"I'll continue the hearing for further evidence--take him over to the jail, Burton."
Throughout all this the boy had stood straight and unflinching. His features were pale but his jaws were hard set. Friendless and moneyless, he knew his chances were small. He knew that he stood on the perilous brink of some dire happening. He understood the import of the commissioner's order to hold him for additional evidence, and while he was not wholly unafraid, he stood tense and determined, boding no retreat, like a brave horse taking a deep, wide ditch in the dark, with yawning depths beneath him, and the gush of waters in his ears.
"I said, have you got anything to say?" repeated the impatient commissioner.
"I hain't got nothin' t' say--only--only----" he began, in a voice that split and ruptured in crowding past the lump that choked him. He turned his gray eyes and fixed them upon the bloated, triumphant visage of Burton.
"Only," he struggled on, quaveringly, as he lifted his two cuffed hands and leveled them at the revenuer, "he kilt my Maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap, he ded--an'--an'----"
[Illustration: "He kilt my maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap."]
Burton grabbed one shoulder with a snort, the deputy the other, and they led him out.
As the door closed, the blonde typist resumed her machine, and her chilly eyes were moist. She glanced covertly at the commissioner. His downward drawn mouth was ajar, and he was gazing blankly at a familiar ink spot on his desk.
Once again Lem found himself marching through the rain between his captors, and all the unknown strange noises of a city consolidated and merged into a tumult that harried his very soul. His next distinct impression came when he realized that Burton was unlocking his handcuffs.
He was now inside of a jail. He stood before a desk and a man in uniform was putting various questions to him in a curt and gruff voice, concerning his age and residence, to which Lem answered in an apathetic, dazed way. The man made a record of these responses in a book. While he was thus occupied, Lem was eyeing his awesome surroundings.
Now for the first time, he was conscious that Burton and his deputy had disappeared, and another man in uniform stood at his side. The desk-man presently handed this officer a pink slip, and he in turn told Lem to follow, leading the way across a big rotunda of concrete to a huge iron-barred gate which he unlocked. He ushered the prisoner into a long corridor, and transferred him to the care of a second uniformed guard, who proceeded to search Lem's clothes with a skill and deftness that would have inspired envy in the bosom of a professional pickpocket.