"But I have been begging," I persisted.
"If you want me to arrest you, break a window," said the man. "Then I'll take you before a bailie and he'll put you into a reformatory, where they'll give you a jail-bird's education. You'll come out worse than you went in, and it's ten to one in favour of your life ending with a hempen cravat round your neck."
The man put his hand in his pocket and took out a sixpence, which he handed to me.
"Run away now and get something to eat," he shouted in an angry voice, and I hurried away hugging the silver coin in my hand. That night I got twopence more, and fed well for the first time in a whole week.
I met the policeman once again in later years. He was a Socialist, and happened to have the unhealthy job of protecting blacklegs from a crowd of strikers when I met him for the second time. While pretending to keep the strikers back he was urging them to rush by him and set upon the blacklegs—the men who had not the backbone to fight for justice and right. Not being, as a Socialist, a believer in charity, he feigned to be annoyed when I reminded him of his generous action of years before.
CHAPTER XV MOLESKIN JOE
"Soft words may win a woman's love, or soothe a maiden's fears.
But hungry stomachs heed them not—the belly hasn't ears."