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job »”? 
Chapter 4 Tramps 
USED to have a little Christian charity 
about me. ’I'wa’n’t much; but still, such 
as) twas, there ‘twas. But I think it’s 
purty well all squeezed out of me by this 
So spoke Mr. Smith, distastefully. He had 
been telling me how he and his carter had been 
subpcenaed (or, as he said, “suffenaed”’) to 
Winchester Assizes, in the case of a man charged 
with robbery and arson. ‘To this man, so long 
ago as the previous April—eight months earlier— 
Mr. Smith, against his rule (“ never did it but 
once before’), had given permission to lie down 
for the night in a shed, ordering the carter to 
shake out a truss of straw for him. The next 
day the tramp, with the police already on his 
track for an offence in Sussex, was at Alton, 
obtaining by means of a forged order various 
goods from a local saddler, which he proceeded 
to sell again. He then tried another county 
—Berkshire; but was caught at Wokingham, 
handed over to the Sussex police, and eventually 
committed to Lewes Gaol for twelve months on 
the first charge. On the other charges he had 
been brought to Winchester Assizes, to be tried 
by Mr. Justice Hawkins, 
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