There was a case then on hand, one of those sad cases which police-courts see so many of. A woman had been brought up to be tried for that sin which, more than any other, blights homes, ruins children, spreads destruction through the land, sends souls to hell,—she was accused of drunkenness and disorderly conduct.
She stood in the prisoner’s dock with a sullen, bleared, indifferent face, her half-dead, listless eyes gazing vacantly at the magistrate. She had appeared in that court charged with the same offence forty times.
Mr Vernon, the gentleman before whom she was accused, asked her what she had to say for herself. Even at this question the indifferent countenance never woke into life.
“Nothing,” she answered listlessly, for the love of strong drink had killed all other love in that woman’s breast. She hardly listened as Mr Vernon addressed her in a few solemn but kindly words, and when her sentence—a month at Wandsworth with hard labour—was pronounced, received it with the same stoical indifference.
Then two boys were led in by the jailor, and constable 21 B. appeared as the first witness against them. As he passed into his place in the witnesses’ box he gave the little woman in black a nudge and an intelligent look, which would have told her, even if she had not known it before, that one of the Derby robbery cases had come on. Through her thick veil she looked at the two lads; one hung down his face, but the other gazed about him, apparently untroubled and unashamed. This hardened expression on the elder boy’s face seemed to cause her much pain, she turned her head away, and some tears fell on her hands. And yet, could she but have seen into their hearts, she would have perceived something which would have kindled a little hope in her soul.
Each boy, standing in this dreadful position, thought of his mother.
Dick, with that sea of faces about him, with the eyes of the judge fixed on him, felt that the memory of his mother was the hardest thing of all to bear, for the conscience of the child who had stood out against temptation for so long was by no means yet hardened, and though he knew nothing of God, his mother’s memory stood in the place of God to him. So the most ignorant among us have a light to guide us. Let us be thankful if it is a star so bright as that of mother’s love. For, strange to say, the older lad, the boy who stood in the dock with that brazen, unabashed face, the clever, accomplished London thief, who though not unknown to the police, had hitherto by his skill and cunning almost always escaped the hands of justice, he too, down deep in his heart of hearts, thought of his mother; he took one quick, furtive glance around as if to look for her, then, apparently relieved, folded his arms and fixed his bold eyes on Mr Vernon. Then the trial, in the usual form in which such trials are conducted in police-courts, went on. The prisoners’ names and ages were first ascertained.
“William Jenks, aged fourteen; Richard Darrell, aged ten,” sounding distinctly in the small room.
Then Police Constable 21 B. identified the boys as the same whom he had caught in the act of removing a gold watch and purse from a gentleman’s pocket in the midst of the crowds who thronged the streets on Tuesday. He described very accurately the whole proceedings, stating how and why his suspicions had been aroused—how he had dodged the boys for some little time, had observed them whispering together, had seen Dick buy his false nose and sixpenny fiddle, had overheard a few words which gave him a further clue to some mischief, had seen them separate, had closely noticed Dick’s antics, had watched the violent push he gave the old gentleman, and finally had laid his hand on Jenks as he drew forth the watch and purse from his victim’s pocket.
His statements, delivered slowly and impressively, were taken down by a clerk of the court, and then read over to him, and signed as quite correct; then the constable retiring, the old gentleman who had been the victim of the robbery appeared in the witness-box.