“Hold, hold, good sir — prithee wait a little — the judge!

Why, man, he hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse! — come, and we will speak further. Ods body! I seem to be in evil case — and all for an innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my wife and little ones — List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst thou of me?”

“Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a hundred thousand — counting slowly,” said Hendon, with the expression of a man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one.

“It is my destruction!” said the constable despairingly. “Ah, be reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see how mere a jest it is —