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 m