Time, night; a splash; she ran to the lock and
found the prisoner in the water.

I flashed my gaze from her to him. So that was
the charge, self-murder. He stood there dazed and
unheeding, his bonny brown hair rumpled down his
forehead, his face haggard and care-worn and boyish
still.

"Yes, sir," the lock-keeper s wife was saying.
"As fast as I pulled to get im out, e crawled back.
Then I called for elp, and some workmen appened
along, and we got im out and turned im over to
the constable."

The magistrate complimented the woman on her
muscular powers, and the courtroom laughed; but
all I could see was a boy on the threshold of life,
passionately crawling to muddy death, and there
was no laughter in it.

A man was now in the witness-box, testifying to
the boy s good character and giving extenuating
evidence. He was the boy s foreman, or had been.
Alfred was a good boy, but he had had lots of
trouble at home, money matters. And then his
mother was sick. He was given to worrying, and
he worried over it till he laid himself out and
wasn t fit for work. He (the foreman), for the
sake of his own reputation, the boy s work being
bad, had been forced to ask him to resign.

"Anything to say ? " the magistrate demanded
abruptly.

[[265]]

p264 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p265w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p266

v?