come along who knew me, and they was that scared when they
found out who I was that they bowed and scraped like dancin' masters
and wanted me to take the skirt along if I'd say nothin' about it. That
might have happened to this poor child--"

"Has Father Cruse seen her?" asked Felix. No word of the recital had
reached his ears.

"No--that's why I come to ye."

"And where did you say she was?" He had himself under perfect control
again, and might have been a man bent only on aiding Father Cruse in
some charitable work.

"Locked up in the station-house not far from here. It won't take ye ten
minutes to get there."

Felix glanced at the big-faced clock, facing the side window of the
store.

"Yes, of course I will go, since Father Cruse wishes it. Thank you for
bringing his message. You need not wait."

"Needn't wait! Ye're not goin' one step without me. They'd chuck ye out
if ye did, and that's what they won't do to me if the captain's in his
office. Besides, Mike run over a boy, and Tim Kelsey is up there now
standin' bail for him. There's no use goin' unless ye see her. That's
what the Father wanted ye to do, and that ain't easy unless ye've got
the run of the station. So, ye see, I got to go with ye whether ye want
me or not, or ye won't get nowheres. I'll wait till ye get yer hat and
coat."

All the way to the station-house, Kitty beside him, Felix was putting
into silent words the thoughts that raced through his mind.

"Barbara arrested as a vulgar thief!" he kept saying over and over.
"A woman brought up a lady--with the best blood of England in her
veins--her father a man of distinction! The woman I married!"

Then, as a jagged thread of light breaks away from a centre bolt,
illuminating a distant cloud, a faint ray cheered him. Perhaps the woman
was not Barbara. No one had any proof. Father Cruse had never believed
it, and he had only argued himself into thinking that the woman who had
dropped the sleeve-link must be his wife. Until he knew definitely, saw
her with his own eyes, neither would HE believe it, and a certain shame
of his own suspicion swept through him like a flame.

The captain was out when the two reached the station. Nor was there
any one who knew Kitty except a departing patrolman, who nodded to her
pleasantly as she passed in, adding in a whisper the information that
Mike and Kelsey had gone up to Magistrate Cassidy, who held court in the
next block, and that she was "not to worry,"