The policeman seated himself with alacrity. The stew which Mrs. Gammer placed before him consisted of a mixture of barley, onions and some white meat. He ate a hearty supper, and when he stood up he drew his hands across his mouth.
"Thank you kindly," he said. "I must be off now, and see where that cock has gone to."
Then it was that Mrs. Gammer gave a short and derisive laugh. She began to pile up the empty plates and to put the spoons and forks in the basin by the sink.
"If you go a-chasing of that cock until you are black and blue in the face," she said, "you'll never find him. And the reason why, is that you have just helped to eat him up."
"I have eat him up!" he gasped.
"Aye," responded Mrs. Gammer, with brevity. "I made him into soup!"
The policeman remained open-mouthed, staring at the impenitent widow.
"You'd no business ever to do such a thing," he said. "The cock belonged to the Law."
"I care nowt for your Law," retorted Mrs. Gammer. "Anyway you've helped to eat him!"
A vague sense of cannibalism was haunting the policeman's mind; he felt almost as dismayed as if he had made a hearty supper off the magistrate's clerk himself.