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264 the stream of sentences which fell from the magistrate's lips.

I was still pondering over a consumptive fence who had pleaded inability to work and necessity for supporting wife and children, and who had received

a year at hard labor, when a young boy of about twenty appeared in the dock. 'Alfred Freeman.' I caught his name, but failed to catch the charge. A stout and motherly-looking woman bobbed up in the witness-box and began her testimony. Wife of the Britannia lock-keeper, I learned she was.