r
native land. When the deputy warden had sufficiently recovered from the
shock brought upon him by the sight of his new charge to give me a
receipt for him, I raced for the noon train back to the city.

Thereon I sat down beside Pol--First-Class Policeman X----, surprised
to find him off duty and in civilian clothes. There was a dreamy,
far-away look in his eyes, and not until the train was racing past Rio
Grande reservoir did he turn to confide to me the following
extraordinary occurrence:

"Last night I dreamed old Judge ---- had my father and my mother up
before him. On the stand he asked my mother her age--and the funny part
of it is my mother has been dead over ten years. She turned around and
wrote on the wall with a piece of chalk '1859,' the year she was born.
Then my father was called and he wrote '1853.' That's all there was to
the dream. But take it from me I know what it means. Now just add 'em
together, and multiply by five--because I could see five people in the
court-room--divide by two--father and mother--and I get--," he drew out
a crumpled "arrest" form covered with penciled figures, "--9280. And
there--" his voice dropped low, "--is your winning number for next
Sunday."

So certain was this, that First-Class X---- had bribed another
policeman to take his eight-hour shift, dressed in his vacation best,
bought a ticket to Panama and return, with real money at tourist
prices, and would spend the blazing afternoon seeking among the scores
of vendors in the city for lottery ticket 9280. And if he did not find
it there he certainly paid his fare all the way to Colon and back to
continue his search. I believe he at length found and acquired the
whole ticket, for the customary sum of $2.50. But there must have been
a slip in the arithmetic, or mother's chalk; for the winning number
that Sunday was 8895.

Frequent as are these melancholy errors, scores of "Zoners" cling
faithfully to their arithmetical superstitions. Many a man spends his
recreation hours working out the winning numbers by some secret recipe
of his own. There are men on the Z. P. who, if you can get them started
on the subject of lottery tickets, will keep it up until you run away,
showing you the infallibility of their various systems, believing the
drawing to be honest, yet oblivious to the fact that both the one and
the other cannot be true. Dreams are held in special favor. It is
probably safe to assert that one-half the numbers over