woman,—she is not a drunkard;—let us listen. “Call Phil. Bird,” says the superintendent. As Phil. Bird is in court, there is no need to call him, but he is called in stentorian tones nevertheless. Policemen, like other men, love to hear the sound of their own voices. Phil. immediately steps into the witness-box. That he is a favourite with the beer-drinking public around is clear as soon as he kisses the Bible, and promises—a promise lightly made, and lightly broken—to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, “So help me God.” “Well, Bird,” says the magistrate, “will you state your complaint?” “Certainly, your honour,” is the reply. “I was in my shop on Saturday, when that woman (pointing to the trembling female in the dock) came in kicking up a row, and asking for her husband; well, she spoke to her husband, and wanted to get him away, but her husband did not choose to go; and as she would not leave quietly, I was obliged to go and speak to her, upon which she turned round, abusing me, saying I had robbed her of her husband, that I had got his money, and kept making a great many remarks which I was not going to submit to, especially as she had got quite a crowd of people together, and it was interfering with my business; so I called in policeman Brown, and gave her in charge.” Policeman Brown corroborates the testimony. He has yet to win his spurs, and is glad of an opportunity of distinguishing himself; besides, he has drunk too much of Phil. Bird’s fine sparkling ales to refuse to do him a little friendly turn when he has a chance. “Mr Bird’s house is a well-conducted house, I believe, Mr Superintendent?” says the magistrate, more from habit than with any view of eliciting information. “Good, your worship,” is the answer,—“impossible to be better.” The superintendent, perhaps, has received a small cask of Devonshire cyder, as a mark of private friendship and personal esteem, from the complainant, and this might, though I would fain hope not—but flesh is grass, and a superintendent of police is but flesh after all—have influenced the nature of his reply. This is the more probable, as one bystander whispers to another, that he believes Phil. Bird’s is the worst house in the street, a remark which seems to excite the cordial approbation of the party to whom it is addressed—a remark also which the superintendent hears, and which leads him to cry “silence” in his loudest voice and sternest manner. The whisperer is cowed at once. Phil. Bird looks gratefully at the superintendent; the latter is grateful in O’Connell’s sense, and has a lively sense of favours to come. “And the woman, what about her?” asks the magistrate. “I believe generally she’s very well behaved,” says policeman Brown, as if on the present occasion she had been guilty of an enormous offence. “Do you know anything against her?” “Not as I know of, yer worship.”