“Can’t say that I do,” returned the detective, “but, you see, a raw thief would have turned as white as a turnip when the man said ‘station-house,’ and cried a pailful of tears, pretty nigh. But this moll’s too clever to waste words and tears when it’s no use. She can see that the old man means pulling her, and she knows well enough, I dare say, that one might as well talk to a post as a ‘bobby,’ specially a country ‘bobby.’ Only wait till to-morrow, and you’ll see how white her cheeks and how red her eyes will get.”
“Well, she didn’t look like a thief to me,” said the butcher, “and as to her being an old hand, I don’t b’lieve it. It’s all moonshine.”
Laura Stanbridge was lodged very roughly that night, and brought up the next morning before two of the borough magistrates.
As the detective had predicted, her cheeks were very pale, and her eyes inflamed with weeping, but in her case they were real tears.
She bitterly regretted having been so imprudent as to commit so foolish and unnecessary a robbery; indeed, she could not very well understand what induced her to run such a risk, and for the greater portion of the night she was plunged into the very depths of sorrow.
Her tears and protestations of innocence, combined with her beauty, might, perhaps have saved her if her judges had been gentlemen of the country, who, as a rule, take a merciful view of cases of this description. But they were tradesmen.
The injured draper was a magistrate himself, and, though not allowed to act in his own case, sat close to the Bench, which he watched with his eyes.
No. 60.
THE YOUNG CHAPLAIN STARTED AS HE BEHELD THE GRACEFUL FORM OF THE PRISONER.