Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/236

212 "Mebbe you'll do as weel," said Joe, scratching his head.

"Can yer tell me wot's become o' the boy Benny?"

"Oh, yes," said the clerk, smiling complacently, "he's where he ought to have been long ago."

"Where's that?" said Joe.

"In prison, sir!"

"In prison?" in a tone of bewilderment.

"Even so," with a bland smile.

I can't say as 'ow I hunderstand," Joe stammered out.

"Very likely," said the clerk, "so I will inform you that Mr. Lawrence, having his suspicions aroused, placed a five-pound note on his desk, and then set a watch——"

"Well?" said Joe, eager, yet fearing to hear the rest.

"Well," continued the clerk, "this young friend of yours, who seems to have been an old hand at the work, was seen coolly to take the money. But when charged with the theft, a few minutes after, he stoutly denied all knowledge of the circumstance; but Mr. Lawrence was determined to stand no nonsense, and had him at once marched off to the lock-up."

For a moment Joe looked at the clerk in silence, then, without a word, walked out of the office. When he told granny, she was at first indignant. "To think that she, a honest woman, 'ad been a-'arbouring a thief all these months!" But Joe soon talked her into a better frame of mind, and it was then that she promised him that if the prodigal ever came back again she would not turn him away.

When Joe read in the paper on Wednesday morning