_Milk Criminal._ O most blessed Magistrate and sweet Your Worship, I fare most happily; for, most comfortably encouraged by your gracious leniency, I did redouble--nay, multiply an hundred times--mine efforts to disseminate disease; so that I may, without undue boasting, claim to be father of an epidemic that felled its hundreds. And further, in the doing of this I have heaped up a most goodly pile of gold. Give me your blessing, most sympathetic Your Worship! _M. Mag._ (_recoiling_). Nay; mine intentions looked not toward so dire result! I cannot bless---- _The Spirit._ How, good Stipendiary? Dost thou now disown me, thine own Spirit? Thou must surely bless thy _protégé_, him who but carries out thy methods to their logical result! And see, I summon others of thy choice; this good butcher who hath sent unwholesome meat to London to feed the poor. Thou didst say of him, "_A most inhuman, ill-conditioned knave and rascal; a constructive homicide! I will not imprison him, but fine him seven shillings._" And again, see this good rough who kicked a constable nearly to death; thou saidst of him, "_A miscreant unfit to live. A savage worse than any tiger! One shilling fine._" Then finding he could not pay without foregoing his accustomed gin, thy heart relented, and thou didst discharge him. Then again, here have we this fair hawker who kicked his donkey's legs and so belaboured him with cudgels that he left no bone unbroken; thou saidst of him, "_An act more horrible and sickening could scarce be perpetrated by a fiend!_" Then, with a gentle caution, thou didst set him free. _M. Mag._ But tell me, prithee, what the outcome was of these my leniences. Did results not justify----? _The Butcher._ Oh, yes, indeed, in my case! Taking courage, seeing that justice was so linked with mercy, I did extend most energetically my little venture in unwholesome meat, and now am rich, and have been made a lord. _The Rough._ And since your clemency, O sweet your Worship, I've kicked to death some dozens of assorted victims--policemen, girls, and infants. _The Hawker._ And I---- _M. Mag._ (_writhing_). Oh, peace, and spare me! Get ye gone! _The Criminals._ What? This is passing strange! You will not bless the work yourself have fostered? _M. Mag._ (_tearing his hair_). _I_ fostered? _I_, the gentle magistrate, the soul of clemency----? _The Spirit._ Come, bless thy chosen clients! [_With a shriek the_ Metropolitan Magistrate _awakes from his doze. He is haggard; his eye is bloodshot with horror. He speaks, shuddering:--_