“An admirable reason for shaking hands with an individual who has knocked you down,” returned Coverdale, “but none whatsoever for screening two malefactors from the just punishment of their ill-deeds;” then, lapsing into the magistrate, he continued, “You mistake the whole scope and intention of our penal code, my dear Alice. We do not punish offenders as an act of revenge upon the individual, but in order to benefit society by deterring others from committing a like crime; thus, laying aside personal feeling, I should be doing an injury to the community at large, by refusing to prosecute these fellows. You see this clearly, do you not?” Alice’s reasoning powers did see it, and had seen it all along, but Alice had also seen the poor wife and the meritorious and seductive baby, and she cared “fifty thousand times” (as she herself would have expressed it) more for them than for the community at large; so finding that the argument was going against her, she, woman-like, adroitly shifted her ground. “According to your reasoning, there would be no room for such a quality as mercy,” she began; “stern, inexorable justice would condemn every criminal, no matter what extenuating circumstances there might be; in each case punishment must follow sin, as effect follows cause. I, for one, should be very sorry always to be judged by such a cruel rule.” “Oh, if you’re going to put German metaphysical sophistries in the place of English common-sense, I’ve no more to say about it,” returned Harry, gruffly; “only it seems to my simplicity that punishment always does follow crime in this world, as soon as it’s found out. If a brat steals the sugar, its mother slaps it; if a schoolboy prigs apples, the master flogs him; if an apprentice bolts with the till, the law transports him; if Jack murders Tom, the hangman stretches his neck for him:--and serve ’em all right say I; it would be a precious deal worse world to live in if it were not so, to my thinking.” Alice paused to consider the justice of this remark--we will follow her example! CHAPTER XXIX.--HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. Mrs. Coverdale, resuming the matrimonial discussion broken off at the end of the last chapter, thus pursued the argument by which she hoped to induce her husband to let off her poaching _protégé._ “In the present case the innocent must suffer with the guilty. I see no justice in ruining a poor family by imprisoning or transporting the only member who is able to work and support it.”