THE TORN TARTAN SHAWL.A servant in a house at the outskirts of the city had been tempted by the clear air and dry frost to leave a whole “washing” of things out over night. She wanted them to get a nip of the frost, she said, but instead they got a nip of another kind. The girl woke at four o’clock in the morning and happened to look out at the green, when the clothes were there all right. She rose again at six, and, looking out, had to rub her eyes to make sure that she was not still in bed and dreaming. Nearly the whole of the things were gone.Satisfied that she was awake, she first asked herself if some kind “brownie” had taken the brunt of the morning’s work off her hands by taking down and folding up the things; but then, remembering that these useful fairies had all vanished before the steam engine and electric telegraph, she ran out of the house, fearing theft and hopeful of catching some of the thieves. No one was visible. The very best of the clothes were gone; the clothes pegs, all scattered over the ground, the empty ropes, and a few articles of trifling value alone being left to tell of the robbery. At least so the girl thought as she ran into the house and roused all within it with the news. Of course the servant got the blame, and received notice of dismissal at once, although, as she afterwards informed me, it had been by her mistress’s express orders that the things had been left out. The lady denied that—it is convenient at times to have a bad memory—and so the disgrace rested on the girl’s shoulders. Had the lady, instead of indulging in recrimination and wrangling, sent word promptly to us, the whole case might have assumed a very different aspect, as we could thus have sent word to most of the pawnbrokers by their hour of opening. A good haul had been made, including some gentlemen’s shirts of fine linen, the best of the lady’s underclothing, and some twenty or thirty pairs of worsted stockings, of all sizes and sorts, as there was a big family. The most of the linen was marked with the letters “A. M. B.,” and some of the stockings had the same initials worked into them with pink worsted near the top of the leg.When the news reached us I went out to see the place and get a list of the stolen articles. Six valuable hours had been lost, and I frankly told the lady that she need scarcely hope to recover all she had lost, and all through that stupid delay. The green had been left exactly as the servant had found it when she rushed out in the morning—the clothes pegs littered the ground; and while I glanced over the approaches to the green, the girl began to pick up these pegs and put them into a cotton bag which hung about half-way up one of the clothes poles. This bag was suspended from a nail at a height convenient for the hand, and at the head of the nail there fluttered a little pennon, which had never been meant for that queer flag-staff. It was a shred of bright coloured tartan, which appeared to have been rent out of some one’s shawl, as the owner hurriedly switched past.“You’ve been damaging your shawl, Maggie,” I remarked to the servant girl, who was busy laying off to me her wrongs and grievances, and the deplorable failings of mistresses in general.“It’s no mine—I dinna wear shawls,” said Maggie shortly as she continued her task. Her head was full of her troubles—mine was far away from what she was most anxious to speak of.I took down the shred of tartan. It began narrow at the nail head which had caught it, and got gradually broader, till it ended, liked a filled-up A, in a fringe of the same colours. I spread the piece out along my palm, and then called to Maggie.“Look here, now, and tell me if any one about the house, or living near, wears a shawl of that pattern?”Maggie looked at the scrap of tartan, and declared most emphatically that no one in the household did wear such a shawl, and added with a smile that none of her acquaintances would be seen in such a thing—the colours being about the brightest and “loudest” that could be made for money. The same thought had already struck me, and my thoughts instinctively wandered in the direction of some of my own “bairns.” The tartan was of just such a pattern as one may see on scores of shoulders about the Cowgate on a Sunday afternoon. I seemed to see the whole shawl in that shred—a little square thing, folded across, and just big enough to cover the shoulders. By mentally picturing the shawl on a woman’s shoulders, and gauging her height by that treacherous nail, I could guess her to be a person rather under than above medium height, and immediately began to ask myself which of my “bairns” given to “snow-dropping” had been lately displaying such a grand shawl. Useless! their name is legion. They nearly all delight in these things, and a dozen at least might wear tartan of the identical colours of the shred in my hand. I began to think that I should make little of my discovery. However, I placed the scrap of tartan carefully between the leaves of my pocket-book, completed my list as far as I could at the house, and left. A bundle of the stolen things was in the Office before me. They had been offered at a pawnbroker’s shortly after the opening hour, and pledged for fourteen shillings. The boy who had taken in the things and paid over the money was ablockhead. He knew that the pledger was a woman, but could not describe her appearance. He did not think she was very old, and he did not think she was very young. Did she wear a tartan shawl? Yes, he thought so; but then he changed his mind, and thought that she hadn’t any shawl. No one could make anything of such a fool, and I strongly recommended the pawnbroker, for his own safety, to get rid of such a stupid assistant, to which the man replied that he would have been happy to do so, had the lad not been his own son. I grinned over my mistake, the pawnbroker helping me liberally, and then left. I then took a long stroll through the likeliest quarters, with a keen eye to every tartan shawl. Twice in the course of that walk did I start joyfully at sight of a shoulder shawl of the identical pattern, but in both cases the owners were decent, hard-working folks, and not a trace of a rent or patch to be found in either of the articles. With my eyes thus grown familiar in the search, I was wearily trudging homewards late in the afternoon with the shawl nearly gone from my thoughts, when on the South Bridge, near the head of Infirmary Street, I came up to a wretchedly-clad woman bearing in her arms a child, round which was wrapped a gaudy and apparently new shawl of the exact pattern I sought. Now, at the first glimpse of this shawl I decided that it was not the one I sought, which I imagined would scarcely be so bright and fresh-looking; but it was the incongruity of that bright shawl, allied to such rags and poverty, which made me slacken my pace, and almost instinctively follow the owner of the child.The woman was not a professional thief—a glance at her somewhat pinched features told me that—yet her poverty was so apparent that I felt by no means certain that she would not have committed a robbery under such pressure. Poverty and a hungry bairn—where is the mother who could resist the pleadings of these? Then the shawl was the only fresh thing about the queer pair. The mother’s clothes were meagre and shabby in the extreme; her boots were mere apologies for foot coverings, and her bonnet only fit for a scarecrow, and the clothing of the child equally poor. They had also a worn and travel-stained look, and stood out prominently among the ordinary passengers as dusty tramps always do when they enter a city. They were strangers, they were poor, and the child wore a tartan shawl of the exact pattern I sought—it could do no harm to follow them, which I did with a sigh for the dinner I had hoped so soon to be consuming.My interesting pair turned down Infirmary Street, and stopped at the gate of that institution—became, indeed, part of a crowd already gathering there—visitors waiting the hour of admittance to see friends. Five o’clock was the hour, and it lacked nearly ten minutes of the time. Most of these visitors were of the poorest, and they varied the monotony of the waiting by exchanging experiences and expressions of sympathy. My tramp joined in the conversation, and I soon learned from her tongue that she came from the West. The Glasgow brogue was strong in her tongue, but not strong enough, and I soon heard her say that she had come from Airdrie, which accounted for the slight difference in the accent. She was the wife of a pit labourer—an occupation considered far beneath that of a collier, who ranks as a skilled workman; and her husband in working among the hutches had got hurt in some way, and been laid up at home till their little house was almost stripped of furniture. Then the disabled man had gone to Glasgow for advice; and afterwards hearing of the great skill of the Edinburgh professors, he had scraped together enough to bring him through to this Infirmary, into which he was admitted as an indoor patient. He did not write very hopefully of recovery; and at length the wife, reduced to her last penny, had resolved to come through and see him with her own eyes.“I’m feared that he’s waur than he says, and maybe winna get better,” she said, shedding tears freely as she spoke. “I’ve walkit every fit o’ the road, thinking I saw a coffin at the end o’ the way.”Cheering words and homely sympathy were showered upon her without stint, most of those present seeming to find their own troubles light beside what that slight woman had endured.“Is that your only bairn?” one asked, to which the motherreplied—“Yes, and I thocht we wad baith a’ been frozen to death on the road. It was awfu’ caul’ last nicht; I never thocht we’d see morning.”“What? did ye sleep in the open air?” cried an old woman, holding up her hands.“I hadna a penny to pay a lodging; and I was tired and dune, and didna like to gang to a poorhouse,” was the choking answer.The old Irishwoman wiped her own eyes, and then I saw her slowly fumble in her own pocket and produce twopence, which she tried to slip into the hand of the baby.“Oh, no, no! No, thank ye,” cried the mother, in strong protest, and flushing painfully at the proffered help so thinly disguised. “I’m no needing that now; I’ve got money since then. There’s some kind folk in the world yet, and I’ve as muckle as take me to my mither’s after I see how my man is.”I did not hear the rest of her speech, for in putting back the proffered coppers she had thrown up the corner of the tartan shawl—turned it back with a whisk right under my eyes, and there I saw a wedge-shaped rent, as if a piece had been neatly torn out of the pattern near the edge. I was in a manner fascinated and horrified by the discovery, and stood staring at the torn shawl in a manner that must have looked idiotic in the extreme.“That’s a bonnie shawl you’ve got on your bairn,” I at length managed to say, by way of opening up a conversation.“The bairn’s bonnier than the shawl,” one woman hastened to add, “but that’s aye a man’s way o’ looking at things. The brightest colours catch his e’e first.”“Have you had it long?” I continued to the mother.“He’ll be eleven months next week,” she answered, with a look of pride.“I don’t mean the bairn—the shawl,” I said in correction.“Oh, no, not long,” she answered frankly; and then she appeared to catch herself up, and said no more.“You’ve torn it a little there,” I continued. “The bit seems to be taken clean out.”“Yes, I noticed that,” she quietly answered. She did not seem to like me or my remarks—just when she was becoming so interesting to me, too!“Would you mind turning back the corner of the shawl again for a moment—just to oblige me?” I continued, in no ways abashed by her coldness.She gave me a look as if wondering at my impudence, and then threw back the corner of the shawl over the baby’s shoulder as I had desired. Her look of contempt was beginning to be reflected in the faces around her, but I heeded the looks no more than if they had been the glassy stares of so many wax figures. I took out my pocket-book, turned open the leaves, and produced the shred of tartan. Then I spread the torn part of the shawl flat on the baby’s shoulder, placed the wedged-shaped piece I had taken from my pocket-book in the opening, and found that in shape, colour, and size they fitted and corresponded exactly.The woman followed my movements with no great interest. Her indifference might have been assumed or caused by the door being about to be opened.“Where were you this morning between four and six o’clock?” I demanded, when I had satisfied myself that I had at last got the right shawl.“That’s nothing to you,” she indignantly answered, with a slight flash of annoyance.“It is everything; and if you won’t answer it here, you must go with me up to the Police Office and refresh your memory there.”The woman turned right round and looked me full in the face, more in astonishment than alarm. Then some one whispered toher—“It’s McGovan, the detective,” with a significant nudge on the arm, and in a moment she became terribly agitated.“Do you think I stole it?” she chokingly exclaimed.“No, not exactly.”“Then what for do you want me to gang to the Office?”“That is not for me to explain, but go you must.”“I winna! I’ve trampit a’ this way to see my puir man, and I maun see him.”I brought out my handcuffs, whereupon the assembled crowd began to groan and hoot and abuse me to their hearts’ content. Would I drag a poor creature like that away to jail at such a moment, before she could even see her invalid husband? I replied that I would not drag her if she was inclined to walk. Then names were showered upon me enough to have stocked a slang dictionary. I pointed out to the crowd that the door was now open, and that through it was their way, while ours was in quite a different direction; and at length, with the aid of a policeman who chanced to pass the head of the street, I convinced them that I was right. The woman was now crying bitterly, and the child was screaming in concert.“What am I ta’en awa’ for? Am I charged as a thief?” she at length sobbed as I led her off.“Not yet. Just keep your mind easy for a little. It’s only your baby’s shawl as yet that is in trouble. Why are you afraid to say where you got it, and when?”She could not see that anyone had a right to ask that. She had not stolen it, nor had she bought it, but she declined to say more, till she saw how serious things looked at the Office.She was carefully searched, with the result that in her pocket was found a half sovereign and some coppers, but none of the stolen articles. Her baby was then inspected, and on it were found a pair of worsted stockings a world too big for its little legs, with the fatal initials “A. M. B.” worked in pink worsted near the top of the leg.The case now seemed very clear, if a little sad. The woman had been in great want; had been tramping past the place, and under a sudden temptation had taken the clothes and pawned some of them. I fully expected her to admit the robbery, and plead the circumstances in piteous tones in extenuation, but nothing of the kind. She roused out of her torpor of grief, and in the most indignant tones made a statement which seemed to us to have not even the merit of ingenuity. She had been sleeping in the open air on the outskirts of the city, with her child closely clasped in her arms, “to keep it frae the caul’,” as it was but thinly clad, when she was roused by a hand shaking her violently. The disturber of her half-frozen torpor was a woman dressed like a servant girl in a common print wrapper, and carrying a big bundle. The strange woman shook her till certain that she was awake, and then rebuked her strongly for exposing herself and her child when shelter was within her reach.“I tellt her I was a stranger, and didna ken where the Night Asylum was, and that I hadna a penny in the world,” continued our prisoner. “Then she took my bairn in her arms, and kissed it and cuddled it to make it warm, and then she took the shawl off her shouthers—that shawl that you’re makin’ sic a wark aboot—and wrapped it roon’ my wean, an’ brocht a pair o’ stockin’s oot o’ her bundle for it, an’ tellt me to keep them. Then she gie’d me a shillin’, an’ tellt me to gang to a lodging in the Grassmarket, and then said she was in a hurry or she wad have ta’en me there hersel’, and gaed awa’.”And the half-sovereign found in her possession? How did she account for that? How did it happen that when the mysterious woman with the bundle spoke to her she had not a penny, and now she had a half-sovereign?“Oh, a gentleman gied me that,” she answered, quite promptly. “I was sittin’ restin’ on a step, when I got in the toon a bit—for I didna think it worth while to gang to the lodging as it was after six o’clock—when a gentleman cam’ up to me and asked me hoo far I had come, and aboot my man and my wean, and then he put his hand in his pooch, and brought oot a half-sovereign and put it in my hands. I thought it was a sixpence, for it was dark at the time, and maybe he thought that too. He looked a wee touched wi’ drink—drunk, ye ken—and I was gled when he gaed awa’.”Clumsy, clumsy! a clumsy story in the extreme. We tried to convince her of that, and by cross-examining her to trip her up, but she stuck to her statements with amazing firmness, and even volunteered fresh details in confirmation. Finding her obdurate, we gave her up in despair, and she was taken away and locked up in a state of frenzy which looked wonderfully real, and therefore piteous enough.The only wonder to us now was where the rest of the stolen clothes had been hidden. Allowing for the woman spending some money in the forenoon, she might be reasonably expected to have about ten shillings left of the fourteen given by the pawnbroker, but that disposal accounted for only a part of the stolen things. Could she have had any assistant who would share the plunder? I was anxious to settle that question. I brought in the pawnbroker’s son to see her, and he identified her in a haphazard fashion as the woman who pawned the things, but then, as I have recorded, he was ablockhead, and his evidence had no great value. I then thought of visiting the Infirmary to see if she had a husband there, and learn if the name she had given—Ellen Hunter—was real or assumed. A little to my surprise I found the husband there, Archibald Hunter by name, as the card at the head of his bed testified; and the moment that a hint of the truth was given him he was so terribly excited and agitated that he would almost have been out of the place there and then had he been allowed.“Hoo can you blame a starving woman with a wean at her breast?” was his wild inquiry. “Can ye no show mercy where it’s no a real thief, but ane forced to it?”“I daresay she would be shown mercy if she would admit the truth, and declare that she was driven to the act,” I replied, “but that she refuses to do. She persists in trying to screen herself and put all the crime upon some imaginary persons who gave her the things. There’s nothing new in that story; every thief has it at his tongue’s end.”Though we thus disbelieved Ellen Hunter’s story, we made every search for the rest of the plunder, and actually did come upon traces of it. Several articles were recovered, which had been either sold or pawned, in which the linen mark had been removed bodily with a pair of scissors. This was particularly noticeable on the gentlemen’s shirts, which had been marked on a little tab at the bottom of the breast. In the case of one recovered, this tab had been cut off and the remaining end neatly stitched down. The consequence was that, though morally certain as to the identity of the shirt, the owner could not swear to it, and it was given back to the buyer, who declared that it had been bought from a man, whose appearance he described, and whom he declared himself able to identify.Meantime the trial of Ellen Hunter came on at the Sheriff Court, to which she had been remitted. No reasoning or persuasion could induce her to plead guilty, or advance extenuating circumstances by way of lightening her sentence.“They may do what they like to me, but I winna say I’m guilty when I’m innocent,” was her firm declaration. “If my wean could only speak, it wad tell ye that I’ve spoken naething but the truth.”The case accordingly went to proof, and was speedily settled to the satisfaction of the jury, who, without leaving the box, found the charge proven. But then there arose in the Court, close to the bar, a pale shadow of a man, who in broken tones stated that he was the husband of the accused, and pleaded for permission to say a few words in mitigation of his wife’s offence. The permission was granted, and, in a husky and broken tone, Hunter proceeded to narrate the circumstances which had brought him to the Infirmary—his wife’s devotion, integrity, and sterling honesty; and the dread fear which had brought her on that long journey on foot, and in the dead of winter, with a child at her breast. The speech was given in the homeliest of language, and without any attempt at grammatical correctness; but there was a power and native eloquence about it which went to every heart. The wife was sobbing loudly at the bar with her infant in her arms, and the judge, visibly affected along with the whole Court, was about to pass a light sentence, when there came an interruption, the very last that any would have looked for in that place.“I will do it, and I don’t care for you!” was shouted out in a woman’s voice in the audience, and as all looked round a girl known to me as “Sally the Snowdropper,” struggled up from one of the seats in spite of the efforts of a man at her side to detain her. Then there was a brief struggle and altercation, and the man rising with her dealt the poor girl a terrific blow in the eyes. The whole Court was aghast, and the brute was speedily collared and brought forward in custody. Then the prisoner at the bar started up with a joyful scream, and pointing to Sally, criedout—“That’s the woman! that’s the kind lassie that gied me the shilling and wrappit her shawl roon’ my wean. Ask her and she’ll tell ye.”Sally came forward, staunching the blood flowing from her nose, and looking pale with excitement, but firm and self-reliant withal.“The woman is innocent as the child in her arms,” said Sally, as soon as she could speak. “A month or two in quod is nothing to me, but it’s hard to send an honest man’s wife there for nothing. I can’t stand that. I never thought it would come to this, or I would have spoken out sooner. Istole the things—every one of them—and I met her and gave her the shawl I had on, as her child was nearly dead with cold. I never knew the shawl was torn, or likely to be traced, or I’d never have given it. I gave her the stockings too—the first pair that came to hand in the bundle, and put them on her bairn with my own hands. The mother was half-frozen in her sleep, and at first I thought they were both dead. Just let her go, and shove me in her place, and the thing will be squared.”“She’s mad!—she’s drunk, and doesn’t know what she’s saying,” shouted the man who had assaulted her; but he was promptly removed and locked up, the immediate result of which was that he was discovered to be wearing a gentleman’s white shirt resembling one of those stolen, and having the tab cut away from the breast, and stitched down exactly like the one already described.Sally very speedily proved that she was neither mad nor drunk by revealing where all the stolen things had been disposed of, and stating that the tabs of the white shirts had been doctored by her own hands. Her companion was next day identified as the man who had sold one of the shirts, and the case was complete.Ellen Hunter, half frenzied with delight, was set at liberty and taken into her husband’s arms; and when our case was complete, Sally, instead of appearing as prisoner, was taken as a witness, and so moved every one that the Sheriff, before allowing her to be dismissed, thought fit to address to her a few words of strong commendation for her generous spirit and truly noble nature, at the same time advising her, in a kind and feeling manner, to try to get out of the debasing life for which she was so ill-suited. In vain! he might have saved his breath. Sally was too far gone to mend her ways; and, while her companion went to prison, she went drifting on to the death and destruction which speedily became her lot. But she left one green spot on her memory. How many such can each of us boast?
A servant in a house at the outskirts of the city had been tempted by the clear air and dry frost to leave a whole “washing” of things out over night. She wanted them to get a nip of the frost, she said, but instead they got a nip of another kind. The girl woke at four o’clock in the morning and happened to look out at the green, when the clothes were there all right. She rose again at six, and, looking out, had to rub her eyes to make sure that she was not still in bed and dreaming. Nearly the whole of the things were gone.
Satisfied that she was awake, she first asked herself if some kind “brownie” had taken the brunt of the morning’s work off her hands by taking down and folding up the things; but then, remembering that these useful fairies had all vanished before the steam engine and electric telegraph, she ran out of the house, fearing theft and hopeful of catching some of the thieves. No one was visible. The very best of the clothes were gone; the clothes pegs, all scattered over the ground, the empty ropes, and a few articles of trifling value alone being left to tell of the robbery. At least so the girl thought as she ran into the house and roused all within it with the news. Of course the servant got the blame, and received notice of dismissal at once, although, as she afterwards informed me, it had been by her mistress’s express orders that the things had been left out. The lady denied that—it is convenient at times to have a bad memory—and so the disgrace rested on the girl’s shoulders. Had the lady, instead of indulging in recrimination and wrangling, sent word promptly to us, the whole case might have assumed a very different aspect, as we could thus have sent word to most of the pawnbrokers by their hour of opening. A good haul had been made, including some gentlemen’s shirts of fine linen, the best of the lady’s underclothing, and some twenty or thirty pairs of worsted stockings, of all sizes and sorts, as there was a big family. The most of the linen was marked with the letters “A. M. B.,” and some of the stockings had the same initials worked into them with pink worsted near the top of the leg.
When the news reached us I went out to see the place and get a list of the stolen articles. Six valuable hours had been lost, and I frankly told the lady that she need scarcely hope to recover all she had lost, and all through that stupid delay. The green had been left exactly as the servant had found it when she rushed out in the morning—the clothes pegs littered the ground; and while I glanced over the approaches to the green, the girl began to pick up these pegs and put them into a cotton bag which hung about half-way up one of the clothes poles. This bag was suspended from a nail at a height convenient for the hand, and at the head of the nail there fluttered a little pennon, which had never been meant for that queer flag-staff. It was a shred of bright coloured tartan, which appeared to have been rent out of some one’s shawl, as the owner hurriedly switched past.
“You’ve been damaging your shawl, Maggie,” I remarked to the servant girl, who was busy laying off to me her wrongs and grievances, and the deplorable failings of mistresses in general.
“It’s no mine—I dinna wear shawls,” said Maggie shortly as she continued her task. Her head was full of her troubles—mine was far away from what she was most anxious to speak of.
I took down the shred of tartan. It began narrow at the nail head which had caught it, and got gradually broader, till it ended, liked a filled-up A, in a fringe of the same colours. I spread the piece out along my palm, and then called to Maggie.
“Look here, now, and tell me if any one about the house, or living near, wears a shawl of that pattern?”
Maggie looked at the scrap of tartan, and declared most emphatically that no one in the household did wear such a shawl, and added with a smile that none of her acquaintances would be seen in such a thing—the colours being about the brightest and “loudest” that could be made for money. The same thought had already struck me, and my thoughts instinctively wandered in the direction of some of my own “bairns.” The tartan was of just such a pattern as one may see on scores of shoulders about the Cowgate on a Sunday afternoon. I seemed to see the whole shawl in that shred—a little square thing, folded across, and just big enough to cover the shoulders. By mentally picturing the shawl on a woman’s shoulders, and gauging her height by that treacherous nail, I could guess her to be a person rather under than above medium height, and immediately began to ask myself which of my “bairns” given to “snow-dropping” had been lately displaying such a grand shawl. Useless! their name is legion. They nearly all delight in these things, and a dozen at least might wear tartan of the identical colours of the shred in my hand. I began to think that I should make little of my discovery. However, I placed the scrap of tartan carefully between the leaves of my pocket-book, completed my list as far as I could at the house, and left. A bundle of the stolen things was in the Office before me. They had been offered at a pawnbroker’s shortly after the opening hour, and pledged for fourteen shillings. The boy who had taken in the things and paid over the money was ablockhead. He knew that the pledger was a woman, but could not describe her appearance. He did not think she was very old, and he did not think she was very young. Did she wear a tartan shawl? Yes, he thought so; but then he changed his mind, and thought that she hadn’t any shawl. No one could make anything of such a fool, and I strongly recommended the pawnbroker, for his own safety, to get rid of such a stupid assistant, to which the man replied that he would have been happy to do so, had the lad not been his own son. I grinned over my mistake, the pawnbroker helping me liberally, and then left. I then took a long stroll through the likeliest quarters, with a keen eye to every tartan shawl. Twice in the course of that walk did I start joyfully at sight of a shoulder shawl of the identical pattern, but in both cases the owners were decent, hard-working folks, and not a trace of a rent or patch to be found in either of the articles. With my eyes thus grown familiar in the search, I was wearily trudging homewards late in the afternoon with the shawl nearly gone from my thoughts, when on the South Bridge, near the head of Infirmary Street, I came up to a wretchedly-clad woman bearing in her arms a child, round which was wrapped a gaudy and apparently new shawl of the exact pattern I sought. Now, at the first glimpse of this shawl I decided that it was not the one I sought, which I imagined would scarcely be so bright and fresh-looking; but it was the incongruity of that bright shawl, allied to such rags and poverty, which made me slacken my pace, and almost instinctively follow the owner of the child.
The woman was not a professional thief—a glance at her somewhat pinched features told me that—yet her poverty was so apparent that I felt by no means certain that she would not have committed a robbery under such pressure. Poverty and a hungry bairn—where is the mother who could resist the pleadings of these? Then the shawl was the only fresh thing about the queer pair. The mother’s clothes were meagre and shabby in the extreme; her boots were mere apologies for foot coverings, and her bonnet only fit for a scarecrow, and the clothing of the child equally poor. They had also a worn and travel-stained look, and stood out prominently among the ordinary passengers as dusty tramps always do when they enter a city. They were strangers, they were poor, and the child wore a tartan shawl of the exact pattern I sought—it could do no harm to follow them, which I did with a sigh for the dinner I had hoped so soon to be consuming.
My interesting pair turned down Infirmary Street, and stopped at the gate of that institution—became, indeed, part of a crowd already gathering there—visitors waiting the hour of admittance to see friends. Five o’clock was the hour, and it lacked nearly ten minutes of the time. Most of these visitors were of the poorest, and they varied the monotony of the waiting by exchanging experiences and expressions of sympathy. My tramp joined in the conversation, and I soon learned from her tongue that she came from the West. The Glasgow brogue was strong in her tongue, but not strong enough, and I soon heard her say that she had come from Airdrie, which accounted for the slight difference in the accent. She was the wife of a pit labourer—an occupation considered far beneath that of a collier, who ranks as a skilled workman; and her husband in working among the hutches had got hurt in some way, and been laid up at home till their little house was almost stripped of furniture. Then the disabled man had gone to Glasgow for advice; and afterwards hearing of the great skill of the Edinburgh professors, he had scraped together enough to bring him through to this Infirmary, into which he was admitted as an indoor patient. He did not write very hopefully of recovery; and at length the wife, reduced to her last penny, had resolved to come through and see him with her own eyes.
“I’m feared that he’s waur than he says, and maybe winna get better,” she said, shedding tears freely as she spoke. “I’ve walkit every fit o’ the road, thinking I saw a coffin at the end o’ the way.”
Cheering words and homely sympathy were showered upon her without stint, most of those present seeming to find their own troubles light beside what that slight woman had endured.
“Is that your only bairn?” one asked, to which the motherreplied—
“Yes, and I thocht we wad baith a’ been frozen to death on the road. It was awfu’ caul’ last nicht; I never thocht we’d see morning.”
“What? did ye sleep in the open air?” cried an old woman, holding up her hands.
“I hadna a penny to pay a lodging; and I was tired and dune, and didna like to gang to a poorhouse,” was the choking answer.
The old Irishwoman wiped her own eyes, and then I saw her slowly fumble in her own pocket and produce twopence, which she tried to slip into the hand of the baby.
“Oh, no, no! No, thank ye,” cried the mother, in strong protest, and flushing painfully at the proffered help so thinly disguised. “I’m no needing that now; I’ve got money since then. There’s some kind folk in the world yet, and I’ve as muckle as take me to my mither’s after I see how my man is.”
I did not hear the rest of her speech, for in putting back the proffered coppers she had thrown up the corner of the tartan shawl—turned it back with a whisk right under my eyes, and there I saw a wedge-shaped rent, as if a piece had been neatly torn out of the pattern near the edge. I was in a manner fascinated and horrified by the discovery, and stood staring at the torn shawl in a manner that must have looked idiotic in the extreme.
“That’s a bonnie shawl you’ve got on your bairn,” I at length managed to say, by way of opening up a conversation.
“The bairn’s bonnier than the shawl,” one woman hastened to add, “but that’s aye a man’s way o’ looking at things. The brightest colours catch his e’e first.”
“Have you had it long?” I continued to the mother.
“He’ll be eleven months next week,” she answered, with a look of pride.
“I don’t mean the bairn—the shawl,” I said in correction.
“Oh, no, not long,” she answered frankly; and then she appeared to catch herself up, and said no more.
“You’ve torn it a little there,” I continued. “The bit seems to be taken clean out.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” she quietly answered. She did not seem to like me or my remarks—just when she was becoming so interesting to me, too!
“Would you mind turning back the corner of the shawl again for a moment—just to oblige me?” I continued, in no ways abashed by her coldness.
She gave me a look as if wondering at my impudence, and then threw back the corner of the shawl over the baby’s shoulder as I had desired. Her look of contempt was beginning to be reflected in the faces around her, but I heeded the looks no more than if they had been the glassy stares of so many wax figures. I took out my pocket-book, turned open the leaves, and produced the shred of tartan. Then I spread the torn part of the shawl flat on the baby’s shoulder, placed the wedged-shaped piece I had taken from my pocket-book in the opening, and found that in shape, colour, and size they fitted and corresponded exactly.
The woman followed my movements with no great interest. Her indifference might have been assumed or caused by the door being about to be opened.
“Where were you this morning between four and six o’clock?” I demanded, when I had satisfied myself that I had at last got the right shawl.
“That’s nothing to you,” she indignantly answered, with a slight flash of annoyance.
“It is everything; and if you won’t answer it here, you must go with me up to the Police Office and refresh your memory there.”
The woman turned right round and looked me full in the face, more in astonishment than alarm. Then some one whispered toher—
“It’s McGovan, the detective,” with a significant nudge on the arm, and in a moment she became terribly agitated.
“Do you think I stole it?” she chokingly exclaimed.
“No, not exactly.”
“Then what for do you want me to gang to the Office?”
“That is not for me to explain, but go you must.”
“I winna! I’ve trampit a’ this way to see my puir man, and I maun see him.”
I brought out my handcuffs, whereupon the assembled crowd began to groan and hoot and abuse me to their hearts’ content. Would I drag a poor creature like that away to jail at such a moment, before she could even see her invalid husband? I replied that I would not drag her if she was inclined to walk. Then names were showered upon me enough to have stocked a slang dictionary. I pointed out to the crowd that the door was now open, and that through it was their way, while ours was in quite a different direction; and at length, with the aid of a policeman who chanced to pass the head of the street, I convinced them that I was right. The woman was now crying bitterly, and the child was screaming in concert.
“What am I ta’en awa’ for? Am I charged as a thief?” she at length sobbed as I led her off.
“Not yet. Just keep your mind easy for a little. It’s only your baby’s shawl as yet that is in trouble. Why are you afraid to say where you got it, and when?”
She could not see that anyone had a right to ask that. She had not stolen it, nor had she bought it, but she declined to say more, till she saw how serious things looked at the Office.
She was carefully searched, with the result that in her pocket was found a half sovereign and some coppers, but none of the stolen articles. Her baby was then inspected, and on it were found a pair of worsted stockings a world too big for its little legs, with the fatal initials “A. M. B.” worked in pink worsted near the top of the leg.
The case now seemed very clear, if a little sad. The woman had been in great want; had been tramping past the place, and under a sudden temptation had taken the clothes and pawned some of them. I fully expected her to admit the robbery, and plead the circumstances in piteous tones in extenuation, but nothing of the kind. She roused out of her torpor of grief, and in the most indignant tones made a statement which seemed to us to have not even the merit of ingenuity. She had been sleeping in the open air on the outskirts of the city, with her child closely clasped in her arms, “to keep it frae the caul’,” as it was but thinly clad, when she was roused by a hand shaking her violently. The disturber of her half-frozen torpor was a woman dressed like a servant girl in a common print wrapper, and carrying a big bundle. The strange woman shook her till certain that she was awake, and then rebuked her strongly for exposing herself and her child when shelter was within her reach.
“I tellt her I was a stranger, and didna ken where the Night Asylum was, and that I hadna a penny in the world,” continued our prisoner. “Then she took my bairn in her arms, and kissed it and cuddled it to make it warm, and then she took the shawl off her shouthers—that shawl that you’re makin’ sic a wark aboot—and wrapped it roon’ my wean, an’ brocht a pair o’ stockin’s oot o’ her bundle for it, an’ tellt me to keep them. Then she gie’d me a shillin’, an’ tellt me to gang to a lodging in the Grassmarket, and then said she was in a hurry or she wad have ta’en me there hersel’, and gaed awa’.”
And the half-sovereign found in her possession? How did she account for that? How did it happen that when the mysterious woman with the bundle spoke to her she had not a penny, and now she had a half-sovereign?
“Oh, a gentleman gied me that,” she answered, quite promptly. “I was sittin’ restin’ on a step, when I got in the toon a bit—for I didna think it worth while to gang to the lodging as it was after six o’clock—when a gentleman cam’ up to me and asked me hoo far I had come, and aboot my man and my wean, and then he put his hand in his pooch, and brought oot a half-sovereign and put it in my hands. I thought it was a sixpence, for it was dark at the time, and maybe he thought that too. He looked a wee touched wi’ drink—drunk, ye ken—and I was gled when he gaed awa’.”
Clumsy, clumsy! a clumsy story in the extreme. We tried to convince her of that, and by cross-examining her to trip her up, but she stuck to her statements with amazing firmness, and even volunteered fresh details in confirmation. Finding her obdurate, we gave her up in despair, and she was taken away and locked up in a state of frenzy which looked wonderfully real, and therefore piteous enough.
The only wonder to us now was where the rest of the stolen clothes had been hidden. Allowing for the woman spending some money in the forenoon, she might be reasonably expected to have about ten shillings left of the fourteen given by the pawnbroker, but that disposal accounted for only a part of the stolen things. Could she have had any assistant who would share the plunder? I was anxious to settle that question. I brought in the pawnbroker’s son to see her, and he identified her in a haphazard fashion as the woman who pawned the things, but then, as I have recorded, he was ablockhead, and his evidence had no great value. I then thought of visiting the Infirmary to see if she had a husband there, and learn if the name she had given—Ellen Hunter—was real or assumed. A little to my surprise I found the husband there, Archibald Hunter by name, as the card at the head of his bed testified; and the moment that a hint of the truth was given him he was so terribly excited and agitated that he would almost have been out of the place there and then had he been allowed.
“Hoo can you blame a starving woman with a wean at her breast?” was his wild inquiry. “Can ye no show mercy where it’s no a real thief, but ane forced to it?”
“I daresay she would be shown mercy if she would admit the truth, and declare that she was driven to the act,” I replied, “but that she refuses to do. She persists in trying to screen herself and put all the crime upon some imaginary persons who gave her the things. There’s nothing new in that story; every thief has it at his tongue’s end.”
Though we thus disbelieved Ellen Hunter’s story, we made every search for the rest of the plunder, and actually did come upon traces of it. Several articles were recovered, which had been either sold or pawned, in which the linen mark had been removed bodily with a pair of scissors. This was particularly noticeable on the gentlemen’s shirts, which had been marked on a little tab at the bottom of the breast. In the case of one recovered, this tab had been cut off and the remaining end neatly stitched down. The consequence was that, though morally certain as to the identity of the shirt, the owner could not swear to it, and it was given back to the buyer, who declared that it had been bought from a man, whose appearance he described, and whom he declared himself able to identify.
Meantime the trial of Ellen Hunter came on at the Sheriff Court, to which she had been remitted. No reasoning or persuasion could induce her to plead guilty, or advance extenuating circumstances by way of lightening her sentence.
“They may do what they like to me, but I winna say I’m guilty when I’m innocent,” was her firm declaration. “If my wean could only speak, it wad tell ye that I’ve spoken naething but the truth.”
The case accordingly went to proof, and was speedily settled to the satisfaction of the jury, who, without leaving the box, found the charge proven. But then there arose in the Court, close to the bar, a pale shadow of a man, who in broken tones stated that he was the husband of the accused, and pleaded for permission to say a few words in mitigation of his wife’s offence. The permission was granted, and, in a husky and broken tone, Hunter proceeded to narrate the circumstances which had brought him to the Infirmary—his wife’s devotion, integrity, and sterling honesty; and the dread fear which had brought her on that long journey on foot, and in the dead of winter, with a child at her breast. The speech was given in the homeliest of language, and without any attempt at grammatical correctness; but there was a power and native eloquence about it which went to every heart. The wife was sobbing loudly at the bar with her infant in her arms, and the judge, visibly affected along with the whole Court, was about to pass a light sentence, when there came an interruption, the very last that any would have looked for in that place.
“I will do it, and I don’t care for you!” was shouted out in a woman’s voice in the audience, and as all looked round a girl known to me as “Sally the Snowdropper,” struggled up from one of the seats in spite of the efforts of a man at her side to detain her. Then there was a brief struggle and altercation, and the man rising with her dealt the poor girl a terrific blow in the eyes. The whole Court was aghast, and the brute was speedily collared and brought forward in custody. Then the prisoner at the bar started up with a joyful scream, and pointing to Sally, criedout—
“That’s the woman! that’s the kind lassie that gied me the shilling and wrappit her shawl roon’ my wean. Ask her and she’ll tell ye.”
Sally came forward, staunching the blood flowing from her nose, and looking pale with excitement, but firm and self-reliant withal.
“The woman is innocent as the child in her arms,” said Sally, as soon as she could speak. “A month or two in quod is nothing to me, but it’s hard to send an honest man’s wife there for nothing. I can’t stand that. I never thought it would come to this, or I would have spoken out sooner. Istole the things—every one of them—and I met her and gave her the shawl I had on, as her child was nearly dead with cold. I never knew the shawl was torn, or likely to be traced, or I’d never have given it. I gave her the stockings too—the first pair that came to hand in the bundle, and put them on her bairn with my own hands. The mother was half-frozen in her sleep, and at first I thought they were both dead. Just let her go, and shove me in her place, and the thing will be squared.”
“She’s mad!—she’s drunk, and doesn’t know what she’s saying,” shouted the man who had assaulted her; but he was promptly removed and locked up, the immediate result of which was that he was discovered to be wearing a gentleman’s white shirt resembling one of those stolen, and having the tab cut away from the breast, and stitched down exactly like the one already described.
Sally very speedily proved that she was neither mad nor drunk by revealing where all the stolen things had been disposed of, and stating that the tabs of the white shirts had been doctored by her own hands. Her companion was next day identified as the man who had sold one of the shirts, and the case was complete.
Ellen Hunter, half frenzied with delight, was set at liberty and taken into her husband’s arms; and when our case was complete, Sally, instead of appearing as prisoner, was taken as a witness, and so moved every one that the Sheriff, before allowing her to be dismissed, thought fit to address to her a few words of strong commendation for her generous spirit and truly noble nature, at the same time advising her, in a kind and feeling manner, to try to get out of the debasing life for which she was so ill-suited. In vain! he might have saved his breath. Sally was too far gone to mend her ways; and, while her companion went to prison, she went drifting on to the death and destruction which speedily became her lot. But she left one green spot on her memory. How many such can each of us boast?