"'Perhaps,' suggested Alderman Darley, 'his anxiety refers to the young woman from Dolphin's Barn, who is charged with concealing the birth of her infant, and who so obstinately refuses to tell who is its father.'
"'Alas! for the depravity of man,' said the Major. 'Shall we never be free from vice and its consequences, sin and sorrow, crime and punishment?'
"'Why, Major,' said Brophy, taking courage, 'I don't think you'll be quite free of them in a hurry; but I'd like to find out the other parties concerned in this darling bill, for, by G——, I'll make some of them pay it if I can.'
"'Fie, sir!' said the Major. 'It is plain that a mistaken lenity has led you to adopt a forgery; and I only hope that there may be more of them in circulation; for now having paid one, you cannot refuse the others; and as it is, I have a strong inclination to fine you for blasphemous swearing.'
"'Don't mind it, Major,' said Brophy, 'I won't swear any more; but when I get out of this, I think that I'll curse a little.'
"He departed, having paid thirty pounds for a forgery of his own name, and had no consolation beyond discovering, which he did very soon, that the fellow who had been thrown over the wall was not dead, nor even materially injured, and had taken his beating without making much noise about it, once it was over. The spade had been found by some poor vagrant, who sought quietly to dispose of it. Maurice was brought home again, and Pat was forced to acknowledge, amongst his bantering associates, that the spade had turned up 'a trump' for the forger."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Such orders were not unusual in former times.
[21] I have often heard Pemberton and Ross Cox describe the scene as fully remembered by them.