Page:The bee-man of Orn, and other fanciful tales.djvu/138

 128 inclusive, and you stand charged with highway robbery, forgery, treason, smuggling, barn-burning, bribery, poaching, usury, piracy, witchcraft, assault and battery, using false weights and measures, burglary, counterfeiting, robbing hen-roosts, conspiracy, and poisoning your grandmother by proxy. I intended to-day to dress the convicts in prison garb, and you shall immediately be so clothed."

"I shall require seventeen suits," said the Jolly-cum-pop.

"Yes," said the jailer, "they shall be furnished."

"And seventeen rations a day," said the Jolly-cum-pop.

"Certainly," replied the jailer.

"This is luxury," roared the Jolly-cum-pop. "I shall spend my whole time in eating and putting on clean clothes."

Seventeen large prison suits were now brought to the Jolly-cum-pop. He put one on, and hung up the rest in his cell. These suits were half bright yellow and half bright green, with spots of bright red, as big as saucers.

The jailer now had doors cut from one cell to another. "If the Potentate comes here and wants to look at the prisoners," he said to the Jolly-cum-pop, "you must appear in cell number One, so that he can look through the hole in the door, and see you; then, as he walks along the corridor, you must walk through the cells, and whenever he looks into a cell, you must be there."

"He will think," merrily replied the Jolly-cum-pop,