The magistrate waved his hand, as if to silence further speech, and writing on a slip of paper, handed it to the officer. “Come,” said the officer, touching Jane. The woman turned sharply upon him. “Where are you taking me?” “Into another wing of the Tombs: don’t make a disturbance now, but come peaceably.” “Not unless this old Jezebel goes with me,” cried the woman, furiously. “I tell you, she is ten thousand times worse than a thief; she wanted me to commit murder—to let one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived starve on her sick-bed; she tried to bribe me with that very ear-ring. I tell you, gentlemen, she is more of a murderer than I am a thief ten times over!” She was interrupted by a laugh, low and quiet, but which shook Madame’s meagre form from head to foot. “Pleasant charges, very,” she observed, addressing the magistrate; “perhaps I stole my own jewels.” “I shouldn’t wonder,” murmured the judge, scarcely above his breath, but Madame heard it. “Yes,” she added, “and perhaps I engraved my own name on the back.” She held out the ear-ring, and the judge saw G. De Marke engraved on the antique setting. He had heard the name, and now gazed with great curiosity on its owner, for with all her apparent poverty he knew her to be one of the wealthiest women in New York. He handed back the ear-ring with a bow, and waving his hand, ordered the prisoner to be removed. CHAPTER XXIII. A FRIEND IN NEED. Alone in the streets of a great city, in the night-time—so young, so beautiful, without a home, a dollar, or a friend, what could the poor girl do? Utter hopelessness is almost rest. Catharine could not understand this, and wondered within herself at the strange apathy that possessed her in this the most forlorn moment of her life. She wandered on, careless of the direction, without object and dreamily. Once or twice she sat down on a door-step to rest, but it was only for a moment, and when she arose it was to forget that a transient repose had been obtained. At last in the drear waste of her thoughts she remembered the Irish woman who had been so kind to her at Bellevue, and around this thought centred other reflections that almost amounted to a resolution. But even this emotion died away when she reflected, that, kind as the woman was, there existed no means of ascertaining exactly where she lived. Still Catharine wandered on; what else could she do? Even from the door-steps she might at any moment be driven forth as an intruder. It was evidently getting late; the noises of city life were gradually hushed, and the growing stillness appalled her. Never, in her whole existence, had she been so utterly alone. Awaking from her apathy, as it were from a dull dream, she found herself upon the corner of two thoroughfares, on the east side of the town. The stores were all closed, and the streets on either hand almost deserted.