As soon as he had got a little distance, he turned round, and saw Master Dick pick up the sovereign and the coat and waistcoat, and run away with them.
Jones turned round then, and shouted, and ran after him.
But directly he came close, Master Dick turned round with the revolver.
Jones hesitated.
“If you come a step nearer, I’ll fire,” shouted the boy.
Jones was just turning round to go away again, wondering whatever people would say if he came back into the village in his shirt-sleeves, when, suddenly, a man came along the road in the opposite direction, and before the boy knew what was up, his arms were seized from behind, and the pistol was forced out of his hand. It was Harry, who had gone up to the place to see if anything had happened, and who had seen the last part of the performance at a distance.
And when they had collared the boy, and Jones had put on his coat and waistcoat and got his sovereign back, and was walking Master Dick off to the police-station, Harry picked up the revolver, and looked at it.
It was empty!
Poor Jones went hot and cold, and begged Harry not to say anything about it, because it would make him look so small; and Harry, who would have burst out laughing if the boy hadn’t been there, promised not to tell; and he didn’t tell anybody except me. It must have looked ridiculous. I couldn’t help laughing at the idea myself, the policeman having to take off his clothes, frightened by a boy with an empty revolver.
Master Dick was taken before the magistrates, and tried for sending a threatening letter, and being in possession of a pistol, which, it was presumed, he had stolen from a farmer’s house in the neighbourhood, but nothing was said by Jones about the robbery from him, and the boy was wise enough to hold his tongue.