ed his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder's
lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner:--

"You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also."

The prisoner's eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted:--

"I have no object in concealing either."

The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly
restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began
again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen:--

"Parish Prison, for thirty days."

The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in
the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a
word or note of distress.

Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the
facetious name of the "Black Maria" received the convicted ones from the
same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the
night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a
line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted
with zest the abundant number of passengers that were ushered into it
one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both sexes;
tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a
man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and
their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury!
Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the passive, the violent, all kinds;
filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room;
crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by
throwing his weight against it.

"Officer," said one, whose volunteer counsel had persuaded the reporters
not to mention him by name in their thrilling account,--"officer," said
this one, trying to pause an instant before the door of the vehicle, "is
there no other possible way to"--

"Get in! get in!"

Two hands spread against his back did the rest; the door clapped to like
the lid of a bursting trunk, the padlock rattled: away they went!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"OH, WHERE IS MY LOVE?"

At the prison the scene is repeated in reverse, and the Black Maria
presently rumbles away empty. In that building, whose exterior Narcisse
found so picturesque, the vagrant at length finds food. In that question
of food, by the way, another question arose, not as to any degree of
criminality past or present, nor as to age, or sex, or race, or