bewildered-looking gentleman gave himself up (as if he were a
riddle), but the police would have none of him, and restored him
forthwith to his friends and keepers. The number of candidates for each
new opening in Newgate is astonishing.

The full significance of this tragedy of a noble young life cut short
had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation
absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on
suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news
fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake's name was a
household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk
upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at Society, should actually
have shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the blood shed was
not blue, but the property of a lovable young middle-class idealist, who
had now literally given his life to the Cause. But this supplementary
sensation did not grow to a head, and everybody (save a few labor
leaders) was relieved to hear that Tom had been released almost
immediately, being merely subpoenaed to appear at the inquest. In an
interview which he accorded to the representative of a Liverpool paper
the same afternoon, he stated that he put his arrest down entirely to
the enmity and rancor entertained toward him by the police throughout
the country. He had come to Liverpool to trace the movements of a friend
about whom he was very uneasy, and he was making anxious inquiries at
the docks to discover at what times steamers left for America, when the
detectives stationed there in accordance with instructions from
headquarters had arrested him as a suspicious-looking character.
"Though," said Tom, "they must very well have known my phiz, as I have
been sketched and caricatured all over the shop. When I told them who I
was they had the decency to let me go. They thought they'd scored off me
enough, I reckon. Yes, it certainly is a strange coincidence that I
might actually have had something to do with the poor fellow's death,
which has cut me up as much as anybody; though if they had known I had
just come from the 'scene of the crime,' and actually lived in the
house, they would probably have--let me alone." He laughed
sarcastically. "They are a queer lot of muddle-heads are the police.
Their motto is, 'First catch your man, then cook the evidence.' If
you're on the spot you're guilty because you're there, and if you're
elsew