He nodded, but then perhaps conscious that he had said too much, he took refuge in silence. Behold the stupidity of the man; just when speaking would have benefited him he closed his mouth. I asked him what he was doing there; if he had been sent by any one, and how he accounted for some of the bottles bearing the address of a Greenside grocer; but to all these questions he remained perversely dumb. He had not the slightest suspicion that Micky had betrayed him, still less that he owed his capture to his own tongue and his anxious father. His idea was that he had been suspected by us, watched and followed to the place, and thus captured in the ordinary course of events. Finding him so stubborn, I sent him to the Office in charge of the others, leaving a man to guard the plunder till it could be taken away in a barrow, while I went up to Micky’s house and considerably surprised him by telling him to get up and come with me—for the cunning rascal had, for the sake of appearances, got into bed, where he stared at me, the very picture of virtuous innocence. He showed every one of his yellow teeth in that devil’s grin of his when I sharply repeated the command, and then I inwardly guessed that I should have some trouble in getting him convicted. My hope, however, was strong in the porter’s son, who, I was convinced, was by far the more innocent of the two, so I snapped the bracelets on Micky with apparent zest, and he was locked up till morning, when I again visited Pat, and found him as obdurate as before. I had still one resource—the old porter, and to him I went as soon as I could get away. His distress—and that of his daughter, who appeared to keep house for them—was overwhelming, and, not unnaturally, the heaviest of their reproaches fell upon me. “You tuck him away after promising that you would do your best to save him and ketch the other villain!” cried the old man, with bitter tears. “Saints above us! and I’ve been the means of sending me own heart’s blood to prison. Och! och! the curse of Heaven be on me for that, and may the tongue that betrayed him wither in me head!” “I may save him yet, if you can only get him to speak—if you can get him to denounce Micky. Could you not prove an _alibi_ for the night of the robbery?” The old man paused in his lamentations to think for a moment, and then honestly confessed that the night of the robbery and that which followed were two on which he was certain his son was not at home. I had therefore no doubt but Pat had actually been engaged in the robbery, which had been executed in a clumsy and haphazard fashion, quite in keeping with the two men in custody. I got the porter to see his son in prison, but the effort was made in vain, for Pat would not open his mouth. Tears, prayers, and entreaties were showered upon him in vain, and the only thing which moved him was his old father lifting his hands to invoke the curse of heaven upon his ungrateful head.