“There’s your pile of gold,” he said, tossing Dickie’s talisman over to Jess. “I hope you like it.”
Jess lifted the trinket and stared at it with her face slowly becoming ghastly, and her heart freezing within her.
“I’ve seen that before!” she slowly whispered, as the men stared at her in awe-stricken wonder and silence. “It was his when he was taken from me. Perhaps it is a mistake—perhaps I have not killed my own bairn. Read! read! you that can read—read what is on that brass plate on the lid of the box.”
Jockey glanced at the plate, and sprang to his feet in horror.
“God alive! it’s there,” was all he could articulate.
“What? what? tell me what?” moaned Jess, beginning to clutch at her breast with her hands, and to writhe about like one grown mad.
“RICHARD MURRAY,
Licensed Hawker.”
was the awe-stricken response, and only the half of it was heard. Shriek upon shriek went pealing through that rookery. Nothing could check her outcry; she screamed at every one; tore at them like a tiger; denounced them with every gasp and mad exclamation, and finally drew to the spot the police by struggling to throw her two accomplices out at the window. They were all marched off to the Central—with the reset as a make-weight, and Jess was there put in a padded cell and watched the long night through, or she would never have seen the light of another day. The first thing that helped to soothe her was the news that Dickie was not killed, and though there was concussion of the brain, he was likely to recover. When he did recover he was allowed to visit her in prison, and put his arms through the bars and clasp her close and hear her say that she was done for ever with a life of crime.
Jess and her companions were tried shortly after, when she, on account of the peculiar circumstances of the case, and the tearful appeal to the jury by the chief witness—Dickie—got the mild sentence of two years’ imprisonment. Jockey and Lynch got ten each, as by a fiction of the law Jess was supposed to have acted under their influence.
When Jess was released, Dickie waited for her, and they vanished together.