* * * * * * *

It’s mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes.  Poets call them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse.  I dreamed the rest of this story.

I thought I was in the next world.  I don’t know how I got there; I suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries’s nose, or doing some such little injudicious stunt.  But, anyhow, there I was, and there was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments were going on.  And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another case.

While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and sang out: 

“Case No. 99,852,743.”

Up stepped a plain-clothes man—­there were lots of ’em there, dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just like cops do on earth—­and by the arm he dragged—­whom, do you think?  Why, Liz!

The court officer took her inside and closed the door.  I went up to Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case.

“A very sad one,” says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers together.  “An utterly incorrigible girl.  I am Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones.  The case was assigned to me.  The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide.  She had no defense.  My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated by reliable witnesses.  The wages of sin is death.  Praise the Lord.”

The court officer opened the door and stepped out.

“Poor girl,” said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, with a tear in his eye.  “It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met with.  Of course she was”—­

“Discharged,” said the court officer.  “Come here, Jonesy.  First thing you know you’ll be switched to the pot-pie squad.  How would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands—­hey?  Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you’ll be transferred—­see?  The guilty party you’ve not to look for in this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in the streets.  Get a move on you.”

Now, wasn’t that a silly dream?

ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS

Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends.  Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic alma mater.