? I should like to know what for! What are you
taking my brother to prison for?" she challenged the detectives, who
paused, bewildered, while all the little Dutch boys round admired this
obstruction of the law, and several Dutch housewives, too old to go
out to see the queens, looked down from their windows. It was wholly
illegal, but the detectives were human. They could snub such a friend of
their prisoner as Breckon, but they could not meet the dovelike ferocity
of Ellen with unkindness. They explained as well as they might, and at a
suggestion which Kenton made through Breckon, they admitted that it was
not beside their duty to take Boyne directly to a magistrate, who could
pass upon his case, and even release him upon proper evidence of his
harmlessness, and sufficient security for any demand that justice might
make for his future appearance.

"Then," said the judge, quietly, "tell them that we will go with them.
It will be all right, Boyne. Ellen, you and I will get back into the
carriage, and--"

"No!" Boyne roared. "Don't leave me, Nelly!"

"Indeed, I won't leave you, Boyne! Mr. Breckon, you get into the
carriage with poppa, and I--"

"I think I had better go with you, Miss Kenton," said Breckon, and in a
tender superfluity they both accompanied Boyne on foot, while the judge
remounted to his place in the carriage and kept abreast of them on their
way to the magistrate's.

XXIV.

The magistrate conceived of Boyne's case with a readiness that gave the
judge a high opinion of his personal and national intelligence. He even
smiled a little, in accepting the explanation which Breckon was able to
make him from Boyne, but he thought his duty to give the boy a fatherly
warning for the future. He remarked to Breckon that it was well for
Boyne that the affair had not happened in Germany, where it would have
been found a much more serious matter, though, indeed, he added, it
had to be seriously regarded anywhere in these times, when the lives
of sovereigns were so much at the mercy of all sorts of madmen and
miscreants. He relaxed a little from his severity in his admonition to
say directly to Boyne that queens, even when they wished to speak with
people, did not beckon them in the public streets. When this speech
translated to Boyne by Breckon, whom the magistrate complimented on the
perfection of his Dutch, Boyne hung his head sheepishly, and could not
be restored to his characteristic dignity again in the