“Take him into custody, p’leeceman,” says the baker.
“No, no, no,” says the crowd. “Now, none of that,” says I.
“Take him into custody, p’leeceman,” says the baker; “he stole a quartern loaf. Comes into my shop a-beggin’, and because I would not give him anythin’ he whips up a quartern loaf and bolts with it, but I ran after him and ketched him.”
Well, I looks at the baker and I looks at the man, and I thinks to myself, “Here’s a case.” But there was nothin’ else for it, so I takes the loaf under my arm, and gets hold of the poor shiverin’ crittur, and away we goes with a long train of boys and sech a follerin of us; but what with the bad night and the long ways as we had to go, they soon all drops off, and we goes along together, me and the poor chap, with only the people a lookin’ at us as we passed ’em.
“P’leeceman,” says my prisoner all at once, and it was the first word he had spoken. “P’leeceman,” he says, “are you a man?”
Well, yer see, sir, I didn’t like my job that evenin’, for it raly did seem as if the poor chap took the bread because he was a starvin’, and he wasn’t a common chap neither, and we knows pretty well what sort a feller is by his looks, I can tell yer. So when he says them words in such an appealin’ way like, I ain’t werry soft, but I didn’t like my job half so much as I did afore. However, it don’t do for us to be soft, so I says quite chuffy, as if I’d cut up rough—
“What d’yer mean?” I says. “Were you ever hungry—ever famishing?”
“Well,” I says, “I can’t say I ever was, but I’ve been precious dry.”
“Ah!” he says, with a sigh as went right through me, for I could see there was no sham in him, and then he hangs down his head and walks on without sayin’ a word.
He didn’t say no more, so I thinks perhaps as he was hungry, and I says, you may as well carry this here loaf, and if it is picked why it don’t much matter.