"Yes, sir--a young scoundrel! I actually twigged him selling papers at the Fulton Ferry this morning! A little rascal!"
"A girl in boy's clothes! A girl!" exclaimed Old Hurricane, with his eyes nearly starting out of his head.
Just then the young culprit looked up in his face with an expression half melancholy, half mischievous, that appealed to the rugged heart of the old man. Turning around to the policeman, he startled the whole office by roaring out: "Girl, is she, sir? Then, demmy, sir, whether a girl in boy's clothes, or men's clothes, or soldier's clothes, or sailor's clothes, or any clothes, or no clothes, sir, treat her with the delicacy due to womanhood, sir! ay, and the tenderness owed to childhood! for she is but a bit of a poor, friendless, motherless, fatherless child, lost and wandering in your great Babylon! No more hard words to her, sir--or by the ever-lasting----"
"Order!" put in the calm and dignified Recorder.
Old Hurricane, though his face was still purple, his veins swollen and his eyeballs glaring with anger, immediately recovered himself, turned and bowed to the Recorder and said: "Yes, sir, I will keep order, if you'll make that brute of a policeman reform his language!"
And so saying Old Hurricane subsided into a seat immediately behind the child, to watch the examination.
"What'll they do with her, do you think?" he inquired of a bystander.
"Send her down, in course."
"Down! Where?"
"To Blackwell's Island--to the work'us, in course."
"To the workhouse--her, that child?--the wretches! Um-m-m-me! Oh-h-h!" groaned Old Hurricane, stooping and burying his shaggy gray head in his great hands.
He felt his shoulder touched, and, looking up, saw that the little prisoner had turned around, and was about to speak to him.
"Governor," said the same clear voice that he had even at first supposed to belong to a girl--"Governor, don't you keep on letting out that way! You don't know nothing! You're in the Recorder's Court! If you don't mind your eye they'll commit you for contempt!"
"Will they? Then they'll do well, my lad! Lass, I mean. I plead guilty to contempt. Send a child like you to the----! They shan't do it! Simply, they shan't do it! I, Major Warfield of Virginia, tell you so, my boy--girl, I mean!"
"But, you innocent old lion, instead of freeing me, you'll find yourself shut up between four walls! and very narrow ones at that, I tell you! You'll think yourself in your coffin! Governor, they call it The Tombs!" whispered the child.