“Oh, yes, yer wash’p—there’s a foine cimitery there,” said the policeman. “It was was just outside the cimitery I arrested the prisoner.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of a cemetery in that neighbourhood,” said the Bench. “Don’t you think the constable is mistaken, sergeant?”
The sergeant put a few questions to the witness, and asked him how he knew that the place was a cemetery.
“Why, how would anybody know a cimitery except by the tombstones?” said the witness. “I didn’t go for to dig up a corp or two, but there was the foinest array of tombstones I ever clapt oyes on.”
“It’s the stonecutter’s yard the man means,” came a voice from the body of the court; and in another moment there was a roar of laughter from all present.
The arrest had been made outside a stonecutter’s railed yard, and the strange policeman had taken the numerous specimens of the proprietor’s craft, which were standing around in various stages of progress, for the bona fide furnishing of a graveyard.
He was scarcely to be blamed for his error.
I believe that it was during these riots the story originated—it is now pretty well known, I think—of the man who had caught a policeman, and was holding his head down while he battered him, when a brother rowdy rushed up, crying,—
“Who have you there, Bill?”