Poor Aggy, when she heard the awful character of the charge that was now made against her darling and innocent Cursty, and saw the policeman proceed to lay hands upon him, swooned right off into the arms of the nearest inspector. The official, however, looking upon the lady as the brazen-faced partner of one of the light-fingered gentry, was in no humour to resort to any gentle restoratives as a means of bringing the lady back to her senses; so, shaking Mrs. Sandboys violently, he, in the most unceremonious manner, said that they were up to all them fainting dodges, and it was no use trying ’em on with them.
It was in vain for Cursty either to expostulate or to explain, for being looked upon as a thief, of course he was treated as one; so that when he endeavoured to make known the real facts of the case, the officers winked their eyes and grinned at one another at what they considered the extreme lameness of the excuse. After he had wasted some ten minutes in attempting to assert and prove his innocence, he was dragged off by two policemen, and being placed in a cab, was conveyed, without loss of time, before the sitting magistrate at the nearest police-office.
There the charge was immediately entered upon, when, the magistrate observing that further proof was required, the Detective prayed for a remand of the prisoner, stating he felt convinced that in a few days he should be able to bring a large body of evidence to bear against the individual, for he was perfectly satisfied that if the party was not the notorious Cursty Sandboys himself, he was at least one of his gang, and had made use of that person’s ticket whilst he was in prison.
Aggy, who, on recovering her senses, had ascertained where her lord and master had been carried, entered the police-court at this precise juncture, and no sooner heard the officer pronounce her husband to belong to a well-known gang of pickpockets, than she insisted upon being heard, and was about to enter into a long family history of her husband and herself, when the magistrate informed her, that unless she would keep silence he should be compelled to have her put out of the court.
Cursty, finding himself likely to be committed to prison, sought to explain to the magistrate how he was a plain country gentleman, come up from Cumberland to enjoy himself and see the Great Exhibition; but his statement was received with no more belief than the excuses of individuals when similarly circumstanced, for the felon’s dock is not exactly the place where a gentleman is likely to obtain much credit for his assertions.
The magistrate, looking sternly at the melancholy Christopher, shook his head, as much as to say that, after what the Detective had stated, the case appeared rather black against him.
Cursty, however, finding himself standing, as it were, on the threshold of a prison, protested his innocence so loudly, and persisted with such pertinacity in his statements, that the magistrate was induced to inquire of the turnkey in attendance whether he knew anything of the prisoner, whereupon the official replied that he remembered the name perfectly well, and having retired to refresh his memory on the subject, returned shortly and stated, that he found Cursty Sandboys had been charged only a short time back with being drunk and disorderly, and incapable of taking care of himself; while the wife of the same “party” had been given into custody about the same time for assaulting the police.
This was more than the blood of Aggy could bear; and immediately she rushed forward and began to enter into an explanation as to how the hussey who had been taken up had used her name at the police-office, after stealing her marriage certificate; but the manner of Mrs. Sandboys was so excited, while her whole story sounded so improbable, that she appeared to the magistrate to be just the kind of woman to commit such an act under the influence of temper.
Accordingly, all things considered, the magistrate decided upon remanding the ill-fated Cursty Sandboys till a future day, and, amid the shrieks of his distracted wife, he was dragged off by the turnkey to be locked up in his cell.
