Two hours and a half lost would still carry me to my destination in season to find the committee-man who had secured my boarding place for me, before he would be likely to be inaccessible. Two hours and a half in Boston would give scope for an amount of agreeable exploration and adventure I had not dared to hope for. I had read in some philosophical newspaper paragraph that the first requisite of a good traveller is coolness ; so I rose above the condition of worrying, and amused myself with a study of the faces and manners of my fellow-passengers.

In the seat before me was a happy young mother with her baby, which, notwithstanding the early hour at which it must have been taken from its cradle, never once intruded its voice upon the attention of its elders, but slept and smiled with wonderful amiability. Behind me were a couple on easy flirtation terms, who took no pains to keep their conversation from my ears, and varied the tedium of the trip by the excitement of a bet of a pair of gloves as to whether the baby in front of them was a boy or a girl. Across the aisle was an old lady who, I was pleased to perceive, asked the reticent conductor more questions than I did, and always had an inquiry ready to intercept his every transit through the car. And so the complement was made up of all the inevitable characters — so new to me in those days — whom my subsequent travelling experiences have taught me to look for in every railway journey.

At half an hour before noon we arrived at the Boston station, and my heart had thrilled at the recognition of the plain shaft on Bunker Hill as we passed over the water to reach the city. I suffered myself to be captured by a hackman, and taken across the town to Haymarket Square, for the sake of getting my trunk there ; and I can remember to this day how strange looked the high brick walls, the brilliant shop-windows, the hurrying crowds that have since become such familiar objects, as I peered, half sick with loneliness but excited by the novelty of the scene, from the windows of the carriage. I think it all appeared more wonderful to me then, fresh from the country as I was, than a glimpse of Jeddo or Pekin would now. Even the people seemed like foreigners, as they rushed along with inexplicable haste close beside me ; and the signs furnished reading as interesting as a novel.

This taste of the sights of the city, I suppose, made the quiet of the Maine station particularly tedious to me. I could not check my trunk until half an hour before the train would leave ; but I could leave it with entire safety in the baggage-room, my hackman told me, and I myself saw him deposit it there and noted the spot. I ate my lunch — a sandwich and a slice of sponge-cake — in the waiting-room ; and as I read the inscription, “Beware of Pickpockets,” which hung by the ticket-office window, I remember mentally congratulating myself that I had put all my store of money, except enough for the needs of the journey, safely in my trunk. Ralph has told me since that that was the beginning of my follies, and the fruitful source of all my woes ; but I thought at the time it was a remarkable piece of womanly prudence. At least it relieved me of my anxiety as I resolved to spend the two hours at my command in rambling about the city ; and I set forth with a stout heart and eager anticipations of pleasure.

I paused, however, at the threshold and looked upon the noisy tumult of the square, thinking whether I had any special point to aim at. I knew but one person in the city, a Mr. Churchill, who had paid a hunting and fishing visit to our village in the summer, had extended his stay far beyond his original purpose, had visited my little school, and had left his photograph in my keeping when he came, in a merry mood, to say good-by. Decidedly, I should like to see Mr. Churchill; but, decidedly, I would not go to his office to call upon him. Perhaps. I might meet him. I had noted the windows of Washington Street, as I rode through, as offering the most positive attractions ; so I determined to go there for my walk, and, if I saw Court Street by the way, to look up and down the walls for the strip of board which, Mr. Churchill had told me, indicated his office there.

A burly policeman gave me the right direction, with a courtesy and clearness which made me set down a mental credit-mark very near the maximum standard of a hundred, as I used to grade my pupils at school, for the whole class to which he belonged. By dint of long waiting at the crossings till a wide gap should appear in the endless processions of teams, and frequent questions when I found myself getting astray in the confusing labyrinths of a part of the city in which now, as a resident, I often get puzzled, I made my way to Washington Street,and speedilyplunged into the delights of book-store windows and millinery windows, with an enjoyment only interrupted by inspections of my watch about once in ten minutes, in my nervous fear lest I should overstay my limit. I walked around the Old State House, and fixed, by a combined effort of memory and imagination, upon the very spot which must have been stained by the blood of the Boston massacre, so familiar to my mind from frequent listening to parrot-like recitations of its history as coldly told in the school-books. I stopped a full minute to look at Mr. Whipple’s revolving sun, — now only a memory of the past,— until people trod on my skirts, and the expressmen stopped to smile at my curiosity, as they trundled their bundles and boxes in and out of the office close by. Every little incident of that hour is photographed upon my mind, as the trifles often are that go before a great calamity or a serious fright; but it is not worth while to recall them all here.

I saw Mr. Churchill’s gilt sign under a window on Court Street ; but I did not see his bright face under any one of the countless black hats which swept by me as I strolled up the street. At last it was one o’clock, and I thought at the next corner I would turn back, and so have plenty of time to reach the station.

The window at which I had paused as I made this resolution was the most florid and the most persistent in its appeals to the public that I had seen. Its contents clamored for attention, with great placards in staring letters, “ A FewMore Left — only Seventy-five Cents,” and equally alluring inscriptions, attached to yellow chains and lockets which, in my innocence. I should have fancied to be of the finest gold, had they not thus proclaimed their own baseness. Vases that looked like porcelain, statuettes that looked like bronze, chessmen that looked like ivory, trumpeted forth their inferior material by similar ostentatious announcements of cheapness. Strings of beads and toy tea-sets, cases of soap and packs of playing-cards, babies’ rattles and old folks’ spectacles, mingled in the heterogeneous assortment ; and little boys on the sidewalk thrust handbills into my fingers, to assure me that the entire stock was to be sold off at an alarming sacrifice on account of removal. But it was none of these temptations which led me on to my fate, and made me enter the shop, It was a paper doll that hung in the window, with her wardrobe beside her, all in a single sheet, ready for the cutting out, — just what would fill with unbounded delight the soul of little Susy Whiting, the one member of my deserted flock who had actually been moved to tears at the news of my going away. My heart seemed to be turned anew towards Susy by the chilly, unsympathizing rush of the throng which swept past me ; and when I thought how easily this addition to her scanty family of rag babies could be sent to her in a letter, I hurried in to secure it.

The shop was so crowded — with women almost exclusively — that I made my way to the counter with difficulty ; and I clutched my pocket-book tightly as the sight of a policeman at the door reminded me of the caution posted at the railroad station. The young women behind the counter were busy as bees, and I waited patiently fully five minutes for my turn.

A sudden scream startled me ; and the lady standing next me turned round, all flushed and half frantic, with the exclamation : —

“ My money! O, my money is gone ! ”

The attendant behind the counter, and all the customers in that part of the shop, crowded around with eager inquiries ; and the policeman was there in an instant, putting quick, curt questions. There seemed no prospect of my getting immediate attention for the little purchase I contemplated ; and thinking at the moment only of the lapse of time and the distance through strange streets to the station, I turned to go without Susy’s paper-doll, — committing thereby, my acute husband informs me, blunder number two.

“Please wait a minute, miss,” said the blue-coated officer. “ The lady has only missed her money a minute; it may not have got out of the store, just keep that door shut, will you.” — this to another man who had joined him.

“ I assure you, sir,” said I, committing I know not how serious an error in my amazement and consternation, “ I am on my way to a train.”

“Going to a train, eh ? ” rejoined the policeman, with a perceptible diminution in the tone of respect he had used at first; “seems to me I have heard just such a story before. Do you think you can tell who took it, ma’am ? ”

The lady who had lost the money — rather an elderly person, with sharp, unattractive features — seemed greatly flustered by the incident.

“ O dear, O dear, no such thing ever happened to me before,” said she, talking at telegraph speed, and at intervals thrusting her hand again and again into the depths of her pocket, as if the thief might have left a glove there, or as if she expected her purse to reappear by magic. “ I had it but a moment ago.

It must have been this woman who stood next me.”

Full of wrath and bewilderment as I was at this abominable accusation, the tears did not come to my eyes as they usually do at moments of excitement. I seemed rather dazed and stunned by the interruption to my sight-seeing, and perhaps I looked calm outwardly to the group who were scrutinizing my features as if I were already on exhibition in some rogues’ gallery.

“You will have to be examined, ma’am,” said the policeman. “If you will step to the rear of die store, it will only take a second. You will please come also,”—to the lady whose loss had occasioned my misfortune, — “I may want to take your name and address.”

“ I am entirely willing,” said I, quite rejoiced at a suggestion which promised my immediate exculpation; “only pray do not detain me longer than is necessary.”

But as I moved to follow in the direction indicated, something fell to the floor. It was a morocco pocket-book. Half a dozen hands hastened to pick it up.

“ You see you have merely dropped your money,” said I to my feminine accuser, already beginning to assume the haughtiness of vindicated innocence.

“ Not a bit of it,” said Officer Knox. (I was destined to learn his name soon after.) “ There is not a cent of money in this wallet. How much is there missing, Mrs.? ”

“ Mrs. James Proctor is my name, and I live in Ames Place. There was sixty dollars in the wallet, and some small silver, and a gold eagle.”

“ I shall feel it necessary to take you to the station,” said the policeman, addressing me again. “ There is no call to search you here. You see, ma’am,” turning to Mrs. Proctor again, “it is not probable she has the money on her. They work in pairs, generally, and when this one took your money she passed it directly to her pal, who would make off with it at once. I saw a woman pass out rather hastily, just before you sung out.”

“This is too much,” I exclaimed, gathering courage for one desperate effort. “ I never saw the woman who went out, but I presume she was the thief. She must have dropped the wallet into my skirts. My name is Mary Gilman ; I am a school-teacher from the country, and a stranger here. Your mistake will make me lose my train.”

The officer’s face showed no more sign of attention to my remonstrance than did the bright buttons on his coat.

“ Will you be so good as to come to the station in half an hour,” said he to Mrs. Proctor. “You will merely have to state the case to the captain of the district.”

“ You see it is your duty to the community, ma’am,” put in another of the group of ladies who clustered around us ; “ if you have no chance of getting your money back, you should feel obliged to bring the thief to justice for the security of the rest of us.”

Mrs. Proctor wavered. Abstract justice seemed a very trivial thing to her by the side of her sixty dollars.

“ It is by no means certain that the money is gone beyond recovery yet,” said Officer Knox, reassuring her. “ When this woman is fairly frightened by seeing she is going to be dealt with, she will be very likely to offer terms, and put you in the way of getting it all back again. It is more often done so than to bring the case into court.”

So to the habit of bargaining with crime, which was rife even then, but which the newspapers have only lately begun to talk about, I owed the persistence of my accuser.

“ I will come there directly,” she said to the policeman; “and if the money is got back,” in a whisper, “the gold eagle shall be yours for your energy in assisting me.”

In the midst of the tumult of thoughts and emotions suggested by my dreadful predicament, I remember thinking that the real pickpocket they took me for was not a whit worse morally than these honest people conspiring for their common advantage. But Mr. Knox, in his imposing uniform, probably cared little for my good or ill opinion. He offered me his arm, with the same politeness which I had seen his comrades of the force showing to the ladies they escorted across the snowy street. “ Not that, at least,” said I ; “ let me walk before you or behind you ; you need not fear my running away.” For I had made up my mind that Officer Knox was too stupid to be reasoned with to advantage. “ Surely,” thought I, “ the captain he speaks of will have penetration enough to see that his captive is not a thief. A word of explanation in an unprejudiced ear will at once release me from this ridiculous dilemma, it must be that after twentyodd years of staid New England life, I have enough of manifest respectability about me to satisfy a captain of police.” So I walked rapidly through the streets, in the direction which my captor indicated, he following close behind me, with an apparent unconsciousness of my presence for which I was deeply thankful. He was sufficiently near, at the corner of every intersecting street, to show me that there was no hope of escape by sudden flight, if I had contemplated such a wild manœuvre ; and in the midst of all my crowded thoughts as to the methods to be taken to make my honesty clear, there hummed over and over again in my mind, like the burden of some old song the words, “ Driven like a lamb to the slaughter, — driven like a lamb to the slaughter.”

“ Here we are,” in the gruff voice of my guide, interrupted my nursings, and scattered my half-formed plans and carefully elaborated sentences of explanation into chaos again. We ascended a short flight of steps, and entered a room wainscoted to the ceiling, in which a row of staves, caps, and blue coats, hung against the wall, suggested to my distempered fancy the night policemen here suspended to take their rest in seemly erectness and uniformity. Behind a wooden railing sat a tall, burly man with a prodigious length of preternaturally black beard, which he caressed and smoothed, with a fat, white, ringed hand, unceasingly during my whole acquaintance with him.

“Ah, Knox, what now?” said this personage, looking through me at the wall behind, with entire ease and overwhelming dignity.

“ Big thing, Cap.,” said my policeman, entirely forestalling my purpose of stating my own case before an unprejudiced mind. “ Party caught picking a pocket in a store on my beat. Pal, dressed in black like this one, made off with the plunder before I could lay hands on her. Empty wallet thrown away by this one when I proposed to search her. Lady coming here presently to identify her. Sixty dollars in bills gone, and some small silver.”

“ O most discreet schemer,” thought I, with all my horror at this succinct statement, “to avoid all mention of your promised eagle ! ”

“If you please, sir,” I began, when the curtain of beard and mustache parted, ever so slightly, with the question, “Seen her before, Knox?”

“ Had my eye on her for several days, Cap. Always keeps her veil down, but know her by her general rig and build. Think she is lately from New York.”

(Ralph says it is a part of the professional police etiquette to have known everybody before. But I thought at the time it was a deliberate lie.)

“ Will you hear me a moment, sir?” said I, with a forced calmness that was anything but real, and I presume deceived nobody. “This is all a most silly mistake. I am a school-teacher, never in the city till to day in my life, and going to Maine this afternoon. I know no more of this robbery than you do.”

“ We always take down these things in order, ma'am,” said the serene official, opening a huge ledger, and substituting his left hand for his right in the task of stroking his flowing whiskers, while lie picked up a stumpy pen. “What is your name?”

“ Mary Gilman.”

“ Age ? ”

I told him.

“ Where born ? ”

“ Massachusetts.”

“ Not a person of color, I see,” murmured the captain, as he jotted down something in each of the ruled-off columns. “ Charge, picking a pocket, you say. Officer, Knox. Complainant ? ”

“ Mrs. Proctor, of Ames Place,” said Mr. Knox, promptly.

“ Now, ma'am, probably it would be pleasanter for you to empty your own pockets,” said the superior officer, passing both hands alternately down his superb cascade of whisker, and gazing lovingly at the scintillations of a diamond thus set off to advantage. “ You can pass the things right over to this desk; and if there is anything more you want to say, I ’ll hear it.”

I began to detest this man, imperturbable, glassy, self-satisfied as he was, more than I did his blundering, impulsive subordinate. But there was nothing to do but to obey him. I took from my pocket my wallet, my handkerchief, the key to my trunk with its long blue ribbon, my little bottle of ammonia.

“There is very little more to say than I have already told you. I left my home, fifty miles from here, this morning, on my way to Maine, where I have a school engaged. I left my trunk at the station, and was merely taking an hour’s walk before the train should leave, when this man pounced upon me. The pocket-book must have been dropped in a fold of my skirt by the thief as she left the store.”

“Have you any friends in Boston?”

I hesitated. I need not set down all the reasons why I did not desire, in my present plight, to send a policeman to Mr. Churchill. Had I liked him less, or known him better, I might have done it earlier. But I could not yet believe my condition so desperate as to require this remedy.

“There is nobody whom I wish to disturb about this matter.”

“ You will see, Mr. Knox, more and more the longer you remain in the force,” proceeded the captain, most deliberately, — the white hand sailing down the black ripples more luxuriously than ever, — “you will see how incapable these people are of making up a tolerable story. Let them be ever so smart in their regular line of business, their lies are always clumsy.” I clutched the railing involuntarily; but the men regarded me no more than they did their spectral comrades on the pegs in the wall. “ Now this party has done very well, very well indeed. But just look at it. She is on her way to Maine to stay several months, and she has only six dollars in her pocket-book, — barely enough for a ticket. She has left her trunk at the depot, but she has not provided herself with a baggage check. She is out for a walk only, and you catch her a mile from the depot in a crowded store. She hangs fire when I ask for her Boston acquaintance. It seems as if any one ought to have done better, Knox; but they are all the same. You can put her in number nine, Knox. Your property will be quite safe, Mary Gilman, in this drawer.” The captain unfolded a copy of the Herald, which a boy had just brought, and put his polished boots on the railing.

I am afraid I exhibit myself in the eyes of my children as having been a girl of very little spirit. I did not audibly resent the police captain’s very logical and professional analysis of my folly and falsehood. If I thought anything at all in the bewilderment of the hour, it was that dignity on my part would impress my persecutors more than any display of wrath. But my dignity was thrown away. Officer Knox took down a key from a row of them that hung just inside the railing, and, in obedience to his gesture, I followed him from the room to the door of the cell designated for me. One glance at its gratings, its chilly floor, its neat, narrow bunk, dispelled all my fastidiousness as to means of rescue.

“ Will you go for me,” said I, “ to Mr. R. H. Churchill’s office, in Court Street, and ask him to come to me for a moment ? ”

“ Now you begin to talk,” replied my custodian. “ I am glad you have had the sense to give up that school-teacher story at last. But Churchill has got mostly beyond this branch of business. I have n’t seen him in our court for a year or more.”

“If you will speak to him as I ask you, I think he will come to see me.”

“Well, perhaps, if it is an old client, he will make an exception in your favor and defend the case. Shall I tell him the same name you gave here? ”

I hesitated again. I saw the honest officer chuckle at my pause tor refiection, as a new proof of his own sagacity. But should I present myself to Mr. Churchill in such distorted character as this officer might give me ? It seemed better to tell him the whole story myself. “You need not give him my name at all,” said I ; “ simply say that a lady whom he knows wishes to see him at the station on very pressing business, — not as a lawyer, but as a friend.”

“just as you please,” said Officer Knox ; and then the door swung into its place, the great key was turned, and I was left alone. There was no window, but a sort of twilight came into the cell through the door. I threw off my bonnet, pressed my hands to my brows, and sat on the edge of the little berth to think. If I had a volume at my disposal, I could fill it all in telling what I thought in the few moments I spent in this way. I remembered shutting little Freddy Lee in the woodcloset of the school-room a week before, because I could not find it in my heart to give the slender boy a severer punishment, and how pale he looked when I released him. I tried to remember what sentence was given to pickpockets, and where was the prison to which they were sent. I wondered whether judges and juries looked at innocent people through such spectacles as blinded the eyes of the policemen. I wondered where the guilty woman was with Mrs. Proctor’s money. And as memory and conjecture were thus busy confusing each other in their eagerness, the door opened again, and the hideously familiar face and buttons of the patrol gleamed before my eyes in the passage-way.

“ Sorry to say Mr. Churchill is not in his office. May not be back to-day; and his boy says he is going for a visit to the country to-morrow, to be gone a week.”

This news seemed hardly more than a fresh drop in the full bucket of my despair, I felt relief rather than additional woe when Officer Knox continued : “Mrs. Proctor is here. She is going away to-morrow, too, and if she is to appear in court it must be this afternoon. So as the court happens to be in session, I will take you right over, and have this thing disposed of at once. It can’t make any difference to you anyway, as I see.”

“ By all means, let us have it over as soon as possible,” said I, tying on my bonnet again with trembling fingers.

“ Nothing you want to say to me before you go in, I suppose,” said the officer, looking at me through eyes half closed.

“ Nothing but to thank you for doing my errand.”

“ O, very well, I like your pluck,” he replied. “ You know you won’t have another chance to make an advantageous arrangement for getting the money back.”

I said nothing in reply to this further hint; and the agent of the law stalked below me into the outer room again. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Proctor leaving it for the court-house. The captain had lighted a cigar ; but the task of watching its fumes left his hands and beard still free for their endearments. He did not once look at me as I stood waiting before him, while Mr. Knox gathered up my possessions from the drawer and thrust them into his own capacious pocket. Then we left the captain, and I never saw him more.

I could not have told whether my guide and I had walked a mile or two rods when our destination was reached. All was a blur before my eyes. Streets and alleys, stairs and passage-ways, were all alike to my dulled consciousness, until I found myself in a sort of pit, so walled and railed about that I could see nothing but the ceiling overhead ; while I knew from the murmurs which reached my ears that there was a room full of people just outside the barrier, before whom I was destined to appear by ascending a short flight of steps. At the head of these steps stood a man all rags and tatters, volubly explaining to listeners outside some charge against himself, but speaking in a brogue so rich that I thought at first he used a foreign tongue. Officer Knox had disappeared, but presently I saw his face over the railing above, and he seemed to whisper to me, “ You come next.” Then the oration of my ragged comrade in misfortune came to a pause, as I thought for want of breath ; but a period was put to it by the announcement in a clear voice, I could not see from whom, “ Four months, House of Industry”; and the fellow, his face grinning as if rather pleased than otherwise at his fate, turned and descended the steps to a seat by my side.

The summons to myself, which I had braced myself to answer bravely, did not follow. There seemed, as well as I could judge from the murmur that reached me, to be some Unusual interruption in the proceedings of the court. One or two people came and peeped at me curiously over the walls of my den, and disappeared again. Presently, I thought I heard my own name, and in a voice that sent a great thrill of delight to my heart. The shrinking horror at the idea of being seen which had before beset me departed ; conquered by my own curiosity, I crept cautiously up the steps until I could just see over the wooden barrier at the top. There, talking eagerly with a gray-haired man who occupied the most elevated seat in the room, was indeed Mr. Churchill. In his hand was my pocket-book, and the little photograph of himself that he had given me, and which had lain hitherto undisturbed in one of the compartments of the wallet. Close by stood Officer Knox, perplexity and chagrin chasing each other over his countenance. Manifestly my champion had arisen, and was fighting my battle in his own way, without having notified me of his interference. As I looked, Mr. Knox stepped gingerly across the room and consulted gloomily with Mrs. Proctor, who sat opposite me. The judge made a gesture of approval, and fell back into his cushioned chair. Mr. Churchill turned towards me, discovered my eyes watching him over the railing, and in a moment had snapped back the bolt of the little door, descended the steps, and grasped my hands.

I had no eloquent speech ready for him, like the rescued heroines of the novels. I only said, “ O Mr. Churchill ! ”

“ Not a word, Mary Gilman, till we are out of this hole.”

He opened the door by which I had been ushered in, and while the stentorian voice of some clerk above us declared the court adjourned, he hurried me out, and putting my arm in his, led me at breathless speed through the building and the street, in at another door and upstairs again, seating me at last in an easy-chair in his office.

“ Tommy,” he said, to an urchin disturbed from a luxurious nap by this movement. “ Go to the post-office, and wait until the mail is assorted.”

Tommy was off at the word; and then Mr. Churchill, pacing up and down the room as he spoke, relieved his mind in his fashion.

“ Upon my word, Miss Gilman, this is a charming scrape I find you in. Don’t speak a word. You must be half frightened to death by your adventure. Let me tell you how I discovered you, while you cool down, and then you can tell me what I do not already know of your story. Most accidental thing in the world that I happened into that court-room. Have n’t been inside the door before for a year. I sauntered in, casually took up some prisoner’s property on the desk, and was amazed by the discovery of your name in the pocket-book, and this most flattering portrait to assure me it was no other Mary Gilman but yourself that owned it. Of course my first thought was that your pocket had been picked. But when I went with my inquiries to the policeman, I found that, by some incredibly stupid blunder, he had arrested yourself in the place of some cunning thief. I thought it not worth while to disturb you until I had relieved you of all embarrassment; and by giving my personal assurance of your entire superiority to any such suspicion, I obtained a reprimand for Mr. Policeman, and your immediate release on his withdrawal of the charge against you.”

At this moment there was a knock at the door, and Officer Knox appeared. His haughty aspect had vanished, and he seemed like the convicted thief in the presence of his judge.

“ Beg pardon, sir,” he began, “ I merely brought Miss Gilman’s key and things, that were left on the court-room table. I hope, Miss, that you will not bear malice against me for this unlucky mistake. We have to be very suspicious in our line, and to doubt appearances ; and that old woman was so sure it was you. She says now she remembers her pocket was on the other side, and that it was the woman who went out before she spoke that stood next her on the right.”

“ Well, well, sir,” said Mr. Churchill, almost fiercely, “ bother us no more about it”

The forgiveness I was about to offer to the contrite officer was prevented by his abrupt departure upon this admonition.

“If it were not for the loss of my train, I do not think I should regret the whole affair very deeply,” said I ; “it will be something to laugh about for a lifetime, when I have got over the shock of fright and annoyance.”

“ What train have you lost, pray, and where are you bound ? ” inquired Mr. Churchill.

I told him as succinctly as I could of my destination, and the plan and purpose of my journey.

“By Jupiter, Miss Gilman, you have time enough for the train yet It is only twenty minutes of four, and we can get to the station in four minutes. Will you try it ? ”

Of course I was ready, though unable at first to believe that events which had seemed to me so long had really passed so quickly. We went through the streets at a pace I had never ventured upon in the country, but not much faster than the city habit. Mr. Churchill found and checked my trunk, while I secured a seat on the train. I noticed that he did not accept my words of inadequate gratitude and good-by as final; but I did not suspect that he was to accompany me, till he took the seat by my side as the cars left the station.

“ You are too kind, Mr. Churchill,” said I : “ you must not undertake this journey on my account, especially if, as I heard from your office when I sent to you, you are going to-morrow into the country.”

“ I have given up that trip,” replied the gentleman, very placidly ; “ since I decided to make it the rural districts have lost their charm for me.”

I am not going to set down all the conversation of that railway ride for my children to read, and perhaps I may as well stop here as anywhere. Mr. Churchill escorted me to my journey’s end, and returned to Boston by the night train. The story I proposed to tell is told; and the children know just how much and how little their father means when he tells them jocosely about marrying a pickpocket. They are both too sensible to allow it to prejudice them against the sagacity of policemen in general ; for they both remember how when Edgar tumbled into the Frog Pond last summer, and Belle could do nothing but scream, Officer Knox, now a veteran and most efficient member of the force, popped up most opportunely to the rescue ; and they have not forgotten what a whistle of delight he gave when the dripping boy — whom he had wrapped in his own coat — told him he was to be carried to his father’s, Mr. Ralph Churchill’s, on the other side of the Public Garden. Mr. Knox took that occasion to renew his apologies, interrupted ten years before, for a blunder made when he was new to his work ; and I learned from him then that Mrs. Proctor never recovered her money.