Then I called for 'elp, and some workmen 'appened along, and we got 'im out and turned 'im over to the constable." The magistrate complimented the woman on her muscular powers, and the court-room laughed; but all I could see was a boy on the threshold of life, passionately crawling to muddy death, and there was no laughter in it.
A man was now in the witness-box, testifying to the boy's good character and giving extenuating evidence.

He was the boy's foreman, or had been.
Alfred was a good boy, but he had had lots of trouble at home, money matters.

And then his mother was sick.

He was given to worrying, and he worried over it till he laid himself out and wasn't fit for work.

He (the foreman), for the sake of his own reputation, the boy's work being bad, had been forced to ask him to resign.
"Anything to say ?" the magistrate demanded abruptly.
The boy in the dock mumbled something indistinctly.