The woman shrank from them with a cry.  “How much?” she asked.

“Half-a-crown!”

The wife of Mac-an-Ward threw out her arms in a wild gesture of despair.  “My God!” she cried.  “I sold it.  I wronged 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 Festus Clasby, and he was vaguely conscious that they were grouped with some military art.  A low murmur of a dispute