The boy was sharp. He said, “I don’t know where Dick is; but, if I see him, I’ll give it to him;” and he took the letter. The letter asked Dick to meet Lucy at nine o’clock the next night up by Giles’s farm, which is up at the top of a lonely road, about half a mile away from the village.
When the time came, instead of Lucy going, one of the policemen in plain clothes went up to the place, and hid behind a hedge. We heard all about it afterwards. After he had waited a little, he saw Master Dick come cautiously along, it being a nice light night, and when he was quite close, the policeman jumped out on him; but, before he could get hold of him, the young fiend had a revolver pointed at his head.
“Oh, it’s a trick, is it?” he said. “I thought it was, so I’ve come prepared.”
“Put that down, you young varmint!” yelled the policeman. “Do you hear? Put that down.”
He told us afterwards he felt very nervous; for that horrid boy pointed the revolver at him, with his finger on the trigger, and he was afraid every minute it might go off.
“Not me,” said the little wretch; “you’re at my mercy now.”
“If you don’t put that pistol down,” said the policeman, beginning to be all of a perspiration, “I’ll give you such a thrashing as you never had in your life.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” said the boy; “you come a step nearer to me, and I’ll blow your brains out.”
With that the policeman began to shout, because he saw he could do nothing. Being a married man, and the father of a family, he didn’t care to have a bullet in him.
But directly he began to shout, the boy called out, “You shout again, and I’ll shoot you dead,” and he put his finger on the trigger again, ready to pull it.