“‘Put your hands up above your head,’ says she.
“‘I looked at the revolver,’ said Joe, telling me; ‘it was about eighteen inches off my nose; and then I looked at the gal. There’s lots of ’em will threaten to blow your brains out for you, but you’ve only got to look at ’em to know they won’t.
“‘They are thinking of the coroner’s inquest, and wondering how the judge will sum up. She met my eyes, and I held up my hands. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have been here.
“‘Now you go in front,’ says she to Joe, and he went. She laid her candle down in the hall and unbolted the front door.
“‘What are you going to do?’ says Joe, ‘call the police? Because if so, my dear, I’ll take my chance of that revolver being loaded and of your pulling the trigger in time. It will be a more dignified ending.’
“‘No,’ says she, ‘I had a brother that got seven years for forgery. I don’t want to think of another face like his when he came out. I’m going to see you outside my master’s house, and that’s all I care about.’
“She went down the garden-path with him, and opened the gate.
“‘You turn round,’ says she, ‘before you reach the bottom of the lane and I give the alarm.’ And Joe went straight, and didn’t look behind him.
“Well, it was a rum beginning to a courtship, but the end was rummer. The girl
was willing to marry him if he would turn honest. Joe wanted to turn honest, but didn’t know how.