-"after dinner we'd go to see one of the roof-garden shows.
Let me tell you they've got the Marigny or the Ambassadeurs or the
Jardin de Paris beaten to a pulp--to--a--pulp! And after the show we'd
slip round to the stage-door--you bet we would!--and capture the two
most beautiful ladies in the world and take 'em off to supper."

He wrinkled his young brow in great perplexity. "Now I wonder," said he,
anxiously--"I wonder where we'd go for supper. You see," he apologized,
"it's two years since I left the Real Street, and, gee! what a lot can
happen on Broadway in two years! There's probably half a dozen new
supper-places that I don't know anything about, and one of them's the
place where the crowd goes. Well, anyhow, we'd go to that place, and
there'd be a band playing, and the electric fans would go round and
round, and Johnnie Doe and I and the two most beautiful ladies would put
it all over the other pikers there."

Young Benham gave a little sigh of pleasure and excitement. "That's what
I'd like to do to-night," said he, "and that's what I'll do, you can bet
your sh--boots, when all this silly mess is over and I'm a free man.
I'll hike back to good old Broadway, and if ever you see any one trying
to pry me loose from it again you can laugh yourself to death, because
he'll never, never succeed.

"That's where I'll go," he said, nodding, "when this waiting is
over--straight back to Liberty Land and the bright lights. The rest of
the family can stay here till they die, if they want to--and I suppose
they do--_I'm_ going home as soon as I've got my money. Old Charlie'll
manage all that for me. He'll get a lawyer to look after it, and I won't
have to see anybody in the family at all.

"Nine more weeks shut in by stone walls!" said the boy, staring about
him with a sort of bitterness. "Nine weeks more!"

"Is it so hard as that?" asked the girl.

There was no foolish coquetry in her tone. She spoke as if the words
involved no personal question at all, but there was a little smile at
her lips, and Arthur Benham turned toward her quickly and caught at her
hands.

"No, no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that.
You're worth nine years' waiting. You're the best--d'you hear?--the best
there is. There's nobody anywhere that can touch you. Only--well, this
place is getting on my nerves. It's got me worn to a frazzle. I feel
like a criminal doing time."

"You came very near having to do time somewher