The prisoner whines and weeps, “Is that you, Mr. Bertram? You’ll speak for a pore honest man--for a pore honest man--not a drop hev Hopper took--not a--not a--not a drop. Hark’ee, Mister--Hopper was a-tellin’ folks--good tidings--proputty’s pison--proputty’s thievin’--proputty’s root o’ all evil--said so yerself, mister. Hopper used yer werry words. And Hopper’s run in, and ye stand there--yah! Blackgud.” “I am ashamed of you, Hopper,” says Bertram, sternly. “But,” he adds to the constables, “if you arrest this man for having taken stimulants, I cannot oppose the measure, he may deserve arrest; but if you consider him guilty because he has merely striven to disseminate the doctrines which I myself hold, I ought in common justice to accompany him and be locked up as well.” The first policeman, who has a satiric vein, smiles rather cynically: “Well, sir, I don’t say as you shouldn’t, but we can’t run you in, sir; you aren’t disorderly.” Marlow, who is sauntering past, stops, and laughs: “His opinions are very disorderly. Half an hour in Bow Street might be a seasonable douche.” Hopper is struggling between the two constables, who have him by the collar: “Hi, mister!” he groans, “won’t ye speak hup for a ’onest man? Kep’ me on beastly swills, you hev--kep’ promisin’ on me beer’d be free all round--promised as ’ow I’d live in Windsor Castle, and hev ale an’ gin on tap all day--promised as ’ow--promised as ’ow--promised as ’ow----” “Shut up his jaw,” says one of the constables to the other. “Get him along somehow. We can’t waste no more time.” They go down the road, dragging and pushing Hopper, a group of small boys dancing hilariously in their rear. “I assure you he was an entirely reformed character, up to this moment,” says Bertram to the satirical and remaining policeman. “Aye, they’re allus the worst, sir,” says that functionary, with conviction. “Reformed characters have a knack of backsliding,” says Marlow, who has lingered to look on, with great enjoyment of the scene. “Vice is magnetic. Virtue isn’t--somehow.” Bertram ignores him and continues to address the policeman: “I suppose I can witness on his behalf in the police-court? Get him out on bail? My testimony surely----” “Well, sir, I’d let him bide if I was you,” says the policeman, without a grain of sympathy. “Seven days’ll do him a world o’ good. Wonderful how it sobers ’em.” “Why are you so ungenerous to your own class?” Policeman looks puzzled: “Don’t know about ongenerous, sir; but I didn’t never cotton to drunkards afore I was in the force.” “I thought you were a total abstainer, Bertram?” says Marlow. Bertram replies, very stiffly: “Drink is the most disgusting of all weaknesses, but our disgust ought not to destroy our compassion. In that poor man yonder it is a relapse into a bad habit after three years of rigorous abstinence.”