Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/249

Rh “Come, my lad,” said the sergeant, confidentially, “it needn’t hurt you, when all’s said and done!”

Tom looked at him in faint astonishment.

“We ain’t obliged to lay it on that thick,” pursued the sergeant, in the same confidential tone. “It’s all left to us. It needn’t hurt him, need it, mates?”

“Not if he comes up to the mark; but he won’t—no fear!” said the ex-butcher, who had got the cat, and was practising with it upon the woodwork of the whipping-frame.

“We’ll ask him,” said the sergeant. “We’ll give him the chance. Will you come up to the mark, my son, or will you take it hot?”

Tom looked at his inquisitors with a sullen, puzzled expression, and chanced to see the overseer, at a little distance, shaking his head and touching his pockets.

“Not got any?” cried the sergeant.

“You ask him,” returned Ginger.

“Gut no money?” said the sergeant. “That’s what we mean by coming up to the mark, you know.”

“A pound apiece,” suggested the free constable. “That’d soften the job.”

He stared at them in dogged defiance.

“I told you so,” said the butcher, throwing down the cat. “Let’s truss him up.”

“Even a pound between us—” the sergeant had said, when the butcher began to grumble, and Tom’s lip to curl; and this settled it.

“Up with him!” cried the sergeant. “We’ll teach you to sneer at us, my game-cock! Stop a bit, though. His legs won’t stretch in these here irons. Who the blazes put them on?” And the zealous officer knelt