"He--he--he is a-stealin'! He--he's a-a-a-a-stealin' star's di'monds--right now--outer dressin'-room"--expounded Pete eagerly. "Mighty likely," exclaimed the policeman in irony. "Gorham's Theaytre,--got in by back window," spluttered Pete. "I believe you!" The policeman gave a gruff laugh. Pete soon ceased to care that his captor seemed to regard this but as a drunken vagary. Before they reached the lock-up he was growing very ill. He was barely conscious of being thrust into a tiny darkened room where there was a narrow bunk. He fell upon it, and there he lay sleeping the sleep of the very drunk until late the next day. He woke with a splitting headache. For a time he was conscious of nothing but this fact. It was suddenly aggravated by a harsh, grating noise. The key was turning reluctantly in the lock. He frowned sullenly and looked over his shoulder. The policeman who had arrested him was standing in the doorway. Then Pete realized where he was and recollected all that had happened. He had never imagined that he could be so disgraced. Everybody whom he knew would find it out, for his name would be printed in the police reports in the daily papers,--in Ned's paper too. Ned himself would read it. He remembered the threats he had made against Ned,--that he would give information against Ned to the police, forsooth,--that he would compass Ned's arrest! These threats were not fulfilled as he had promised himself. It would be but natural that Ned should gloat over his coarse, foolish degradation. Because he could not remain sober till he reached the station he must spend the night in the lock-up while Ned was enjoying the play. "An' the gump would never have drempt o' gittin' in the theaytre if it hadn't a-been fur me," he thought. His mortification and self-reproach gave way at once to a surly jealousy and malignity, for it is more characteristic of such a boy as Pete Bateman, when forced by circumstances to recognize his faults, to seek to blame and injure others and find parallel misdeeds in their conduct, rather than to repent and amend. "A cheatin' scamp,--I wisht I had Ned 'ere now," he thought virulently. These feelings were in his heart when the policeman spoke. "Boy," he said gravely, "now that ye're sorter sober I want ye ter tell that story again that ye told las' night about that burned theatre." Pete started up in his bunk,--his headache forgotten. He had not before thought of this chance. Although Ned could not be caught in the active perpetration of the misdeed, he could still be accused of having climbed into the window of the theatre with nefarious designs. "Maybe I'll make it lively fur him yet," Pete reflected with satisfaction. Then he drawled with an affectation of indifference, "I never said nothin' 'bout no _burned_ theaytre sence I wuz born."