A shriek—appalling enough to reach my ears above, and bring me rushing down—was Pretty Polly’s only answer.
Her husband, however, laid a hand on Brettle’s shoulder—
“How dare you, sir? Who are you?”
“Her husband!” shouted the infuriated house-breaker; and at the same moment there was the flash of a knife and an agonising cry from the wounded woman, and a rush upon the assailant from all sides. I was among the number, and Brettle recognised me with a quiet nod.
“I’m not going to struggle or bolt,” he quietly observed, as Pretty Polly was lifted from the pavement and borne insensible into the hotel, with the blood gushing from a deep wound in her breast. “I’m satisfied now. I have paid her off. I’ve taken it out of her, and she was the only woman I ever loved!”
Bob’s grief, however, seemed quiet and tame compared with that of Polly’s second husband, upon whom the revelation came with a shock which nearly proved fatal. Mr Harper quietly slipped away out of Edinburgh without once asking to look on the face of the woman who had deceived him. Brettle went to prison, of course, and Pretty Polly, as soon as she could be moved, was sent to the Infirmary. She lingered long, but did not die. In about six months she was pronounced able to leave the hospital. She appeared as witness against Brettle, and helped to fix a year’s imprisonment on him, and then she drifted out to a life of hardship and degradation which ended her before Brettle’s sentence had expired. Brettle heard the news unmoved when he was liberated, and then disappeared. I have never heard of him since.
McSWEENY AND THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.
The things were missed from one of the rooms in a house in George Square not many hours after the sweeps had been there, and of course suspicion at once fell upon these men. Who ever trusted a chimney-sweep the length of his own nose? The blackness of their faces is supposed to be nothing to that of their souls, and what was the old and popular portrait of the devil but a chimney-sweep with a tail tacked on? There were three articles taken—a gold bracelet, a very valuable necklet and pendant, and one gold ear-ring.
The leaving behind of one of the ear-rings gave the robbery an odd look, for the whole of the things had been taken from the drawer or a dressing-table, and the ear-ring left was the first article which caught the eye of the owner when she opened the drawer.
Either the thief had wanted only one ear-ring, or had been scared in grasping at the plunder, and so left the odd trinket. The drawer had been locked, but the key had been left in the lock, and must have been made use of by the thief both to open and refasten that receptacle. Mrs Nolten, the lady of the house, was the first to make the discovery, and, not knowing that the sweeps had been in the house, fancied that one of the servants might have taken the use of the jewels.