“You’ll see who we are directly,” said Jack, jumping down, and giving his horse to the ration-carrier. “I wish to search your cart, that’s all. I believe you’ve been selling spirits to my men. I’m a magistrate.”
“What d’yer mean, then, by coming here on the bounce?” said the man, placing himself doggedly between Jack and the cart. “You ain’t got a warrant, and I’ll see you far enough before you touches a thing in that there cart. Why, my wife’s asleep there.”
“No she ain’t,” said a shrill voice, as a woman disengaged herself from the canvas, “but you don’t touch anything for all that. We’ve our licence, ain’t we, Bill, and what’s the use of paying money to Government if pore people can’t be purtected?”
“Perhaps you’re not aware,” said M‘Nab, with cool accuracy, “that by the 19th and 20th sections of the 13th Victoria, No. 36, any magistrate or constable, on suspicion of spirits in unlawful quantities being carried for the purpose of sale, can search such hawker’s cart and take possession of the spirits.”
“That’s the law,” said Jack, “and we are going to search your cart; so stand aside, you cowardly scoundrel, making your ill-gotten profits out of the wages of a lot of poor fellows who have worked hard for them. Do you see this?” Here Jack suddenly produced his revolver, and giving the fellow a shove, which sent him staggering against a fallen tree, took possession of the vehicle, all unheeding the shrill tones and anything but choice language of the female delinquent.
“Ay!” said M‘Nab, as he leaped actively into the cart, and turned over packages of moleskin and bundles of boots, bars of soap, and strings of dried apples, “this is all right and square; if you had only kept to a fair trade nobody could take ye. What’s under these blankets?”
Lifting a pile of loosely-spread blankets, be suddenly raised a shout of triumph.
“So this was where the lady was sleeping, is it? Pity for you, my man, she didn’t stay there; we should have been too polite to raise her. The murder is out.” Here he drummed with his hand upon a new kind of instrument—a ten-gallon keg, half empty too. “What a lot the ruffian must have sold.”
“What is your name?” asked Jack, blandly.
“William Smith,” answered the fellow, gruffly.