We had soon crossed the ferry, and were seated in an omnibus, moving slowly (who ever went in any other way by that conveyance?) up Broadway. Pat had by this time grown very taciturn, and no doubt began to suspect that his escort was not entirely prepared to fight for his personal liberty. In fact, he must have fully decided in his own mind that we were no very consistent friends of the "largest liberty," in his case at least, when one of us pulled the leather strap, to give the usual signal for a halt. This was just as we had reached the head of Cedar street, on which the post office is situated, and before we had arrived, by several blocks, at the place where he at first supposed he was going to call, for a much more agreeable purpose than that of being confronted with the charge of extensive mail robbery. As he alighted from the "slow coach," he halted for a moment, as if inclined to have some better understanding before proceeding further, especially as we turned our faces in the direction of the post office. He possessed physical strength enough to have put an end to our troubling him any further, but Broadway at midday is no very favorable place for such an attempt; and besides, he no doubt hoped that all might yet come out right. After being told that he was wanted at the post office on some private business, he went there peaceably. Once alone with him in a private room, the time had fully arrived for deciding--not as to his guilt, for of that I was fully satisfied--but what were the chances of proving it, and of inducing him to disgorge his plunder. "Patrick," said I, "you are detected in your robberies of the night mails in this office, and the first question I wish you to answer is, can you restore the money, that it may be returned to those you have robbed." He received the accusation with a look of surprise, but without any manifest trepidation. "I am an honest man, thank God," he asseverated, "and I'll defy all ye can do to me; and it's nither ye nor the divil that can scare me, so it ain't," at the same time drawing himself up into an attitude of defiance. "I don't wish to scare you, Pat," I remarked. "I am sorry on account of your family that you should have so abused your trust while employed in this office. But that is neither here nor there. I want you to hand over the seven or eight thousand dollars you have got so wrongfully. You passed some of the $2000, from the Middletown package, to Mr. G., for the grave-stones, you know, and I have the bills in my pocket."