Fourth-moment tightness of polygonal random walks ($\mathbb{E}|S_t^N-S_s^N{|}^4\le \max (3,m_4)|t-s{|}^2$)

For centered unit-variance independent and identically distributed increments with $m_4=\mathbb{E}{\xi }^4<\infty$, an interpolated increment is $N^{-1/2}{\sum }_j{c}_j{\xi }_j$. Here $c_j$ is the length of the overlap of $(Ns,Nt)$ with the $j$th unit cell, so $0\le c_j\le 1$ and $\sum c_j=N(t-s)$. Independence gives its fourth moment as $N^{-2}[3(\sum c_j^2{)}^2+(m_4-3)\sum c_j^4]$. This is at most $\max (3,m_4)N^{-2}(\sum c_j^2{)}^2$, and $\sum c_j^2\le N(t-s)$ gives the bound, including intervals crossing a mesh point. A uniform fourth-moment continuity criterion yields tightness of probability measures on $C_0[0,1]$.