onged my sick brother."

"Where did you sell it, mother?"

"Here, to this handsome dark man."

"How much did he pay?"

"Eighteen-pence."

The three youngsters raised their hard faces to the sky and raised a
long howl, like beagles who had lost their quarry.

Suddenly the woman's face brightened. She looked eagerly at Festus
Clasby, then laid the hand of friendship, of appeal, on his arm.

"I have it!" she cried, joyfully.

"Have what?" asked Festus Clasby.

"A way out of the trouble," she said. "A means of saving my brother from
wrong. A way of bringing him his own for the Can with the Diamond
Notch."

"What way might that be?" asked Festus Clasby, his manner growing
sceptical.

"I will go to the shopman with it and get the half-crown. Having got the
half-crown I will hurry back here--or you can come with me--and I will
pay you back your one-and-six. In that way I will make another shilling
and do you no wrong. Is that agreed?"

"It is not agreed," said Festus Clasby. "Give me out the tin can. I am
done with you now."

"It's robbery!" cried the woman, her eyes full of a blazing sudden
anger.

"What is robbery?" asked Festus Clasby.

"Doing me out of a shilling. Wronging my sick brother out of his
earnings. A man worth hundreds, maybe thousands, to stand between a poor
woman and a shilling. I am deceived in you."

"Out with the can," said Festus Clasby.

"Let the woman earn her shilling," said Mac-an-Ward. His voice came from
behind Festus Clasby.

"Our mother must get her shilling," cried the three youngsters.

Festus Clasby turned about to Mac-an-Ward, and as he did so he noticed
that two men had come and set their backs against a wall hard by; they
leaned limply, casually, against it, but they were, he noticed, of the
same tribe as the Mac-an-Wards.

"It was always lucky, the Can with the Diamond Notch," said the woman.
"This offer of the man in the big shop is a sign of it. I will not allow
you to break my brother's luck and he lying in his fever."

"By heaven!" cried Festus Clasby. "I will have you all arrested. I will
have the law of you now."

He wheeled about the horse and cart, setting his face for the police
barrack, which could be seen shining in the distance in the plumage of
a magpie. The two men who stood by came over, and from the other side
another man and three old women. With Mac-an-Ward, Mrs. Mac-an-Ward, and
the three young Mac-an-Wards, they grouped themselves around Fes