"You mean stole," said the sergeant.
"And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's."
"Hallo!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
"Hallo, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.
"It was some broken wittle—that's what it was—and a dram of liquor, and a pie."
"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" asked the sergeant, confidentially.
"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"
"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and without the least glance at me; "so you're the blacksmith, are you? Then I'm sorry to say I've eat your pie."
"God knows you're welcome to it—so far as it was ever mine," returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starve to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. Would us, Pip?"
Something that I had noticed before clicked in the man's throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, but they looked at him stolidly and rowed him back to the hulks as a matter of course.