J-----, however, hearing U---- at her mother's door, asking for
medicine for R-----, called out for medicine for his cold, and the thieves
probably thought we were bestirring ourselves, and so took flight. In
the morning the servants found the hall door and the breakfast-room
window open; some silver cups and some other trifles of plate were gone
from the sideboard, and there were tokens that the whole lower part of
the house had been ransacked; but the thieves had evidently gone off in a
hurry, leaving some articles which they would have taken, had they been
more at leisure.
We gave information to the police, and an inspector and constable soon
came to make investigations, taking a list of the missing articles, and
informing themselves as to all particulars that could be known. I did
not much expect ever to hear any more of the stolen property; but on
Sunday a constable came to request my presence at the police-office to
identify the lost things. The thieves had been caught in Liverpool,
and some of the property found upon them, and some of it at a
pawnbroker's where they had pledged it. The police-office is a small
dark room, in the basement story of the Town Hall of Southport; and over
the mantel-piece, hanging one upon another, there are innumerable
advertisements of robberies in houses, and on the highway,--murders, too,
and garrotings; and offences of all sorts, not only in this district, but
wide away, and forwarded from other police-stations.
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