“That is not for me to explain, but go you must.”
“I winna! I’ve trampit a’ this way to see my puir man, and I maun see him.”
I brought out my handcuffs, whereupon the assembled crowd began to groan and hoot and abuse me to their hearts’ content. Would I drag a poor creature like that away to jail at such a moment, before she could even see her invalid husband? I replied that I would not drag her if she was inclined to walk. Then names were showered upon me enough to have stocked a slang dictionary. I pointed out to the crowd that the door was now open, and that through it was their way, while ours was in quite a different direction; and at length, with the aid of a policeman who chanced to pass the head of the street, I convinced them that I was right. The woman was now crying bitterly, and the child was screaming in concert.
“What am I ta’en awa’ for? Am I charged as a thief?” she at length sobbed as I led her off.
“Not yet. Just keep your mind easy for a little. It’s only your baby’s shawl as yet that is in trouble. Why are you afraid to say where you got it, and when?”
She could not see that anyone had a right to ask that. She had not stolen it, nor had she bought it, but she declined to say more, till she saw how serious things looked at the Office.
She was carefully searched, with the result that in her pocket was found a half sovereign and some coppers, but none of the stolen articles. Her baby was then inspected, and on it were found a pair of worsted stockings a world too big for its little legs, with the fatal initials “A. M. B.” worked in pink worsted near the top of the leg.
The case now seemed very clear, if a little sad. The woman had been in great want; had been tramping past the place, and under a sudden temptation had taken the clothes and pawned some of them. I fully expected her to admit the robbery, and plead the circumstances in piteous tones in extenuation, but nothing of the kind. She roused out of her torpor of grief, and in the most indignant tones made a statement which seemed to us to have not even the merit of ingenuity. She had been sleeping in the open air on the outskirts of the city, with her child closely clasped in her arms, “to keep it frae the caul’,” as it was but thinly clad, when she was roused by a hand shaking her violently. The disturber of her half-frozen torpor was a woman dressed like a servant girl in a common print wrapper, and carrying a big bundle. The strange woman shook her till certain that she was awake, and then rebuked her strongly for exposing herself and her child when shelter was within her reach.
“I tellt her I was a stranger, and didna ken where the Night Asylum was, and that I hadna a penny in the world,” continued our prisoner. “Then she took my bairn in her arms, and kissed it and cuddled it to make it warm, and then she took the shawl off her shouthers—that shawl that you’re makin’ sic a wark aboot—and wrapped it roon’ my wean, an’ brocht a pair o’ stockin’s oot o’ her bundle for it, an’ tellt me to keep them. Then she gie’d me a shillin’, an’ tellt me to gang to a lodging in the Grassmarket, and then said she was in a hurry or she wad have ta’en me there hersel’, and gaed awa’.”
And the half-sovereign found in her possession? How did she account for that? How did it happen that when the mysterious woman with the bundle spoke to her she had not a penny, and now she had a half-sovereign?