When we reached that foul-smelling pen we were kept waiting by a large "order" that had just been rounded up from a gambling-house in the neighborhood. There were about twenty men and women in this flock. They were filing, one by one, before the desk-sergeant. I had never heard such a family gathering of names. They were all Smiths, Browns, and Joneses, and they all lived a good way from town, out in the fifty-hundreds, where there are many vacant lots. At the end of the file there was a little unshaven Jew, who seemed very mad about it all. He was the only one who had any money; he gave up a fat roll of bills that took the officer some time to count. "I know who did this!" the Jew sputtered at the man behind the desk. "And I can make it hot for some of youse, all right." "That's good," the sergeant replied pleasantly. "Another time you'll have the sense to know when you are well off." I thought this was fatherly advice addressed to the Jew for his moral health. I congratulated myself that I had fallen into clean hands. So when my turn came, I said to the desk-sergeant confidentially:-- "I am quite innocent!" "Is that so, m'son?" he remarked pleasantly. "They haven't any right to arrest me. I was--" "Of course, of course! Keep all that for his Honor to-morrow morning. What's your name, m'son?" "E.V. Harrington," I replied quite innocently. "And where do you hail from?" "Jasonville, Indiana." It did not occur to me then that, guilty or innocent, it made no difference after I had given my real name and home. Thanks to the enterprise of metropolitan journalism, the folks in Jasonville, Indiana, would be reading at their breakfast to-morrow morning all about how Van Harrington had been taken up as a thief. "Here!" the fat sergeant called out to one of the officers, after I had handed over to his care the few odds and ends that I still had about me; "show the gent from Indiany to number twelve." CHAPTER II THE HARRISON STREET POLICE COURT _A night in jail--A rapid-fire judge--The young lady is not so positive--The psychology of justice--What's the matter with Jasonville?--I tell my story to his Honor_ [Illustration: _Feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago mighty quick._] There was a greasy bench at one end of number twelve, where I sat myself down, feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago mighty quick. A measly gas-jet above the door showed what a stinking hole I had got myself into. I could hear the gambling party across the way, laughing and talking, taking their lot rather easily. Pretty soon a man was put into the cell next mine. He kept groaning about his head. "My head!" he would say, "oh, my head! My head! oh, my head!" until I thought my own head was going wrong.