Guilty, or Not Guilty

Guilty, or Not Guilty.
480.1

Yoar name,” said the judge, as he eyed her with Lindly look and keen.
“Is Mary McGuire, If you please, sir,” “and your age?””I am turned fifteen.”
“Well, Mary,” and then from a paper he slowly und gravely read,
“You are charged here. I am sorry to say it, with stealing three loaves of bread.

“You look not like an offender, and I hope that you can show
The charge to be false. Now tell me, are you gulity of this, or no?”
A passionate burat of weeping was at first her sole reply.
But she dried her eyes in a moment, and looked in the Judge’s eye.

“I will tell you just how it was, sir, my father and mother are dead,
And my little brothers and sisters were hungry and asked me for bread
At first 1 earned it for them by working hard all day.
But somehow times were bad, sir, and the work all Koll away.

“I could get no more employment; the weather was bitter cold,
The young ones cried and shivered-(little Johnny’s but four years old)
Fo, what was 1 to do, sir? I am guilty, but do not
I took-oh was it stealing?-the bread to give to them.”