“Oh, a gentleman gied me that,” she answered, quite promptly. “I was sittin’ restin’ on a step, when I got in the toon a bit—for I didna think it worth while to gang to the lodging as it was after six o’clock—when a gentleman cam’ up to me and asked me hoo far I had come, and aboot my man and my wean, and then he put his hand in his pooch, and brought oot a half-sovereign and put it in my hands. I thought it was a sixpence, for it was dark at the time, and maybe he thought that too. He looked a wee touched wi’ drink—drunk, ye ken—and I was gled when he gaed awa’.”
Clumsy, clumsy! a clumsy story in the extreme. We tried to convince her of that, and by cross-examining her to trip her up, but she stuck to her statements with amazing firmness, and even volunteered fresh details in confirmation. Finding her obdurate, we gave her up in despair, and she was taken away and locked up in a state of frenzy which looked wonderfully real, and therefore piteous enough.
The only wonder to us now was where the rest of the stolen clothes had been hidden. Allowing for the woman spending some money in the forenoon, she might be reasonably expected to have about ten shillings left of the fourteen given by the pawnbroker, but that disposal accounted for only a part of the stolen things. Could she have had any assistant who would share the plunder? I was anxious to settle that question. I brought in the pawnbroker’s son to see her, and he identified her in a haphazard fashion as the woman who pawned the things, but then, as I have recorded, he was a blockhead, and his evidence had no great value. I then thought of visiting the Infirmary to see if she had a husband there, and learn if the name she had given—Ellen Hunter—was real or assumed. A little to my surprise I found the husband there, Archibald Hunter by name, as the card at the head of his bed testified; and the moment that a hint of the truth was given him he was so terribly excited and agitated that he would almost have been out of the place there and then had he been allowed.
“Hoo can you blame a starving woman with a wean at her breast?” was his wild inquiry. “Can ye no show mercy where it’s no a real thief, but ane forced to it?”
“I daresay she would be shown mercy if she would admit the truth, and declare that she was driven to the act,” I replied, “but that she refuses to do. She persists in trying to screen herself and put all the crime upon some imaginary persons who gave her the things. There’s nothing new in that story; every thief has it at his tongue’s end.”
Though we thus disbelieved Ellen Hunter’s story, we made every search for the rest of the plunder, and actually did come upon traces of it. Several articles were recovered, which had been either sold or pawned, in which the linen mark had been removed bodily with a pair of scissors. This was particularly noticeable on the gentlemen’s shirts, which had been marked on a little tab at the bottom of the breast. In the case of one recovered, this tab had been cut off and the remaining end neatly stitched down. The consequence was that, though morally certain as to the identity of the shirt, the owner could not swear to it, and it was given back to the buyer, who declared that it had been bought from a man, whose appearance he described, and whom he declared himself able to identify.
Meantime the trial of Ellen Hunter came on at the Sheriff Court, to which she had been remitted. No reasoning or persuasion could induce her to plead guilty, or advance extenuating circumstances by way of lightening her sentence.
“They may do what they like to me, but I winna say I’m guilty when I’m innocent,” was her firm declaration. “If my wean could only speak, it wad tell ye that I’ve spoken naething but the truth.”
The case accordingly went to proof, and was speedily settled to the satisfaction of the jury, who, without leaving the box, found the charge proven. But then there arose in the Court, close to the bar, a pale shadow of a man, who in broken tones stated that he was the husband of the accused, and pleaded for permission to say a few words in mitigation of his wife’s offence. The permission was granted, and, in a husky and broken tone, Hunter proceeded to narrate the circumstances which had brought him to the Infirmary—his wife’s devotion, integrity, and sterling honesty; and the dread fear which had brought her on that long journey on foot, and in the dead of winter, with a child at her breast. The speech was given in the homeliest of language, and without any attempt at grammatical correctness; but there was a power and native eloquence about it which went to every heart. The wife was sobbing loudly at the bar with her infant in her arms, and the judge, visibly affected along with the whole Court, was about to pass a light sentence, when there came an interruption, the very last that any would have looked for in that place.
“I will do it, and I don’t care for you!” was shouted out in a woman’s voice in the audience, and as all looked round a girl known to me as “Sally the Snowdropper,” struggled up from one of the seats in spite of the efforts of a man at her side to detain her. Then there was a brief struggle and altercation, and the man rising with her dealt the poor girl a terrific blow in the eyes. The whole Court was aghast, and the brute was speedily collared and brought forward in custody. Then the prisoner at the bar started up with a joyful scream, and pointing to Sally, cried out—