TRIED TO CATCH THE THIEF.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2209, 22 August 1910, Page 7

TRIED TO CATCH THE THIEF.

Brown is going around with a variegated eye. This is the story that he is telling his friends ■— "It was such a petty thing that the more I thought of it the madder I got. "The milkman leaves my milk before the sun is up. It is somewhat later when I feel called upon to leave my bed, and during the time that the milk remains on the back pofch someone has been making a practice of stealing it. It is more than provoking to find when breakfast is ready that you have no milk for your coffee. "I set all manner of traps to catch the thief,, without success. Then I hired one of the neighbours' boys to sit up and keep watch. But the next morning I found the milk gone and the boy asleep. "The other morning I chanced to be awake just before sunrise, and I heard someone fumbling with the milk-can on the back porch. Hastily throwing on my dressing-gown, I stepped softly to the door and threw it open suddenly. "In the dim light I could see a man bending over the can, and, without stopping to see if he was a bigger man than I, I sprang at him with blood in my eye. The shock threw him off the porch, and we rolled down the steps together, fighting like a couple of wild cats. "We must have had an awful racket for I heard the windows going up all around me, and someone was blowing a police-whistle, while my wife was wringing her hands upon the porch.

"I got my man down at last and sat upon him. We were both a sight, being covered with milk from head to foot.

"It had grown a little lighter by this time, and my wife, taking in the situation, gasped : " 'John, that's the milkman that you are sitting on !'

"It was, for a fact, and explanations were in order. "I understand that the milkman is going around exhibiting his wounds and saying that I made a brutal and cowardly attack upon a defenceless man, and increasing the amount of damages he is going to sue me for at every telling. "Meanwhile somebody ite stealing my milk."