you," he
continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here.
Let me see you a few minutes, Mac."

The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie
Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must
be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of
shadow.

"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on
graft charges."

"He was my inspector," said the Captain.

"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for
the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony
will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force.
His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the
stand and testify against him."

"He was"--began the Captain.

"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out
of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty
on the spot, and the rest"--

"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and
the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before
I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm
no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose
and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie
Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters;
and take your dirty money with you."

Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his
seat.

"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are
the biggest fool I ever saw."

"What would you have done?" asked the Captain.

"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray.

"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are
different. New York is divided into two parts--above Forty-second
street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both
act according to our lights."

An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that
it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and
moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the
park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway,
at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii.

Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt
and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he
would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every
street