'Want me, do you?' cried Sam, putting as easy a face as he could upon the matter. 'What do you want me for? To give evidence?'
'You know. It's about that row last night. I wonder you hadn't better regard for your liberty than to get into it.'
'Why, you never was such a fool as to put yourself into that!' exclaimed Mrs. Shuck, in her surprise. 'What could have possessed you?'
'I!' retorted Sam; 'I don't know anything about the row, except what I've heard. I was a good mile off from the spot when it took place.'
'All very well if you can convince the magistrates of that,' said the officer. 'Here's the warrant against you, and I must take you upon it.'
'I won't go,' said Sam, showing fight. 'I wasn't nigh the place, I say.'
The officer was peremptory—officers generally are so in these cases—and Sam was very foolish to resist. But that he was scared out of his senses, he would probably not have resisted. It only made matters worse; and the result was that he had the handcuffs clapped on. Fancy Samuel Shuck, Esquire, in his crimson necktie with the lace ends, and the peg-tops, being thus escorted through Daffodil's Delight, himself and his hands prisoners, and a tail the length of the street streaming after him! You could not have got into the police-court. Every avenue, every inch of ground was occupied; for the men, both Unionists and non-Unionists, were greatly excited, and came flocking in crowds to hear the proceedings. The five men were placed at the bar—Shuck, Bennet, Cheek, Ryan, and Strood: and Abel White and his bandaged head appeared against them. The man gave his evidence. How he and others—but himself, he thought, more particularly—had been met by a mob the previous night, upon leaving work, a knot of the Society's men, who had first threatened and then beaten him.
'Can you tell what their motive was for doing this?' asked the magistrate.
'Yes, sir,' was the answer of White. 'It was because I went back to work. I held out as long as I could, in obedience to the Trades' Union; but I began to think I was in error, and that I ought to return to work; which I did, a week or two ago. Since then, they have never let me alone. They have talked to me, and threatened me, and persuaded me; but I would not listen: and last night they attacked me.'
'What were the threats they used last night?'