LXXXI. THE RETURN TO BROXBRIDGE HALL――THE FARMER AND HIS DAUGHTER…

LXXXI. THE RETURN TO BROXBRIDGE HALL――THE FARMER AND HIS DAUGHTER

Lord Ethalwood was a little surprised upon finding his grand-daughter returning so suddenly. He had expected her to remain in the metropolis for another fortnight at the very least. He was, however, but too glad to have her back, and, therefore, did not care to inquire the reason for her sudden return. He knew her to be capricious――a little wilful――and concluded that she was satiated of pleasure, and was, therefore, but too glad to have rest and quiet at Broxbridge――any way, he felt he was the gainer. He soon discovered from her manner that she was much more reserved and serious than she had been prior to her visit to the metropolis; the reason for this he could not very well make out.

The crucial question, if we may so term it, had to be put――the intelligence in respect to the law proceedings had to be made known to Aveline.

This difficult and delicate task was reserved for the diplomatic Lady Marvlynn, for the earl did not care to broach the question himself. He was too dignified for that――besides, it would come better from her female adviser and friend; and so, after a playful prelude and a good deal of beating about the bush, Lady Marvlynn came to the point, and informed her young charge of the legal proceedings.

Aveline looked awe-stricken.

“And, pray, who has had the presumption to give these orders without consulting me?” she exclaimed. “I am the fit and proper person to determine, and no other.”

“My dear child,” said Lady Marvlynn, “you really must not spoil your beautiful features by displaying this excess of anger. Who do you suppose――not me, surely?”

“I have not accused you as yet, Lady Marvlynn,” cried Aveline. “It will be time enough for you to answer when I do.”

Her ladyship laughed good-humouredly.

“You know, my dear girl, that whatever you choose to say will always be taken in good part as far as I am individually concerned――so leave off pouting. Sit down and lend me your attentive ear, or rather ears.”

“Well, what more have you to say?” returned Aveline, dropping into the nearest chair.

“The earl your grandfather, the head of the house and master of Broxbridge,” said Lady Marvlynn, emphasising her words with more than her usual care, “has thought fit in his wisdom to take upon himself the responsibility of getting you released from the thraldom which, to say the truth, has been to him for a long time almost insupportable.”

“To him?”

“Yes, my dear, to him, and――but this is only hypothetical――he presumes that it is insupportable to his darling pet also, for what constitutes his happiness or misery applies with equal force to his grandchild.”

“And have you told him?” exclaimed Aveline, as her brow darkened.

“I have told him nothing,” said her ladyship, still more emphatically. “It is not likely I should do so, and you will pardon the observation, but it is by no means complimentary to me to offer such a suggestion.”

“Oh, pardon――pardon me! I was wrong, I know it!” cried Aveline, throwing herself forward and clasping her companion round the neck with every expression of fondness.

“Say no more, darling, upon that head. You will find it indeed difficult to offend me. This is but a passing cloud; but my charge must learn to control her feelings――she really must. In the fashionable world these sudden emotions are quite out of place――they are, indeed. Well-bred people never suffer themselves to give way to violent demonstrations. Besides, dear, anger or rage is a sore destroyer of beauty.”

“I care not for beauty, and am but as nature made me. I will not give my consent to this suit against my husband.”

“You surely do not mean to say that you will oppose the wishes of Earl Ethalwood?”

“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” said Aveline, bursting into a flood of tears. “I am the most miserable creature in the whole creation.”

“I should have thought――――” exclaimed her ladyship, pausing suddenly.

“Should have thought what?”

“Well, I don’t know. May I speak plainly?”

“Certainly.”

“And you promise not to be offended?”

“I promise.”

“I should have thought, after what we both witnessed at the opera, that you would have no hesitation――――”

“And assuming it was a mistake――an error, he might have gone thither with some relative――a friend’s wife, perhaps. It surely must be so.”

Lady Marvlynn shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

“We are most of us prone to put the worst construction on the matter in cases of this sort.”

“All I can say is, I hope we have.”

“But you do not think so?”

“I confess I do not.”

“Very well. Nothing ought to be done till we have made further inquiries, if it be as you think.”

“As I think?”

“Well, say me, if you like. If it be so, then, indeed, I shall not hesitate for one moment.”

“So be it, Aveline. We will make further inquiries, and so let the matter rest for the present. You are a dear darling girl,” and with these words the speaker embraced her young charge fondly.

“Do not pain the earl by any allusion to this subject for the present,” cried her ladyship.

“I promise not to do so.”

And so the interview ended.

Patty Jamblin, who had returned with Aveline, did not remain long at Broxbridge Hall. She was anxious about her father, and on the following day hastened at once to Stoke Ferry Farm.

The honest old farmer was almost beside himself with joy when his eyes lighted on the sweet and innocent face of his only child.

She was the only solace he had in his declining years, and for her he seemed to live. Patty was pleased to find that the old man was looking very much better than she expected to see him.

It had been a sore trial, the loss of his son Philip, but he had borne up against the misfortune with great fortitude, and appeared to be more himself.

“I dunno how I shud ’a got on wi’out ee,” said the farmer, “hadn’t it a bin for John Ashbrook. He took compassion on the old man, ye zee, and has gi’en me as much of his company as he could well spare.”

“I’m sure it’s very kind of him,” said Patty, “and I shall always feel grateful for the timely service he has rendered. Where is he now?”

“Oh, he be here.”

“Here?”

“Well, lass, not ’xactly here, I don’t mean that; but he be about a lookin’ after the men. Ye see he’s been my right hand, aye, and the left too I’m thinkin’.”

Patty found Stoke Ferry Farm as clean as a pink, both inside and out.

During her absence it had been put in thorough repair. It was never much out of order, but now it was a perfect model in its way.

The house was a substantial affair, as red and ugly as a British uniform, relieved at the corners with white stone facings.

Whether the farmer had sent word to John Ashbrook or not it would be difficult to determine. The fact, however, was clearly demonstrated.

Patty had not been in the house half an hour before Ashbrook made his appearance in the large room which served as a parlour.

He was, as usual, very attentive to the farmer’s daughter, and that was all.

But anyone who saw them together would not be far out in their reckoning if they came to the conclusion that he had a sneaking fondness for her.

Old Jamblin was a sociable man, and very few evenings passed in which some neighbour did not drop in to smoke a pipe, have a glass of grog, or a hand at short whist.

During Patty’s absence John Ashbrook had paid frequent visits to her father.

After her return he did not seem disposed to leave at all.

“Dall it! but John ’ud mek her a good husband,” muttered the farmer. “The Jamblins and Ashbrooks wer med to run in pairs. Patty and John ’ill go together as nat’ral as half-and-half.”

As these were his sentiments he gave the young people every opportunity of sweethearting, as he termed it.

And he was perpetually finding excuses for putting on his thick boots to go into the yard.

Jamblin was known to be a rich man. His father had left him a good sum at his death, to which he had been adding for years.

The only wonder was that his daughter had not a host of candidates for her hand.

By-and-bye it came to be rumoured among the old women who gossipped over their brown sugar and tea, and among the farmers and dealers on “’Change” on market day, and among the servants in their Sunday strolls, that John Ashbrook, of Oakfield House, was keeping company with Miss Jamblin, of Stoke Ferry.

As soon as this fact was established Stoke Ferry became the focus of twenty radiating hearts. Then intelligent agriculturists could only discover that Patty Jamblin was a catch both for wealth and beauty by the time that a good-looking and (for a farmer) a passably talkative young man had got a footing ahead of them.

But this, doubtless, most of my readers may have observed is often the case. On Sunday evenings Stoke Ferry was like a fair, and the consumption of spirits and tobacco would have shed honour upon an assemblage of medical students; but even gin and water did not embolden these visitors to make more than sheep’s eyes at the fairy who had drawn them there.

These silent tributes flattered her vanity without putting her to the trouble of paining their’s. She had, however, one suitor who was really unfortunate.

This was no other than Mr. Nettlethorpe, a new neighbour of Jamblin’s, but a man whom he despised; he was one of the most cheeseparing, meanest men in the whole county.

At one time he had been a money-lender, but of later years he had chosen to try his hand at farming, about which he knew next door to nothing.

Although Jamblin had a great antipathy to him, he could not, as a neighbour, be positively rude to him.

“I hate the man,” said Jamblin, “but one can’t shut the door in his face. Pipple say he’s been dangling after you, but of course you think nothing of such a varmint――a fellow with a set of cows not worth opening and shutting a gate after. Why, you might hang yer hat on thur hipbones. He a farmer! A pretty notion he has of farming. He let his plough stand to kill a mouse, and instead of dunging twelve cartloads to the acre, as everybody else does, he doesn’t dung twelve barrowfuls. And his horses, too! He thinks it’s a saving to starve ’em till they’ve got as weak as chickens, and can’t do any work. Why, you can see ’em reel as they go up the road.”

“He has a very nice house,” said Patty.

“Nice, indeed. It’s Mock Beggar Hall, foine outside, but nat’rally barren within. There aint much more than carp pie for his wife in the larder, I’ll be bound, for he beant the sort to keep more cats in his house than’ll kill mice.”

“He’s got a very nice sister.”

Farmer Jamblin burst out into a loud laugh.

“Has he?” he cried; “well that’s a matter of ’pinion, Patty. She be as wretched and ignorant a little nat’ral as ye’d find in a day’s tramping. Did I ever tell ’ee? I was riding by the house one day, and she came out with her back hair flying loose, and crying ready to split herself. Dear, dear, thought I, brother been took with a fit of remorse and killed hisself. ‘Oh, Mr. Jamblin,’ cried she, ‘what shall I do? My poor duck is so ill――she’s got fast on the nest and I can’t move her off.’ Oh, oh, that was a larfable ditty.”

“But she hasn’t been brought up to farming, father,” suggested Patty.

“That beant it, gell. She be mean and close-fisted like her brother. Do you know what she did?”

“No.”

“She watered the men’s beer when she sent it out to ’em in the hay harvest. Why, if you put one drop of water into beer it’s spoilt directly. It is so different to spirits. She ought to have been made to drink it.” The farmer paused suddenly, and then said, in a lower tone, “but here, as I’m alive, comes the very man hisself. I say, Patty, can’t ’ee manage to chuck him off somehow? I can’t send him away, and it gives me the sick every time as I sees him.”

She answered with a cunning little smile. Her father went out into the fields, and Mr. Nettlethorpe found Patty alone in the parlour, sewing.

He stammered a good morning, and sat down clumsily on a chair.

Nettlethorpe, the miser-farmer, as he was called――for in many respects he resembled the far-famed old Elwes――was a tall meagre-looking man with bright red hair.

He carried pinch and starve in broad letters upon his features, which were angular, and also on his clothes which were patched and threadbare.

“Are you not well, Mr. Nettlethorpe?” inquired Patty, with an appearance of interest, as she saw her visitor shifting about on his seat as uneasily as if he had been on the top of a kitchen oven.

“Quite well, thank you. The fact is, I――I came over to――to see you.”

“Oh, indeed, you flatter me.”

“Do I? I think not. I did not mean to do so, but――”

“Yes, exactly, I understand. Pay your respects to me and all out of pure disinterested friendship.”

“That’s just it.”

“So I thought; but you have some dust on your coat,” said she, patting him on the shoulder under the pretext of dusting it.

This made her lover blush from the nape of the neck to the tip of his long, ungainly nose.

It also emboldened him to seize her hand and to cry――

“Oh, Miss Jamblin, you are so good and kind, so beautiful, and you make me feel so happy.”

“Do I?”

“Oh, yes, indeed you do. Will you consent to make me happier still?”

“How can I do that, Mr. Nettlethorpe?”

“By giving me your hand. By consenting to become my wife and mistress of my house.”

Mr. Nettlethorpe appended a huge sigh to this request. It might have been a gasp of relief――it might have proceeded from some tenderer emotion.

Patty at first turned away her head――it might be supposed to hide her maiden blushes――it might be to conceal a roguish smile――or, probably, to consider her answer. Then she said――

“But your sister is mistress of your house now, and perhaps she might not like to part with the keys,” observed Patty, keeping her countenance in a most wonderful way.

“She shall leave the house directly you come into it. I pledge my word as to that. She can go back to her mother, who resides in London.”

He glanced at her with what he intended to be an expression of love, but it struck her as being irresistibly comic.

Nettlethorpe regarded the coy beauty with a somewhat dubious expression.

Patty remained silent.

“What say you?” he inquired.

“Oh, I am afraid to answer. You know I have such a prodigious appetite. I am afraid I should eat you out of house and home, and folks do say that you don’t often light the kitchen fire in your house. I couldn’t bear the idea of being starved.”

“You shall have anything you wish, my dear Miss Jamblin,” cried her red-haired supplicant, with a sudden impulse of prospective generosity. “You shall go shopping yourself, and marketing yourself, just whenever you please.”

“I fear, sir, I should not be stewardly enough for your wife, and that you would be too stewardly for my husband. Were it in my power to give you my hand, I must tell you candidly, Mr. Nettlethorpe, that it never would be yours. When I marry, I marry a man not a savings-box; a man who spends his money, and does good with it, and who does not keep it piled up in a heap till it decays; a man who does not think it sinful or extravagant to enjoy a few innocent pleasures, and who will give me a good dinner and eat one himself every day in the year.”

“Miss Jamblin, I am astounded. Do you suppose I am so mean that I should begrudge my wife the necessaries of life. A good dinner! You don’t suppose I am likely to starve you, or anyone else, for the matter of that?”

“I will take good care you don’t starve me, Mr. Nettlethorpe.”

“You wrong me――indeed you do. These observations are most uncalled for.”

“Are they?”

“Most certainly they are. But I see how it is――some mischievous, evil-disposed person has been prejudicing you against me――――”

“No such thing;” your name has not been mentioned to me by anyone, and I am sure nobody has spoken against you. It is not at all likely.”

“Then am I to understand, madam,” exclaimed the miserly farmer, “that you decline to listen to my suit?”

“You may understand that without a doubt.”

“And why, pray?”

“I am already engaged, Mr. Nettlethorpe. This is a very cogent reason.”

“Then why couldn’t you say so at first, without all this cursed preaching?”

“Your hat, Mr. Nettlethorpe!”

“When you have spent all your money, come and borrow some of me, and you shall have it at sixty per cent.”

“Your stick, Mr. Nettlethorpe!”

“Dash the stick! Let it stay where it is. It’ll do for your husband to lay across your back when you’ve made a fool of him.”

[Sidenote: No. 43.]

“Thank you. I will keep it in memory of you.”

Nettlethorpe burst out of the room, and went home, snapping like a mad dog at everything he met.

“I’ve got rid of your pest,” cried Patty, when her father entered the parlour, after Nettlethorpe’s departure; “and I don’t think we are likely to be troubled again with him for some time to come.”

“Hast thee given ’im his answer, lass?” said the farmer.

“Well, I fancy so.”

“An’ what did ’ee want, Patty?”

“He made me an offer.”

“Of what?”

“His hand and heart.”

The farmer burst out in a roar of laughter.

“He must be mad to mek’ such an offer. His hand and heart! Why, the mean hound hasn’t got any. Heart indeed! But ye gev’ him an answer? Ye’d be sure to do that.”

“Oh, yes, he’s got his answer, father.”

“Good gell. It be loike ’is impudence. I hate ’im as I hate the measles or wire worm. An’ he aint o’ no good to man nor woman either.”

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LXXXII. THE NOTTINGHAM SILK ROBBERY――HOW PEACE DID IT

For some time after his last escapade Charles Peace continued to work industriously at his business. It must not be supposed, however, that during this period he refrained entirely from his evil practices.

He was at work occasionally at night at habitations within a short distance of Sheffield; but he was specially careful, and did not venture upon what he termed a “big job.”

No one at this time suspected that he was carrying on his depredations in such a secret and covert way.

He had refilled his purse by disposing of some plate, which was the private property of a merchant at Hull.

When the summer came again he contrived and carried out a robbery on a more extensive scale.

He had for a long time contemplated making an incursion on a large warehouse in Nottingham. He had journeyed thither, and had made a careful inspection of the scene of his proposed operation.

Bandy-legged Bill had to act in concert with our hero, who felt assured that he would be successful in his forthcoming enterprise.

During the latter months of the year, when fishing on the Trent was considered good, a man of fairly gentlemanly appearance, with black hair and a closely shaven face, presented himself at one of the boating stations at Nottingham.

The manager came forward and asked our hero what he could do for him.

“Ah, you see, I have but indifferent health,” observed Peace, “and a change of scene is absolutely necessary, so my doctor says. I think of having a week’s fishing.”

“Yes, sir, and I have no doubt you will benefit by the change,” returned the manager. “Do you require a waterman?”

“No, I can manage very well by myself; all I need is a boat. My tackle I have with me at a house in the neighbourhood. I want a good-sized boat, for, let me see, say a week or so.”

“Yes, sir, we can accommodate you. Step this way, if you please, and make choice of a boat.”

Peace accompanied the speaker to the appointed spot, and after much consideration and haggling a bargain was struck for the fishing-boat.

The required deposit was paid, and Peace on the following morning brought down to the water’s side a considerable amount of tackle, rods, lines, baits, and all the requisites for an experienced angler.

His manner was so urbane, and he spoke in such a quiet unostentatious manner, that the boat proprietor was quite taken with him, believing him to be a gentleman of independent means, who was a devotee to the sport.

After some conversation as to the best places on the river and other topics, Peace got into the boat and rowed down the stream. Prior to his starting he said that he had to meet some friends, who, like himself, were about to have a few days’ sport on the Trent. He was, as a matter of course, accepted as a profitable customer.

The day was fine and bright, and the water was as clear as crystal, and Peace, as he drifted down the river, was well satisfied with the proceedings thus far. He moored his boat on the river’s bank and threw in his line. He remained at what he deemed a likely spot, and pulled out three or four fish.

Peace has been described in the newspapers “as a little insignificant man with grey hair,” but at this time his hair was raven black――made so by artificial means――and to all appearances he was a professional man; he might be a doctor or else a clergyman――it would be difficult to say which.

Certainly no one would have taken him for a mechanic; neither did his appearance or manner suggest that he belonged to the working class. He could assume an air of gentility when it answered his purpose to do so. As we have already indicated he was a man of what might be termed a Protean character.

The few chance wayfarers who observed him in his boat were doubtless under the impression that he was a gentleman of independent means. This was precisely what he wished to appear.

After angling for some time he went further down the river, making apparently for a more favourable spot.

After spending some considerable time at his well-beloved sport, he made for a neighbouring house, where he had his midday meal. Here he met with some brother sportsmen, who joined him for the remaining portion of the day, and when night came on he put up at the house by the river side, where he had a bed.

By early morn he again betook himself to his boat, and drifted further down the river, until he arrived in sight of the silk manufactory upon which he proposed operating.

In the after part of the day Bandy-legged Bill made his appearance.

“Well, old man, how goes it?” said the new-comer, in a whisper.

“All right so far. Have you got the trap with you?”

“Yes; I’ve put it up at a beershop close by here.”

Peace at this moment pulled out a good-sized barbel.

“My eye! but you’ve got a whopper there, Charlie, and no mistake,” cried the gipsy.

“Don’t call me Charlie. If anybody sees us you are my man――don’t you understand?”

“A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse. Your servant――I tumble,” returned Bill.

“I’m supposed to be a gentleman now,” said Peace, with a chuckle.

“Ah, I see; and you know how to play the part, which, to say the truth, is altogether beyond me. Howsomedever, I do very well for a slavey; nobody is likely to take me for a gentleman.”

“So much the better.”

“But how about the bisness? When is it to come off?”

“To-night, if all goes well.”

The gipsy gave a low mysterious whistle.

“And about this ’ere child?”

“You had better meet me at yonder point,” said Peace, pointing to a turn in the river. “Be there between eleven and twelve to-night, and take care to have the trap in readiness.”

“There’s a grove of trees just by that spot, which will suit us to rights. The pony and trap shall be there at the time you name.”

“Don’t disappoint me, you old sinner,” said Peace; “if you do, it will spoil all.”

“Did you ever find me in the rear when I was wanted at the fore?” inquired the gipsy.

“No, I never have. Only it’s as well to have a clear understanding.”

“I will be there at yonder point. But how about ‘cracking the crib?’ Don’t yer want my assistance?”

“I think I can manage that very well by myself.”

“There’s a bloke as sleeps on the premises――so I’ve heerd,” cried Bill.

“The devil, there is! What――a sort of porter, or something of that sort, eh?”

“So I’ve heerd.”

“Well, then, perhaps it would be just as well for you to come round to the warehouse.”

“And leave the trap in the grove of trees.”

“Just so.”

“At what time?”

“Say eleven, or from that to half-past.”

“Now go,” said Peace. “For I don’t want you to be seen by anybody, if we can help it. Remember, from eleven to half-past.”

“I’ll not forget.” And with that promise the gipsy sheered off, leaving Peace alone in the boat.

“A good faithful fellow,” he murmured, after his friend’s departure. “It’s not many I put trust in, but he’s fair and square enough.”

As the shades of evening descended Peace moored his boat, and threaded his way through the bye-roads and green lanes. He sought seclusion, which he succeeded in obtaining――seclusion till the hour arrived which had been appointed for the robbery.

He found the time hang heavily enough on his hands, and hardly knew how to employ himself; waiting and loitering about is not pleasant under the most favourable circumstances; but in the dead of the night, enshrouded by dark shadows, and with no other sounds but the splashing of water and the mournful sighing of the trees, the watching and waiting was inexpressibly dull.

However, it had to be endured like all other human ills and trials, and Peace endeavoured to put the best face on the matter. He trolled in a low tone a popular ditty, and strove to be as cheerful as possible.

It was some satisfaction to him that he had not met with a solitary individual in his wanderings――this was just as he could have wished.

At length the appointed time drew nearer and nearer. Peace made for the back of the silk manufactory, and waited patiently for the sounds of footsteps.

Bill was true to his appointment. Presently his companion heard the rustling of the decayed leaves which strewed the ground, and he was at no loss to conclude that his confederate was approaching.

He was correct in his surmise.

A low whistle was heard, which Peace answered by a similar sound.

The two robbers were very soon in close conference.

“Any blokes about?” said Bill.

“Not a living soul besides ourselves――at least, none that I have seen. And you?”

“All’s still and quiet. The gentlemen who live in these ere parts go early to roost, it would appear. And how about cracking the crib?”

“Leave that to me,” said Peace. “It’s an easy job enough, I fancy.”

The speaker led the way to the side of the premises.

Peace set to work on one of the windows which with his accustomed skill he contrived to open. The window was drawn down, the gipsy gave his companion a “leg up,” and in another moment our hero was inside. He had on at this time some yachting boots, the soles of which were made of vulcanised india-rubber, and his footsteps were almost noiseless.

Passing through the room he had entered, he crept downstairs and undid the bolts and other fastenings of the front door.

This done, he beckoned to his companion.

“I wonder where this man sleeps?” he murmured.

“Haven’t the slightest idea,” returned the gipsy.

“No matter, it’s as well to be prepared, however,” he muttered, drawing his revolver from his coat pocket. “I never have recourse to this, except in extreme difficulty,” said he.

“Ah, don’t settle anyone’s hash,” cried the gipsy, moving forward.

“Don’t you come in――leave it to me. You can’t slide about so silently as I can. Don’t you come in unless you hear me give the alarm. Wait and watch just inside the passage and keep guard over the door.”

“All right. On yer goes then.”

Peace did go on. In one of the rooms on the basement, he found a man and his wife in bed, fast asleep. He did not, of course, attempt to disturb their slumbers, but assuring himself first of all that they were actually asleep, he withdrew, closing the door gently after him.

He then inserted into it some of his long thin screws, so that the porter and his wife, if they should by any chance be disturbed, would find themselves close prisoners in their bedchamber.

It was not at all likely they could break open the door before our hero and the gipsy had got clean off.

Having performed this little bit of business in a way which was satisfactory to himself, Peace proceeded upstairs into the warerooms.

He found in these an immense amount of property――silks of every hue――but he chose rolls of black silk, this being more saleable.

He brought down as much as he could well carry, and then went upstairs for more, for he was unconscionable in his demands, and stuck at nothing.

Agreeable to his direction Bill took a considerable portion of the booty, which he laid carefully in the boat. Then he returned for more and placed the same with the other rolls.

In a very short time the boat was pretty well filled, and no more black silk could be found. However, Peace laid his unholy hands upon some coloured silks.

They had now as much as they could conveniently take away. Peace emerged from the house and hastened to the banks of the river; he was followed by the gipsy, both the robbers at this time having their arms full.

All this had been done without attracting the notice of any one. The two men jumped into the boat, which sped along over the surface of the stream swiftly and almost silently till the point made by the bend of the river was reached.

Near to this point was the grove of trees where the gipsy had tethered his pony.

The boat was moored again, and the goods taken therefrom as rapidly as circumstances would permit, and transferred to the cart.

But before this was done ten trusses of tares, which Bill had brought with him, were taken out of the vehicle, and when the silks had been packed and been made to occupy as small a compass as possible the tares were thrown on the top, partially covered with a piece of tarpauling, and the gipsy was ready to start on his journey.

He was instructed by Peace to make the best of his way to London.

“I’ll go a little way with you, Bill,” he said, “and put up at a hotel, and the sooner I am housed the better. There will be a rare outcry in the morning, but that matters but little, I shall be in my boat.”

“Ah, ah!” laughed the gipsy; “it’s as good as a play. Strike me silly, but this is about the cleanest job that mortal man ever did.”

“You must get safely to London, and we are not as yet safely out of the fire.”

“I shall reach London right enough――have no fear about that.”

“Ah, I don’t fear, but still it’s just as well not to shout before you are out of the wood; but you know what to do when you get there?”

“Get rid of the goods as soon as possible.”

“Yes, and there won’t be much difficulty about that if you go to the address I gave you. The name is――”

“Stanbridge,” cried Peace’s companion.

“Right you are. See her, and say you come from me, and she’ll work the oracle. She’s up to every mortal dodge.”

“I’m afraid she’ll be too much for me――I aint much of a hand in dealing with women; they’re a jolly sight too artful for me.”

“You do as I tell you, and all will be right. There’s no call for you to be mistrustful. You may rest assured that I am sending you to the proper party. See her, and if she can’t do the job herself she’ll find somebody who can.”

The gipsy nodded assent to this proposition, and as the vehicle he drove came in sight of a road-side commercial hotel he brought his pony to a standstill.

Peace alighted, wished his companion good night, and entered the hostelry, where he remained till morning.

By early dawn he was up and doing. He swallowed a hasty breakfast, and took his departure, making his way direct for the river’s side.

He unmoored his boat, and pulled it between three and four miles down the stream. He then began to angle with all the keen relish of a persevering sportsman.

He was tolerably successful, and drew out a number of fish, some of which were of good size. There were other persons in boats engaged in a similar occupation, and in the due course of time Peace managed to scrape acquaintance with those who were nearest to him.

One was an old gentleman, who was a good companion, being loquacious and full of anecdote. He was, he informed our hero, devoted to the sport, and the extraordinary “takes” of fish that had at various times fallen to his share were perfectly astounding.

Peace had the prudence to hear all he said, and say but little in return. He did not know a great deal about angling, and he was therefore anxious not to betray his ignorance.

He, however, affected to believe all his companion said, for it was his “game,” as he termed it, to make as many friends as possible. Certainly, under the existing, circumstances, this was the wisest course to pursue.

He said in reply to the old gentleman that he enjoyed the sport, but could not boast of being a particularly skilful angler, but he was willing to learn.

Upon this his companion gave him a few useful hints, and said that fishing had been one of the chief pleasures or pastimes of his life. He had fished in Scotland, Wales, Norway, and a host of other places.

He did not succeed in pulling out more fish than Peace, but that did not much matter――he would have done so if they had bitten more freely.

“Much sport, gentlemen?” said a young man who had been walking along the bank of the river.

“Middling, only middling, as far as I am concerned,” returned the old gentleman; “but then I’ve not been long here. This gentleman has done pretty well.”

“Yes, but then I’ve had four days of it, this being my fifth,” cried Peace. “I mustn’t complain, I suppose――still, I might have done better.”

“Ah, that’s what we all say,” observed the man on the bank. “But have you heard the news?”

“What news?” inquired the old gentleman.

“Why, very bad. Spearman’s silk-mill was broken into last night, and some hundreds’ worth of property stolen.”

“Never!” cried several of the fishermen. “Broken into――eh?”

“So it is supposed. Indeed, there cannot be much doubt about that.”

“It seems incredible that so many dishonest people should be in the world,” said Peace, in a deprecating tone. “It is indeed a most melancholy reflection.”

Then, addressing himself to the man on the bank, he said, in a careless way――

“And where is this mill situated, sir?”

“On the bank of the Trent, about five miles from here, or a little less, perhaps.”

“Dear me, I’m very sorry to hear it. And have they any clue to the robbers?”

“None at present, I believe.”

“But they will have. Oh, they will have, let us hope,” remarked Peace, with well-simulated sympathy.

“Hope told a flattering tale, my friend,” said the old getleman, who was of a cynical turn of mind. “The chances are that they will never find out the culprit or culprits――they never do. The police are sure to go on the wrong scent.”

“Perhaps it was some one on the premises who committed the robbery?” suggested Peace.

“Very likely, sir――nothing more likely,” cried the old gentleman, as he pulled out his line and rebaited his hook.

Another passenger now came along the pathway by the side of the river. He, like the first gentleman, was full of the robbery, and it was perhaps needless to say that he gave another version of the affair.

His theory was, that somebody was concealed in the warehouse for the whole of the day, and when it was closed and the porter and his wife were fast asleep, he crept forth from his hiding-place and let in a band of men, who ransacked the place and made off with a large amount of property.

He also stated that the porter and his wife had been drugged.

People are so remarkably fond of dealing with the wild and wonderful.

“It’s a very sad and bad business,” remarked Peace, “whichever way it was done; and it is to be hoped that justice will overtake the scoundrels.”

His fellow-fisherman coincided with him in the opinion he had expressed, and looked upon him as a man whose highly moral principle made him indignant with the miscreants who had been guilty of so lawless an act.

He was not known, or rather recognised, at Nottingham, and none for a moment suspected that the highly moral and sensitive gentleman was the real culprit.

Peace laughed in his sleeve. The amusement it afforded him was, of course, known only to himself.

He amused himself with his brother anglers for the whole of that day, and when evening set in he repaired to the public-house called the “Seven Stars,” and made himself very agreeable to the frequenters of the parlour.

He had, before giving over for the day, agreed to meet some of his brother anglers at the same spot for another day’s sport, and he was again to be seen in his boat as heretofore.

He did this to lull suspicion――that is, if any was likely to be attached to him. While occupied in fishing with what to all appearance was a party of his own particular friends, he felt he was perfectly safe.

The police went far and near in search of the burglars; they made desperate efforts to trace the stolen goods. They arrested an unfortunate tramp who was seen lurking about the neighbourhood on the preceding day. There was, however, not a tittle of evidence against the poor tramp, whom the magistrate at once discharged.

It was of no use people saying that they had arrested the wrong man――they shook their heads and looked mysterious.

As he had been arrested they clung to the opinion that he had a hand in the robbery.

The poor wretch wanted the common necessaries of life, and was of course perfectly innocent of the charge made against him; but he was a tramp, and that was enough for the police, and they assumed, as illogically as they usually do, that he knew something about it.

This was all they could do in the matter, and so after a hubbub and outcry for a week or so, the matter was given up as hopeless.

Peace took back his boat, settled with the proprietor, and made the best of his way to Sheffield.

His wife at this time presented him with a daughter.

Meanwhile Bandy-legged Bill arrived safely in London with the booty obtained at the mill.

He waited on Laura Stanbridge, and gave her a note from Peace.

The silk was safely deposited in a loft over a stable, which was in the occupation of a friend of the gipsy’s. The same friend had no difficulty in divining that Bill was doing something on the cross, but as he received a handsome sum for the loan of the loft he saw and heard but said nothing.

The most accomplished and daring thief finds it difficult to get on without the assistance of one or more confederates. Laura Stanbridge accompanied the gipsy to the loft in question and inspected the goods. She was of course to have something for her services, and it was ultimately decided to remove the silk to her house.

This was done.

Doubtless most of my readers are aware that there are in London establishments kept by honest tradesmen, who are in a large way of business, and whose buyers are instructed to purchase goods at their own discretion, without being rude enough to ask any questions of those who offer them for sale.

This practice has been carried on for a number of years. It would be invidious to mention names. The fact of purchases being made in the manner described is incontrovertible, and the fact also that the honest tradesman very often, in the way of business, becomes――innocently enough perhaps――a receiver of stolen goods.

Laura Stanbridge, when the silks were in her possession, got a young man who had been in the trade, but who had at one time been unfortunate enough to mistake his master’s money for his own, to offer the rolls of silk for sale. At one of the aforesaid houses before referred to they were purchased at about fifteen per cent. below the market value.

The vendor had to be paid handsomely for his trouble――so had Miss Stanbridge; so also had several other persons; but with all these drawbacks Mr. Charles Peace obtained for the goods half as much again as he would have got from a Jew receiver; so that all things considered, he had done a lucrative stroke of business. Bill, of course, stood in, but Peace had the lion’s share.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter LXXXIII

STOKE FERRY FARM HOUSE――THE LOVERS――A CONFIDENTIAL TETE-A-TETE.

Patty Jamblin, as we have already seen, contrived to rid herself of her most obnoxious and objectionable admirer. She had, nevertheless, to make use of a common phrase, “many strings to her bow.”

Numbers of soft-hearted irrepressible rustic swains hovered round the central figure of Stoke Ferry.

As time went on, John Ashbrook became more deeply enamoured of the pretty Miss Jamblin.

It was generally understood that he was the favoured suitor, for Patty, albeit a little wilful and capricious, had eyes and ears for him more than all the rest.

Old Jamblin was a farmer of the old school. He was, like most of that class, a little prejudiced; it may be said, very prejudiced, as far as his political opinions were concerned. Free trade and the abolition of the corn laws he had opposed to the utmost of his power, and a Radical he hated worse than a tax-collector.

Do not blame him for these opinions. Do not laugh at farmers, for they are men who have worked hard, and who have been ill-treated.

This nation once made it legal to have a free trade in corn, and corn alone. They had the bread cheap at the expense of the farmers.

“And not contented with cheating them,” observed Jamblin, “they jeered at them too.”

“Ah,” say the free traders, “Bobby Peel was going to kill three farmers a week, but there is one or two of them left alive yet.”

Yes, for when that law was passed the English yeomen, whom fools call idle grumblers struck their broad breasts with their hands, and resolved to struggle hard against their foreign foes.

It was a hard battle for them, this fight with farmers whose land cost them little, and who had few taxes to pay.

And as they were growing fagged and faint, and were forced to fall back upon their hard-earned savings, the Crimean war began, and the cry was for meat to send out to the land of strife and famine. The nation which had bled the farmers had now to bleed for them, and to buy their sheep or oxen at fabulous prices.

Thus the Emperor of Russia saved half the English farmers from ruin.

As we have already signified, Jamblin was a farmer of the old school, whose favourite maxim was――

He who by the plough would thrive, Must himself either hold or drive.

He acted throughout his life in accordance with this precept.

He chose for his wife a farmer’s daughter――one of the old-fashioned sort――an adept in the economies of the stables and pig-sty, and a perfect genius among the milk-pails.

Having presented him with a son and a daughter, she expired in the act of lifting a large brewing-tub, which was out of its place in the back kitchen.

Although his wife had perished a victim to her love for ne plus ultra housewifery, Jamblin reared up his son and daughter in the same line of education which proved so beneficial to himself.

And sometimes he would recite this old adage in a kind of chant, beating time with his fingers on the kitchen dresser:

The man to plough, The wife to cow, The boy to flail, The girl to pail, And your rents will be netted. But the man tally-ho! The wife piano, The boy Greek and Latin, The miss silk and satin, And you’ll soon be gazetted.

“When you grow up to be a man, Phil,” he would say to his son, “and I have grown old, you shall live in the big house and farm Stoke Ferry all to yourself. You stick to your trade like wax, my boy, and you’ll have a red face when you come to be old, and a sound liver, a strong jolly heart, aye, and your pocket full of yellow-boys, tew.”

When Philip was talked to like this he would go to work with hoe, spade, or sickle, as if were a young hero cutting himself a path to glory with his sword. His father’s words gave him thoughts which cheered him to his work far more than the black muddy beer which was sent out to them in stone or leather bottles. And sometimes, as he plodded across the fallow fields while the last red clouds in the west were fading into white, and while the dew was rising like a fog from the meadow grass, he would stop and fold his arms upon his breast, and, looking up to the sky, dream that he could see a farmhouse with a great straw yard and massive barns and countless heads of cattle.

But by daylight he gave himself no time for reverie. Even at nooning, when the labourers were enjoying their dinner and siestas, his mind was full of business, and questions streamed from his lips as water from a bucket overthrown.

“Phil will be a great man,” his father used to say; “he does his work like a free horse, an’ is allays peerin’ about to pick up wrinkles. His heart’s in his call, an’ that’s the head thing to look after.

But poor Phil was not destined to fulfil the farmer’s predictions; he was cut off when on the very threshold of life――stricken down by the hand of an assassin.

His connection with Nell Fulford had been a source of anxiety to the farmer long before his son’s death. It was a subject he never afterwards made reference to; but although he was silent on the subject he had not forgotten it.

One evening when Patty was away (she had gone to the hall to spend a day or two with Lady Aveline, at her ladyship’s special request), Jamblin had for his companion John Ashbrook.

Strange to say, on the evening in question there were no chance droppers in――the reason for this being, perhaps, the absence of Patty.

The two farmers were seated in the parlour before a bright, cheerful fire.

“Kitty,” said Jamblin, addressing himself to a red-faced, red-armed servant girl, who was kept more for use than ornament, “go down to the cellar and bring up a big jug of the October old ale out of that little cask in the corner.”

The October ale, which was several years old, and of unrivalled strength and flavour, never moistened throats except upon holiday occasions.

The girl knew her master disliked to be questioned, so taking a bunch of keys from the shelf, she glided out of the room and returned with the ale.

“Now, gell,” said her master, “go upstairs into my room, and on the top of the shelf of the left hand cupboard, you will find a jar of ’bacca in it, under a lead weight. Bring two or three screws of that, will you?”

It was real Latakia, which had been smuggled over from Turkey by a parson’s son, a midshipman in the navy, and presented to the farmer in return for hospitalities.

Kitty gave one stare of astonishment before she complied. She had never known the old man treat himself to the October ale and the Latakia tobacco on the same evening, but she said nothing, and hastened on her errand.

When she returned, Jamblin said――

“Reach down from the shelf in the parlour two of those cut glasses.”

This was too much for Kitty, who could hardly believe her ears. The cut glasses in question had never been used――so she had been told since the death of her master’s wife――they were called Mrs. Jamblin’s glasses.

“Do you mean the best cut glasses, sir?” inquired the girl, almost breathless with astonishment.

“Yes, you little fool!” roared the farmer. “What for d’ye want doddlin’ and starin’ like a stuck pig? I thought I spoke plain English tew.” The beer and tobacco were all placed on the oak table at the farmer’s elbow.

“Well, measter John,” said he, “it be’s a poor heart as never rejoices, and now we be free from them chaps who drop in at times when mebbe they’re not wanted, we’ll enjoy ourselves in our own humble way.”

The glasses were filled and Jamblin held his own up in the air and looked at the bright liquor it contained.

“I will gi’ ’ee a toast,” said he. “Here’s everybody in the world’s good health, ’cept farmer Nettlethorpe.”

They both drank the toast, after which John Ashbrook burst out into a loud laugh.

“Poor Nettlethorpe!” he exclaimed.

“Poor, indeed,” returned Jamblin. “I’ll tell ’ee why I don’t drink his good health. It is because I want farmer Nettlethorpe to die. He’s a puddin’ mean man, and tries to make his land as thin and poor as his cattle, and his cattle as poor and thin as himself.”

“He’s what I call an apron-stringed farmer,” said Ashbrook. “He was a grocer, and now he’s taken to farming. He’ll find it a poor catch.”

“You don’t say much, John, but what you do say aint a great ways off the mark. He will find it a poor catch for all he tries to strip two skins off a cow, and would stoop any day to take a farthing off a dunghill wi’ his teeth. I dare say ye’ve heard in yer Sunday travels ’em tell that he who changes his trade often makes soup in a basket.”

“If a man was bred and born a farmer,” said his companion, “and could tackle hold of the right end of the stick, and mek the quarters meet as should be, I don’t think he’d want to change his trade――that is, if he has got a farm worth working, but land ’ill beat any man.”

The old farmer gave a laugh of pleasure, disguised as a cough; then he asked for his pipe, and having filled the bowl with the Turkish herb, dipped the stem into the beer to sweeten the clayey morsel to his mouth.

He then leant back in his chair in an attitude of placid enjoyment. His friend filled his pipe and began smoking also.

For some little time neither of them spoke. Jamblin’s eyes, though half closed, were directed towards Ashbrook. The two human funnels were absorbed in a fragrant weed.

“I feel somehow, John, that I be gettin’ an old man, and may be I shan’t be able to look after Stoke Ferry for many more years. It’s of no use denying the fact or attempting to conceal it. I ain’t what I was, an’ ever since my poor boy’s death I aint had the heart as I used to ha’.”

“You must not talk like that, Mr. Jamblin; you are not so young as you were, it is true, but you are hale and hearty as yet.”

“As yet――that be a good term; but I ain’t got the pluck as I ought to ha’, an’ I’ve been thinking, lad――well I’ve been thinkin’ of a lot of things. Now there’s Patty, you know――――”

“Yes, and as good a girl as ever stepped.”

“That be right enough――I am glad to hear thee say so. Well, although I be old I ha’ got eyes in my head and know how many blue beans mek five――an’ I can see pretty plainly, John Ashbrook, that you are sweet on the gell, and it may be that she’s a bit partial to you. This is only as I guess,” he added, pointing over his shoulder with the end of his pipe.

“Be I right or be I wrong?” he said, sharply.

“Why of course you are quite right. I am glad you have broached the subject, which, to say the truth, I was about to enter upon myself. Mr. Jamblin, I need hardly tell you how dearly I love your daughter, I have done so for years past, but――――”

“But what? Don’t ’ee begin loike that, John. The only butt there is in the question is one filled with the best stingo, which is to be broached when the health of the bride has to be drunk.”

“It does one good when you talk like that,” cried Ashbrook, bursting out into a laugh.

The old man indulged in a merry chuckle also.

“But I must beg you to listen to me for a short time,” said Ashbrook. “You see, Mr. Jamblin, things are not so rosy with us at Oakfield as they used to be. There are many reasons for this. The farm has not been so profitable of late, and we’ve had some heavy losses. Poor Richard has not been the same man since the loss of his wife――you know, of course, she died of a broken heart.”

“Ah, poor gell, so I heard. That scoundrel Gregson, the burglary, his execution, enough to make one shudder to think on.”

“You know also that the man Peace who was here some time since――he as your son gave a thrashing to, he was concerned in the burglary at Oakfield.”

“Was he though?” cried Jamblin, taking the pipe out of his mouth and staring at the speaker.

“Yes he was, but let that pass. As I was saying, Richard, poor chap, took it in his head to have a turn at brickmaking. He fancied he had found a vein of earth well adapted for the purpose, and he’s sunk a deal of money on the speculation, which we shall none on us see back agen, I’m thinking.”

“Foolish lad, what does he understand about bricks?”

“Well, Mr. Jamblin, I am not a rich man but a poor one, and that has been my only reason for not asking your consent, you understand?”

“Umph, well yes, I think I do. Well, John, I’m sorry you’ve bin goin’ to the bad of late, but it can’t be helped; it aint no fault o’ yours, that I be quite sartin on. And as far as Patty is concerned, it won’t mek much difference.”

“She may have more wealthy suitors.”

“She may certainly, or she may not; but in any case it won’t make much difference. If you loike her, which I blieve ye do, and she loike you, we’ll strike a bargain.”

John Ashbrook shook the old farmer warmly by the hand.

“I cannot tell you how supremely happy you have made me,” he murmured, “and only wish I had a fortune to lay at your daughter’s feet.”

“But you’ve got time afore ye, lad. Ye’re young, and ha’ got common sense.”

“No one can be too clever for a farmer. I haven’t been in the world without knowing that.”

“You’re right, John. The more a man larns our trade the better he finds out how little he really knows, an’ I’ve often thought that if God gave a man the grace to live a thousand years, like Methusalem of old, he wouldn’t be able to tackle the ins and outs of the weathers, and manners, and stock, and markets, and all the rest of it. Well, John, most people who have saved a little money and bought a little land like to keep their children waiting for it till they die, and then folks wonder there aint more tears shed over burials. Now, I aint one of that sort. My daughter is now my only care, and if so be as she and you make up your minds to be one――which I dare say ye have for a long time past――ye shall have a fair start in life. You’ve got your head screwed on the right way, lad, and what I put by for poor Phil shall be yours.”

“Oh! Mr. Jamblin, I have no right to it.”

“I tell ’ee ye have, and that’s sartain. You shall have a good start, and as Oakfield Farm aint what it was, let Richard and your sister have it. You can work this for awhile under my direction, and in time, when I be gathered to my faythers――well, then it’ll be yours and Patty’s. There, I can’t say much fairer than that.”

The farmer sent forth vigorous puffs of smoke from his pipe after he had delivered himself of this speech, and his companion, who was perfectly overwhelmed by his generosity, could not for the moment find words to express his gratitude.

“I am sure I can never be sufficiently thankful to you, Mr. Jamblin,” he ejaculated.

“Nonsense, lad. Haven’t we known each other for years and years? The Jamblins and Ashbrooks ha’ been staunch friends for more than half a century. Your poor fayther and myself went to school together when mere yonkers――and that be a few weeks ago,” cried Jamblin, bursting out into a loud guffaw; “only a few weeks ago, John.”

“Ah, sir, time runs on pretty fast with most of us; and what appears but a few months or years perhaps bridges over a long gap in a man’s lifetime.”

“That be true, lad. Well, as I was a sayin’, the Jamblins and Ashbrooks ha’ bin firm friends for more than a lifetime, and setting aside Patty, I’ve neither chick nor child, and therefore she be my only consideration. Mek her a good husband, John, and I be sartin sure she’ll mek you a good wife; and so, lad, we ha’ a clear understanding. There, boy, my hand on it!”

The two friends shook hands once more, and they drank each other’s health in some whiskey toddy, and did not retire to rest till an unusually late hour.

Patty Jamblin returned on the following day, and after a cordial greeting the old farmer went abroad in the fields, leaving the lovers to themselves.

“I expect you and father have been enjoying yourselves to your hearts’ content during my absence,” said Patty to John Ashbrook.

“We’ve made ourselves as contented as we could under the circumstances,” returned Ashbrook.

“Ah――so I should suppose. You can do very well without me, you two cronies.”

“Indeed, we cannot, neither of us. But we have touched on a question during your absence which concerns both of us. Oh, Patty! I am thankful and grateful to Providence that we have spoken so freely to one another.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Just this. Your father has given his consent. There is now no impediment in the way of――――”

“Impediment! Pray tell me what I am to understand by this.”

“You cannot guess, then, my darling?”

Miss Jamblin coloured, and stammered out the monosyllable, “No.”

“I say he has given his consent freely and unconditionally. What say you to that?”

“I wish you would speak a little more plainly.”

“Oh, Patty! surely you who are so quick-witted will find it easy to divine my meaning. You do not need to be reminded of my devotion to you. You do not need me to plead my own cause, for, to say the truth, I am a very dunce in affairs of this sort. You do not require me to tell you how dearly and fondly I love you.”

“Upon my word, you are growing eloquent all of a sudden.”

“It is the first time I ever was, then; but, Patty, say something. Tell me, do you――――”

“Do I what?”

“Give your consent? There, dall it, I am a plain-spoken man, and am but a poor hand at pleading my own cause. You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” inquired the little coquette.

“Why, of course you do. Will you be mine?”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

He drew her towards him with his arm round her waist, and his heart going, as he afterwards said, “nineteen to the dozen,” he embraced her passionately.

“Your answer, darling. Give me an answer.”

“You are in such a mighty hurry, John. You don’t give one time for reflection.”

“But you have reflected long ago.”

“Ah well, there may be some truth in that.”

“There is――there is a great deal of truth in it. If you don’t know your own mind now you never will; but it’s of no use you making any attempt to oppose your father’s expressed wishes,” he added, with a smile and a kiss. “No dutiful daughter would do that, you know.”

“Oh, then, according to your showing I am to have no voice in the matter?”

“Your word is law――I obey it most implicitly; but you will not be so cruel as to――well, cast me off.”

“No, I don’t say that.”

“Well, then, what do you say?”

“That if I am not your wife, I’ll be no man’s wife, John. That’s what I say.”

Ashbrook uttered an expression of delight.

“Oh, Patty, my own, my dear, dear Patty!” he ejaculated.

“And so you and father have settled the business between you――eh?”

“No, do not misunderstand me. It was left for you to determine.”

“But I suppose now you had the vanity to believe that I shall do so in your favour.”

“I confess I had.”

“So I thought. Well, John, you are not mistaken, you see, and what did father say then?”

“Oh, he said a good deal more than I expected, and his kindness quite overpowered me. He spoke of poor Philip.”

“Ah, I thought he would do that,” said Miss Jamblin, her countenance changing in its expression. “I cannot forget Phil――he never will, rest assured of that. And what else did he say?”

“I told him of our altered circumstances.”

“That did not make any difference, I’ll be sworn.”

“None in the least. He said the money he had put by for his deceased son should be mine, and that I was not to trouble myself about being not so well off as I have been; but lor, Patty, it would take me a long time to tell you the whole of our conversation. It is enough to declare that he does not make money a consideration, or the need of it an impediment to our union.”

“Ah, John Ashbrook, my dear father may be a little wilful and opinionated, but his heart is right enough. No one knows that better than myself; but there, you know there is Richard and your sister Maude. What will they say?”

“That is all arranged. Richard is not the same man he was a few years ago, and, without Maude, I know not how he would get on at all.”

“He’s never got over the loss of Jane.”

“Never, and I fear never will. You see Jane was a fatalist, a believer in destiny, was strangely superstitious, believed in omens and signs and all that sort of things, and somehow or other at times I am afraid she has imbued my brother with the same notions.”

“You think so?”

“Sometimes I do, while at others I hope I am mistaken, but taken altogether it has been a bad business.”

“What! his marriage with Jane Ryan?”

“I don’t say that. He loved her if ever man did love a woman, and she was worthy of him, for a better, more true, and honest gell never broke the bread of life. This is one thing, but her heart was bruised and half-broken when she gave her hand to my poor brother.”

“Ah, John, a deep shadow has fallen over you and yours, even as it has done over me and mine, but these are things over which we have no control, and yet they both spring from the same cause or nearly so.”

“You are right, Patty. A shadow has fallen on Oakfield.”

“But we are no worse off than our betters――perhaps not so badly off, in many ways. A shadow has fallen over the inmates of Broxbridge Hall, and Lady Aveline is not without her troubles; neither is the earl, her grandfather.”

“I suppose not.”

“By no means. Did my father say anything about the lad that used to be with us――the boy Alf Purvis?”

“No, he did not mention his name.”

“What can have become of that young scapegrace? We have had no tidings of him since he left here with the dead hare tied round his neck.”

“How very remarkable!”

“It is singular, I must confess. I know father would be glad to learn something about him; but he never will, I suppose, now.”

“I fancy not, but he’s better lost than found, if all be true I’ve heard.”

[Sidenote: No. 44.]

“Yes, that’s right enough――at least, I suppose so,” cried Miss Jamblin, who after this was lost for some time in reflection.

“I am the happiest man alive,” exclaimed John Ashbrook. “You are to have your own way in everything――that has been agreed upon.”

“Has it? I am glad to hear you say so, because, you see, we all like to have our way.”

“Ah, but you are not to be crossed in anything, and, to say the truth, darling, it is not at all likely you will be. I love you too much for that.”

“Promises are one thing――――”

“And the performances of them are another――that’s what you were about to say.”

“You are very clever to be able to anticipate one’s thoughts,” said the farmer’s daughter, with a merry laugh, “but I think I may trust you.”

“Be assured you may. You will have no reason to repent of your choice, although I say it as should not say it, to make use of a common phrase.”

“I do not for a moment doubt it, John. I accept you with a right good will, and with all my heart.”

The young farmer embraced her fondly, and nothing now remained but for the happy day to be named.

In a few days after this it became generally known to all who took interest in such matters that John Ashbrook and old Jamblin’s daughter were shortly to become man and wife.

There were of course a number of disappointed swains, who had to repine at the loss they had sustained, but we are happy to be able to state, upon reliable authority, that no serious results attended their discomfiture. They solaced themselves by seeking “fresh fields and pastures new,” and bore their fate with becoming fortitude.

The wedding ceremony was performed on a grand scale, and on the day on which it took place Stoke Ferry Farm was filled with guests of every denomination. Lord Ethalwood honoured the nuptials with his presence, and his grand-daughter, Aveline, was one of the bridesmaids; Maude Ashbrook, and her brother Richard, were of course there, and the good people in the neighbourhood had not seen such a gathering or such a scene of festivity for many a long day.

The bride looked lovely, as all brides do under similar circumstances, or said to do, which is much the same thing.

Farmer Jamblin was a little thoughtful, or it might be said downcast, this being attributable to painful reminiscences in respect to his son; but when the ceremony had been performed, he rallied and was as cheerful as the best of them.

After the bride and bridegroom had started on their wedding tour, he became silent and thoughtful again. He had, however, for his companions Maude and Richard Ashbrook, who had arranged to stay at Stoke Ferry for a few days to keep him company.

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Chapter LXXXIV

PEACE’S LAWLESS CAREER――CAPTURE, TRIAL, AND CONVICTION――HIS ATTEMPTED ESCAPE FROM WAKEFIELD.

We must return again to the hero of our story. To say the truth the life of this man is little more than a record of his escapades, troubles, and trials, and a detail of the various robberies in which he was engaged. The scoundrel’s hypocrisy forms a large element in his character.

He was professedly a religious man; the neighbours thought him so, and possibly he thought so too; so he associated with the good folk who congregated in the sacred edifice, but never made himself conspicuous.

Peace trifled with Fate. She had blessed him with worldly goods, though it must be confessed that they were not his own, and his consummate impudence led to his apprehension.

One of the inspectors who had been concerned in his capture, expressed his opinion of Peace’s character in these words:――

“There is not another demon in Europe like him, unless it’s the Czar. What sort of scoundrels they have in Asia I don’t know.”

The words were graphic, but they were spoken with such vehemence as to show that even the London police were surprised at the revelations which were made.

Another said, “He mistook his hunting-ground; there is not sufficient room for brigandage in England; he ought to have gone to Sicily.” The general opinion of the police was one rather of wonder mixed with surprise, but with a certain admiration for the fellow’s cleverness in his profession.

The more inquiries that are made into the past history of Peace, the more does it appear that he was a head and shoulders above the ordinary criminal. He appears to have had ingrained in his nature a cruelty of mind and firmness of purpose which nothing could baffle. He always objected to poverty, and as he did not seem to be over fond of hard work――though at times he certainly did follow his business of a picture-frame maker with something like assiduity――he chose a career of crime as the most fitted to maintain him in luxury.

When eighteen years of age he lived with his mother at Walker-street, Sheffield, and was employed in Millsand’s rolling mill.

At this time he developed a passionate love for music, the instrument on which he most excelled being the violin. He was welcomed at the various public-houses in the vicinity on account of the readiness with which he was always willing to exhibit his accomplishment without direction, and there are many people residing now in Sheffield who can remember with pleasure evenings spent in Peace’s company.

He was at this time known by a little goat-carriage in which he was accustomed to drive the child who was his pupil, and who was introduced to the reader in a previous chapter.

This singular equipage usually attracted great attention, and many no doubt remember him by his goat excursions.

His course from this time became a downward one, and from one excess he fell into another. He was living with his wife and stepson on good terms, and ostensibly his business was that of a picture-frame maker.

He became acquainted with a neighbour who was notoriously dishonest, and the pair spent a good deal of time together.

They planned a daring robbery of wine, which they managed to successfully carry out. The booty was concealed in a field until the hue and cry should have ceased.

For some considerable time he and his accomplice managed to carry on their depredations with impunity; but justice, however, at length overtook them, and again Peace was brought to the bar of justice.

Indeed he passed, as we have already signified, a very considerable portion of his time in prison; but penal servitude in his case, as in so many other instances, did not appear to have a deterrent effect.

No sooner was he released than after a short period of honest industry he again had recourse to his thieving propensity. We subjoin a report of his trial and sentence.

BURGLARY AT RUSHOLME.

George Parker, alias Charles Peace (aged 30), and Alfred Newton (aged 25), were charged with having burglariously entered the house of Elizabeth Brooks, at Rusholme, near Manchester, and stolen therefrom a quantity of silver plate and other property. Mr. Higginson prosecuted; Mr. Fearnley defended the prisoner Parker, and Newton was defended by Mr. Campbell Foster.

Mr. John Aitken, a gentleman residing with Miss Brooks, stated that about six o’clock on the morning of the 3rd of June he discovered that an entrance had been effected into the dining room by forcing open the window, and upon examination it was discovered that a coat, some papers, and a cigar case belonging to himself, and a picture, a cash-box, fourteen silver spoons, and two sugar tongs, the property of Miss Brooks, had been stolen. Information was given to the police, and a search being made in the fields near the house, nearly the whole of the property was found in an old sewer. Officers were set to watch the place, and on the prisoners approaching the spot with a hamper for the purpose of removing the property, they were apprehended, and after a violent resistance safely lodged in Bridewell. The missing cigar-case was found in the possesion of Parker, who stated in the first instance that he found it, and afterwards that it had bean given to him.

On behalf of the prisoner Parker witnesses were called to prove that he came from Sheffield to Manchester only a few hours before he and Newton were captured, and several witnesses were called to prove that Newton was in Sheffield at the very time that the burglary was committed, and did not leave that town for Manchester until the next morning.

It was contended on behalf of the latter prisoner that he would have no motive for committing the crime with which he was charged, as he was a well-to-do tradesman, having money in the bank. The explanation given of their attempting to remove the stolen property from the sewer was that they had accidentally found it whilst taking a walk together.

Both prisoners were found guilty of receiving the property knowing it to have been stolen.

A former conviction was proved against Parker, and he was sentenced to six years’ penal servitude. Newton was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

Peace was sent to the Old Trafford Gaol. We must pass over the period of his imprisonment for this offence, as other and more important events in his life have to be chronicled.

Peace, though a desperate character, could appear as meek and mild a man as ever handled a six-shooter.

The result of his playing the good boy was that he was let out on ticket-of-leave, and society once more suffered for the relaxation of the law’s severity.

After his Old Trafford sentence he returned to Sheffield, and took a small shop in Kenyon-alley. There he used to amuse his acquaintances by showing the dexterity with which he could pick the most stubborn lock. He soon afterwards resumed his old practices, proving the truth of the old adage, “Once a thief always a thief.”

He carried on his business for some time in Kenyon-alley, and it was while here that he displayed some considerable amount of ability as an actor. Mr. John Tait, schoolmaster at Consett, gave an account in the Consett Guardian of a visit Peace paid to his school. He says, “Many of my old scholars well remember Peace performing the gravedigger scene in “Hamlet.” His acting was admirable, but the contortions of his countenance and the amazing transformations he effected in his visage baffle all description.” Mr. Tait further states he visited Mr. Dawson’s school at Spennymuir about the same time, and performed the same part as he did at his school, with the addition of decamping with two musical instruments he had borrowed, and attempting to persuade a girl to elope with him.

His life in the several convict prisons in which he was confined would fill a volume, but as we have given an account of his sojourn at Preston and Dartmoor, this will suffice for the present.

In serving his time at different periods, Peace made the acquaintance of the prisons of Millbank, Chatham (where he was flogged), and Gibraltar.

His handiness caused him then as at other times to be employed as a sort of general utility man about the prisons, doing odd jobs in which tact and dexterity were needed.

It was after his earlier convictions that Peace was sent to Gibraltar, where, with other convicts he was employed on Government work, and was there known to be anything but a quiet sort of man to have in charge.

This, however, must be considered an exception to the rule, as in most cases he was tolerably well conducted when undergoing the various terms of imprisonment.

At Gibraltar he especially incurred the hatred of a servant there, named Baynes, who, he found, was stealing firewood.

It appeared that Government allowed firewood in certain proportions for the use of the men stationed there, and Peace, after watching him, caught him in the act of taking firewood and disposing of the same.

He informed the authorities of this, and the result was that Baynes was discharged. However, by some means or other the latter became employed as a warder at one of the great convict establishments, and subsequently our hero found himself under his care.

It may be imagined that, though a convict’s life is far from a pleasant one, that of Peace was, if anything, more unpleasant than usual. The warder paid off one or two old scores, and never let an opportunity pass of showing his aversion, and making Peace’s life as uncomfortable as possible.

However, in the due course of time, the convict was discharged, and returned to Sheffield.

In the summer of the year before his arrest at Blackheath, Peace was in the City on business, and had occasion to pass over London Bridge. His hands were not covered, for at this time he wore no gloves; he was simply clean shaven, and well dressed. Midway on the bridge, who should meet him but the warder who so much detested him?

Of all the men he would rather not have faced, this, with the exception of a Sheffield detective, was the one.

However, he walked straight on, and though the warder looked at him, and actually turned, he never stopped, and thus once more Peace escaped detection and apprehension. Had he been “tackled” there and then, doubtless he would have made a desperate resistance, and what the result would have been can only be a matter of conjecture――for at this time he never went out unarmed.

When in confinement Peace, during his leisure moments, used to employ himself in studying mechanics. He was, as we have already signified, exceedingly fond of watching machinery in motion, and had a good idea, with regard to its essentials――he having, in the earlier part of his life, worked at a rolling mill.

At Dartmoor he suggested some very important improvements in the machinery used there.

His notions were tried, and then adopted, and up to the present time they have not been superseded, there having been no improvement upon them.

Indeed, many of his inventions were adopted in other of the convict establishments.

Whatever Peace undertook, whether it was a burglary or a piece of other handiwork, he always did it well, and in that sense he may be said to have been a successful man, but in that sense alone.

During his imprisonment for the Rusholme robbery his poor wife had a hard time of it. In addition to the boy, Willie Ward, she had a child by Peace to look after.

The lonely wife had to sell up her home to provide the means of defence at his trial, and afterwards she began to keep a shop――the little bow-windowed shop so well known in Kenyon-alley. Hither came, one night in the summer of 1864, the returned convict, released on ticket-of-leave.

It was now that Peace again commenced the picture-frame making, which was the ostensible business of the remainder of his life, and for a time he seems to have been industrious and to have done well.

The wretched criminal had many good chances of placing himself in a respectable position, but was so steeped in crime that he would not avail himself of the chances thrown into his way.

For some time he led a more creditable life; he worked for Closer’s, in Gibraltar-street, and afterwards he was manager for Peters, in Westbar-green. Then he engaged a workshop at the end of Kenyon-alley, and found so much to do that from having only a boy he employed two journeymen to help him.

In this way he got a good business together, and the place being too small, he made the unfortunate venture of taking a shop in West-street, two doors from Rockingham-street.

The moment he got there his luck seemed to turn, and the takings were not so great in a week as they had been in Kenyon-alley in a day.

This exasperated him, for he was not a man who could ever do upon a small income. What he did with all the money he obtained by his extensive robberies must for ever remain a mystery.

Not satisfied with the business in West-street he gave the shop up, and migrated, with his family, to Manchester. He took with him a stock of frames, but he had not been there a fortnight when he was once more in the hands of the officers of the law for doing a job at a house in Lower Broughton. He was caught in the act, and his excuse for such clumsiness was that he, who was usually strictly temperate, had partaken of several glasses of whiskey and water, and did not know what he was doing.

We subjoin an extract from a Manchester paper, containing a brief report of the trial and conviction of Peace:――

George Parker, alias Charles Peace, was indicted for breaking into the dwelling-house of Mr. W. R. Gemmell, Addison-terrace, Victoria Park, on the night of the 20th of August. Mr. Gorst prosecuted; and Mr. Torr defended.

The servants and Mr. Gemmell were disturbed about 4 o’clock in the morning by a noise outside the house. On going downstairs they found that some person had got in through the scullery window, and that £3 7s. 4d. in money, an opera glass, a pipe, and other things, had been stolen from the dining-room. The prisoner was arrested near the house, about five o’clock, by Police-constable Norris, who found upon him the whole of the stolen property, and several burglarious tools.

Mr. Torr raised a point as to whether the case was one of burglary or of simple robbery from a dwelling-house. It appeared that the scullery window was a horizontal sliding one; and his lordship ruled that the mere sliding back of the window, whether fastened or not, was sufficient to constitute a burglary. It was not necessary that anything should be broken――the mere act of removing anything that prevented an entrance was enough. The jury found the prisoner guilty of burglary.

The prisoner, a grey-headed man, begged in piteous accents for mercy for himself and his children.

His lordship said he found that the prisoner was convicted at Liverpool in 1859, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment; in 1854 he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment; and before that he had been convicted of housebreaking. If he had really been penitent, it was not likely that he would have committed the present offence, and that, too, in a manner which showed that he was prepared to go all lengths in housebreaking. Not only, however, did he commit this burglary, but on the very same night he broke into another house, from which he stole some plate; but that charge would not be gone into. Under the circumstances, his lordship thought he could do no less than sentence him to be kept in penal servitude for the term of seven years. The prisoner then implored permission to be allowed to see his family, and his lordship said the proper authorities would decide that point.

The court then rose.

Peace, when he parted with his wife after his conviction, was sadly borne down. He bitterly regretted having indulged in strong drink. He had indeed put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains.

“It’s no use blubbering,” he said to his weeping wife; “it’s done and can’t be helped. I was a fool to muddle myself, and make such a miserable mess of the business; but drink will knock over any man. Look here, now, aint it aggravating to be lagged for years because a chap was stupid enough to be boozing in the morning? It’s hard lines――――”

“It’s hard for me, as well as yourself,” returned his companion. “What is to become of us?”

“You must do the best you can, old girl; and when I return I’ll make it up to you. I’ll lead a new life, and cut this sort of business.”

“It’s time you did, Charles. If I thought――――”

“Thought be hanged!” interrupted the convict, petulantly; “I tell you I will, and so there’s an end of the matter.”

“Seven years is a long time.”

“I know that, you stupid; I know it from sad experience, and don’t want you to remind me of it. All this is sad enough, but my trouble is about you. It is not so much for myself that I care, but for you. Not, mind you, that a seven years’ stretch is a thing to be proud of or pleased with. It’s a hard sentence, that’s what it is. Ain’t it, guv’nor?”

This last observation was made to a warder who had charge of him.

“I don’t know that it is, considering all things,” returned the warder.

“Oh, no; you chaps never do think a cove gets more than he deserves.”

“Well, you see, there were previous convictions against you――that’s why you’ve got it so hot.”

“I was driven to it. Business was bad, and I was without a mag.”

“That’s no reason for laying your hands upon other people’s property,” suggested the warder; “but I don’t want to pain you by my reproaches. I am sorry for your misfortune――sorry for your wife and child’s sake.”

“Thank you, sir; you are very good, I’m sure,” observed Mrs. Peace, wiping the fast-falling tears from her swollen eyelids.

“It is not the man only who suffers――it is his family,” said the warder. “They are to be pitied the most.”

“What’s the use of pity?” cried Peace. “Did you ever know it do any good? It aint worth a rap――pity indeed. No one will help her or me――not that I know of.”

“I hope there is some one. Have you any friends?” This last observation was addressed to the woman.

“No, none. None that can give me any assistance. Those I know are as poor as myself.”

“Now, then, prisoners, this way!” shouted out a man in the lobby in a stentorian voice. “This way for prisoners.”

Peace bade a hasty farewell to his wife, kissed his infant daughter, and was conducted to the “Black Maria,” which was standing at one of the side doors of the Court-house.

Mrs. Peace returned home in a very wretched frame of mind, as may be readily imagined. She did not know how to eke out a living for a short time after the conviction of her husband.

She kept a little shop in Long Millgate, Manchester, but before long she went back to Sheffield, and got employment in charing, and in the bottling department of a wine merchant. There were some few who took compassion on her, and strove to put something in her way.

She was an industrious frugal woman, who did her best under most trying and disheartening circumstances.

At first she lived in Prippet-lane, but afterwards in Orchard-street, where Peace’s mother lived.

In 1865, shortly before leaving Kenyon-alley, there had been a son――John Charles――born, but he did not live to see the return of his father.

Peace was taken to Wakefield gaol. The usual formalities were gone through, which were much the same as those described in some of the earlier chapters of this work.

Peace, as we have observed, was a handy man enough, and this was soon found out by the authorities of Wakefield prison.

For the first few weeks after his introduction he was set to work at oakum-picking; but as time went on, and the warders and deputy-governor became better acquainted with his habits, he was set to work at whitewashing, painting, and doing other odd jobs in the prison. He contrived to make himself generally useful, and in addition to this he succeeded in impressing the chaplain with the fact that he was a very devout person, who had seen the error of his ways, and who was moreover duly impressed with the necessity there was for him to reform.

He had been convicted thrice; this fact he could not conceal; but when once he had another chance given him he said he would avail himself of it, and that nothing in the world should ever induce him to stray again from the path of rectitude.

He talked so plausibly, entering into elaborate disquisitions upon certain portions of the Scriptures, that the chaplain was fairly imposed upon by the hypocritical prisoner.

Some repairs were being done in the prison, and Peace was one of the gang employed for this purpose. He worked industriously with his mates for some days.

Although he was a cunning, clever rascal, and was unscrupulous and daring to boot, he does not appear to have rivalled the celebrated Jack Sheppard, as far as attempts at escaping from prison are concerned.

As he was at work the thought crossed his mind that he might succeed in effecting his escape, and when once this idea entered his head he did not rest till he laid out his plan of operation.

The repairs he was executing gave him an opportunity of smuggling a short ladder into his cell. No one for a moment suspected what he was meditating, and, indeed, it would appear that much more latitude was allowed him than usually falls to the share of a convict.

He managed to secure a piece of zinc, and took an opportunity of nicking it so that it would answer the purpose of a saw. When shut up for the night he set industriously to work.

The cell in which he was confined was not of a modern structure, with stone walls and an arched stone roof, such as are now invariably used in all our convict prisons.

The roof was plaster; in the centre of it ran a beam. Peace had ascertained this before he began his operations. It did not take him long to make a hole in the ceiling. When this had been done he set to work with his zinc saw to cut through the beam.

The cell was one of the top ones; it was in close proximity to the roof. This he had also ascertained――if he could once get on the roof, he felt the rest would be an easy matter.

The chances are that he would not have succeeded in any case, but he was bent on his project, and was in a state of nervous excitement until it was carried out.

“I’ll do them yet,” he murmured. “If I gain the roof I shall be able to give them the slip, and there will be one prisoner less in Wakefield gaol――that’s all. Ha, ha!” he laughed, at the prospect of doing his janitors.

For the greater part of the night he was at work, but the progress he made was so slow, in consequence of the clumsy instrument with which he worked, that daylight came before he had made a hole sufficiently large for him to pass through.

“The warders will be round presently,” he ejaculated; “and if I am not clean off before they make their appearance I am lost.”

He set to work with renewed vigour; the perspiration fell in thick beads from his forehead and temples. An exclamation of delight escaped him: the aperture was sufficiently large for his purpose.

He crept through the hole, and then seemed to breathe more freely. He laid hold of the top rail of the ladder, which he was in the act of drawing up after him, when the cell door was opened, and an official exclaimed in a voice of alarm――

“Halloa there――what’s this? Come down!”

Peace made no reply. The moments were now precious to him. The officer advanced and endeavoured to seize the ladder. Peace gave him a blow with it in the chest, and knocked him down.

The man uttered an exclamation of rage and pain. But Peace did not wait for further parley: he drew up the ladder and ran along the roof in the greatest state of excitement.

After running over the roof he got on to the prison wall, and he was making his way along there when a terrible misfortune befel him: the bricks were loose, and it was impossible for him to keep his balance or maintain his foothold. He fell. It was supposed that he had fallen outside.

There was by this time a hue and cry after him. Consternation sat on the visages of the warders, and the whole place was soon in an uproar.

The deputy-governor asked what was the matter. The warders said that a prisoner had escaped.

“How and by what means?” cried the deputy-governor.

Nobody appeared to know. Davis, the warder who had been pushed down by Peace, not chosing to stop and explain matters, hastened at once into the governor’s presence, and made him acquainted with the facts which had come under his knowledge. After this he ran round the outside of the prison in search of Peace, whom he did not succeed in finding.

Peace had really fallen inside the prison wall, not far from where some servants were looking out from the door of the governor’s house; but, notwithstanding their close proximity to him, they had not seen him either before or after his fall, the reason for this being that their attention was directed away from him.

The general impression was at this time that our hero had succeeded in making his escape, and the governor and deputy-governor were greatly incensed at what they termed the carelessness of the men in charge of the convicts.

The prison officials were in no enviable frame of mind; they expected to be called over the coals, and were ransacking their brains for excuses to offer.

Peace, finding that the governor’s servants had not observed him, determined upon a bold stroke. With the cunning of a hunted fox he slipped past the room in which they were at this time, entered the governors’ house, and ran upstairs.

No one for a moment supposed that he was loitering about the premises. Indeed, everyone was fairly puzzled, and could not in any way account for his sudden and mysterious disappearance.

People were started off at once in quest of the fugitive.

Upon Peace reaching one of the upstair rooms of the house, he stripped off his prison clothes and dressed himself in a suit of the governor’s.

This done, he watched patiently for an opportunity of escape, but none came.

A throng of persons were in the lower rooms of the habitation, and, for the present at least, escape was impossible.

Even if he had the temerity to drop from the window, he would be sure to be recaptured, for there were numbers of persons――policemen and warders――gathered round the walls of the gaol.

Peace was wild with fury. He was within sight of liberty, which was, however, denied him.

He thought it best to remain concealed in his hiding-place till the aspect of affairs changed.

But no change appeared likely to take place.

An hour passed.

Then another half hour, at the expiration of which the room door was suddenly opened, and several piercing screams proceeded from a maid-servant, in whose room Peace was secreted.

He strove in vain to silence the girl by placing his hand over her mouth for the purpose of stifling her cries.

But the attempt proved futile. She was too much alarmed, and her voice was so shrill that it would have awakened one of the seven sleepers.

“Hold your deuced tongue, you little fool!” exclaimed Peace. “Nobody will hurt you.”

But the mischief was already done. It is just possible that the maid might have connived at his escape if she had considered twice about the matter; as it was, he was lost.

He knew and felt this, as the noise of ascending footsteps fell upon his ears.

The governor, with a cohort of prison officials, now entered the apartment.

Peace cut such a rueful figure, and presented altogether such a comical appearance in the governor’s clothes, which were a world too wide for him, in addition to being too long, in this respect resembling two towns on the Continent, namely Toulouse and Toulon, that more than one of the party could not refrain from laughing, the governor first setting the example himself.

“So, sir,” said he, this is how you repay the kindness shown to you――is it?”

“Oh, I am very sorry for what I’ve done,” said Peace, in a whining tone of voice, “but liberty is sweet, and penal servitude is a sore trial. I hope you will take a merciful view of the matter, for I don’t suppose it would have made much difference to anybody if I had got clean away――as it is I am to be pitied.”

“You are a hypocritical, worthless fellow,” observed the governor; “and the sooner we are rid of you the better. You are not worthy of consideration, and as to kindness, it’s thrown away upon you. But whose clothes is the rascal wearing?” he observed, as it suddenly occurred to him that the garments looked very much like his own.

“He’s got on your clothes, sir,” said one of the warders.

“Upon my word, his impudence exceeds all bounds,” cried the governor in a fury.

“I couldn’t find any others to put on,” whined Peace. I’ll take them off at once.”

He began to undress, slipped out of the garments in question, and put on his prison attire.

“Has he any accomplices?” inquired the governor.

“I think not, sir,” answered Davis.

“I have a great mind to recommend a sound flogging.”

“Oh, pray don’t, sir; I ask your pardon. Pray have pity on me, if you please. I declare most positively that I intended to lead a new life, to reform, if I had got back into the world, and I intend to do so, under any circumstances. I pledge my word as to this.”

“Your word!” exclaimed the governor, in ineffable disgust. “Your word, indeed! There, take him away; place him in one of the refractory cells.”

Upon hearing these words Peace made a most piteous appeal to the governor, who, in reply, told him that he might think himself fortunate at being spared a flogging.

The refractory or punishment cells, as they are termed, have double doors, which are kept locked to effectually prevent any communication from without. The prisoner, on entering one of these dark cells, which do not admit a single beam of light when the doors are closed upon him, finds everything as silent as the grave.

The furniture of these wretched places consists of an iron bedstead, securely fixed in the floor, and a water closet.

There is also a bell to communicate with the officers of the prison, and a trap in the door to convey food, as in the other cells.

When under confinement in these places the prisoners are kept upon bread and water.

The bedding at night consists of a straw mattrass and a rug, handed in at nine o’clock in the evening and taken away in the morning, when a tub of water is given to the prisoners for the purpose of performing their ablutions.

Peace was conducted back to the gaol by the warders, one of whom unlocked the door of one of the refractory cells, and the wretched prisoner was thrust into the dark and cheerless receptacle.

Without doubt even a temporary or short imprisonment in a dark cell is a terrible punishment to most men.

When Peace heard the door slammed to his heart sank within him. A cold shudder passed through his frame as he breathed the mephitic black air, which seemed to be more like a fluid than an atmosphere.

His allowance of bread and water had been given him as he made the acquaintance for the first time of his dark prison-house.

“Oh!” he exclaimed; “and to think it should come to this! Had it not been for those loose bricks I should be breathing the fresh air now――be at liberty――but this is, indeed, most horrible. Ugh! this wretched darkness――this appalling gloom!”

He sat down on the side of his bed and pressed his hands to his temples, which were throbbing painfully. He remained for some time lost in thought.

“I am but a poor, silly fool after all,” he presently ejaculated. “Why should a man like me shudder at the darkness. What does it matter when one’s asleep whether there be light or not? How long am I to remain here, I wonder, and what will be their next move?”

He endeavoured in vain to penetrate the gloom――endeavoured to make out the objects in his cell, but all to no purpose.

It was the first time in his life that he had been immured in a refractory cell――he had heard the horrors of the place described by those who had suffered confinement in such places――now he had to learn them by his own bitter experience.

“After all it is better than being bashed (flogged),” said he, “but it is bad enough, and a little of it goes a long way.”

“If I keep still I shall be benumbed with cold. I must endeavour to get some exercise.”

He groped to the wall, and keeping his hand on it, went round and round like a caged wolf. This exercise seemed to afford him some temporary relief, which, however, was but of a transient nature. He groaned and gnashed his teeth――the silence and gloom seemed almost insupportable. He sat himself once more on the side of his bed.

“What have I done that I should be punished thus?” he ejaculated. “Endeavour to gain my liberty. Every person would do that if he saw a chance; he’d be a born idiot if he did not.”

He sat rocking himself to and fro――trying not to think of anything, for now the miserable nature of his position seemed to fall upon him with additional force.

“If they would only let me have one ray of light, however feeble, I would not complain. Nay, I would be satisfied, but this impenetrable gloom is more than mortal man can bear. I shall go mad. In a short time they will let me out of this place a howling maniac.”

He stretched himself on his bed, and endeavoured to sleep, but every now and then he started as if an adder had stung him; he started and groaned, then he turned round, covered his face with his handkerchief and remained quiet for awhile.

If he could only sleep he would be satisfied, but he found this impossible. The place was cold, damp, and cheerless.

He arose and crept towards the door of the cell. What would he give to see it opened and have free passage accorded him?

He listened at the door for some time; he could not detect the faintest sound, save the beatings of his own heart.

He shouted out as loudly as he could, and his voice reverberated through the cell, making strange and uncouth echoes.

He beat his fist violently against the door, the only effect of which was to bruise his hands; no one answered――there was nothing for him but darkness, silence, and solitude.

“They have no compassion, no feeling, and have left me here to die!” he ejaculated. “Oh, the merciless wretches!”

A thousand fugitive thoughts flitted through his brain; the incidents of his life were pictured before him with inconceivable rapidity.

He had some feelings of remorse, and made good resolutions for his future conduct, which were afterwards broken, like others he had made when in trial and suffering, and now remorse and memory contracted themselves on one dark spot in Charles Peace’s history.

Fear came upon him, an icy tremour crept through his frame, and a feeling of faintness came over him.

Once more the past rushed by with tenfold force. All this was bad enough, but worse followed.

He fancied something supernatural passed him like a cold blast.

His limbs shook as with palsy, and his teeth chattered. Thick beads of perspiration oozed from his forehead and temples, and coursed down his cheeks.

He cried most piteously for help. He said the cell was full of evil spirits――uncouth forms were flitting about him――horrible faces were grinning hideously at him. He screamed and cursed, and prayed, and dashed himself frantically against the door, and ran round his cell like a mad person. But no one came to his assistance. He flung himself once more on his bed, and uttered a plaintive moan.

How long a time he had passed in his miserable prison house he could not possibly tell――to him it appeared an age. He was, however, aroused from his state of lethargy by the cell door being suddenly flung open, and when this had been done he beheld Davis――the man he had knocked down with the ladder――peering in. The warder tossed in the rug which was to cover him for the night.

Peace sprang from his rude couch, and rushed towards the door.

“You’ll kill me, that’s what you’ll do,” he said, in a whining voice.

“How long am I to be shut up in this cursed place? Tell me that. How long?”

“I don’t know――the governor has not determined.”

“It’s cruel――monstrous, inhuman.”

“It’s your own fault, you’ve nobody to blame but yourself.”

“Don’t go. Pray, don’t go.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m not well――want to see the doctor.”

“You are all right. Don’t think to gammon me again.”

“It isn’t gammon. I pledge you my word that it’s the solemn truth. May I see the governor?”

“He’s not in the way just now, and I don’t suppose he would see you if he were. I am sorry for you, and thought better things of you. You’ve had every indulgence.”

“I know it, and am grateful for it.”

The warder laughed.

“Don’t jeer at my misfortunes. May I have a light?”

“Certainly not; I can answer that question. No lights are allowed in the refractory cells. You have your answer, and so――――”

The warder suddenly slammed the door to, and Peace was left in darkness again.

“Wretches――barbarians――inhuman monsters!” he ejaculated, and in the bitterness of the moment he felt disposed to cry.

The prison authorities were, however, more considerate and merciful to him than perhaps he had any reason to expect.

After two days’ confinement in the refractory cell he was taken out and placed in an ordinary prison cell, and in a few days after this he left the gaol with a batch of convicts, who were bound for Millbank. The officials at Wakefield were but too glad to be rid of him.

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Chapter LXXXV

PEACE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH THE INTERIOR OF MILLBANK PENITENTIARY――A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRISON.

Millbank Penitentiary, as it was termed, is now a thing of the past. The new prison at Wormwood Scrubs will supersede a place of some historic history. Probably not many Londoners of the present generation know the history of the huge ugly building which occupied the left bank of the Thames between the Horseferry-road and Vauxhall-bridge.

It figures on the maps as a series of six pentagonal structures arranged round a central sexagon.

The forbidding structure was, until very recently, an ordinary prison, whither convicts were sent for separate confinement for the first nine months of their sentences of penal servitude, before they were drafted off to the convict prisons at Portland, Chatham, Portsmouth, or Dartmoor.

Its history as a “Penitentiary” closed more than thirty years ago, when Sir James Graham told the House of Commons it was a failure.

The place itself was one of the early results of Howard’s efforts to improve the condition of prisoners, and all the methods of prison discipline which have since been practised have been associated with it.

Howard withdrew from the scheme before even the site had been fixed on, and it was taken up by Jeremy Bentham, who wished to realise his idea of the Panopticon or Inspection House, “in which any number of persons may be kept within reach of being inspected during every moment of their lives.”

Bentham agreed with the Government to build a prison, and bought the land at Millbank of Lord Salisbury for £12,000, but the scheme fell through, though eventually the Penitentiary was built, and received its first batch of convicts in June, 1816.

In its management the new institution was meant as an experiment in the humanitarian treatment of crime.

The place was not to be a prison, but a penitentiary, and the convicts were not so much to be prisoners as penitents. Men who knew trades were to work at them and teach others.

Captain Griffiths, the present Deputy-Governor, in his “Memorials of Millbank,” just published, describes it as at this time “a huge plaything; a toy for a parcel of philanthropic gentlemen, to keep them busy during their spare hours.”

Visitors were taken to it as a show-place, where the prisoners read and went through religious exercises to the great edification of the company.

At Christmas they were regaled with roast beef and plum pudding, after which they passed a vote of thanks to Archdeacon Potts, the visitor, and sang “God save the King.”

Punishments were rarely inflicted, and then only after report to the visitor. The first prisoner who was released from the penitentiary was a woman who, being dressed in her new clothes, was taken round to see her fellow-penitents, who were duly addressed by Sir Archibald Macdonald, the visitor, on the improving spectacle.

Next day as she left the place of her temporary detention the other women were at their cell windows, and vociferously cheered the first subject of the new discipline as she went forth into the world. Convicts thus treated soon began to give themselves airs.

One charged with stealing the matron’s tea was so hurt as to be thrown into fits. Some of the women refused to have their hair cut short, and were allowed to retain their locks.

One Sunday the Chancellor of the Exchequer and some friends were at the prison service when a riot arose from the objection of some women to brown bread. The Chancellor addressed the men after the women had been removed, and promised to represent their complaint to the Home Secretary. The rebellious spirit, however, continued, and eventually had to be suppressed by punishments. The failure was charged on the officials, not on the system, and the Penitentiary continued to be conducted, as Captain Griffiths says, like a big school.

The populace called it “Mr. Holford’s fattening-house,” and it was suggested that the guards and warders were not needful to keep the rogues from getting out, but to prevent honest people from rushing in.

One of the services which Millbank has rendered in return for the half million of money squandered on it may be said to be the complete explosion of the idea on which penitentiaries were based.

Millbank was the first penitentiary, and the last, in the full sense of the word.

From the very first the place was a perpetual source of anxiety and dispute.

Before it was finished Sir Robert Smirke had to be called in to rebuild it, and it had only been opened a few years when one of the most terrible epidemics in prison history broke out among its occupants, necessitating their removal to the hulks.

When it was again occupied the same weak system seems to have prevailed.

The power of persuasion to reform criminals was thoroughly believed in, and nobody seemed to doubt that a year or two in Millbank would change any rogue into an honest man, if he were at all capable of reformation.

Only such as were considered hopeful were sent to the Penitentiary, and it required the failures of years to convince the public mind that the system of petting and patronising was the wrong one.

Parliament had not even given the governor the power to inflict corporal punishment; and a Parliamentary committee reported that the situation of convicts in Millbank “cannot be considered penal; it is a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.” In 1826 the prisoners began to revolt even against restriction.

For some years the place was the scene of continual rebellions and disturbances, and Parliament at length authorised whipping.

[Sidenote: No. 45.]

This was inflicted in the first instance on a man named Sheppard, who had beaten an officer in presence of other prisoners, but it was done with great gentleness, and when it was over the scoundrel made an edifying address to his fellow-prisoners.

One of the most celebrated cases of incorrigible perversity was that of Julia St. Clair Newman, which was often discussed in Parliament, and investigated by a select committee of the House of Lords.

She was apparently a Creole who had been educated in France, and came to England as a swindler. She looked like a gentlewoman, but had been imprisoned several times before she was sent to the penitentiary to be reformed.

Here her conduct alternated between fits of uncontrollable fury and passionate appeals for sympathy.

She feigned illness, pretended to be insane; sometimes embraced the female warders vehemently, at others flung her gruel in the face of the chaplain; would one day make her clothes into a doll, and another compose a long and critical examination of the character of the Queen, who had just then come to the throne.

Her influence all through the prison was most mischievous, and at length she had to be removed to Bethlehem.

There it seemed impossible to restrain her, and the effort was given up. She was at length sent out to Van Dieman’s Land in the “Nautilus,” and was no more heard of. She was only one of the Millbank failures.

After the confession in 1843 of the breakdown of the penitentiary system, the great prison became a kind of second Newgate.

In Newgate, however, as Captain Griffiths points out, the worst criminals soon pass beyond human ken; at the great depot prison they at least continue alive.

The calendar is full of names which have become historic in the annals of crime. Not to come down to the times of Orton, the names of Robson, Redpath, Poole, and Pullinger recall frauds which were conducted with a cleverness, and for a long time with a success, which only a genius for swindling could have attained.

“Jem the Penman,” the master mind of a gang of forgers, who made great hauls before they were caught, looked like a drunken sot in prison, but conducted himself fairly well.

One remarkable criminal was a practising surgeon, who had married wives in various parts of the country, and having got possession of their money, trinkets, and clothing, had deserted them.

He spoke several languages, and one of his favourite feats in prison was to write the Lord’s Prayer in five different languages within a circle the size of a sixpence.

His conduct at Millbank was most exemplary, and he, like other prisoners, eventually went to the Antipodes and married.

An “honourable and reverend” gentleman, who was convicted of forgery, and sentenced to transportation for life, became almost imbecile and useless in confinement; he, too, went to the colonies, where he “was last heard of performing divine service at an out-station at the rate of a shilling a service.”

A military man, of good family, who had become a gambler, and was convicted of enormous swindling transactions, proved in detention an idle, good-for-nothing rascal, who would do no work, and expected to be waited on.

Another ex-military officer was sentenced to seven years for striking the Queen. No motive could be found for the act, but in prison he declared that his sole object was to bring disgrace on his family, as his father had offended him. He was leniently treated, was popular with the officers, and eventually went to Australia.

These glimpses which the records of such a prison as Millbank give of men who have disappeared from the world are like scenes from Dante.

All hope, however, is not abandoned even when the gates of Millbank close behind a criminal. He still belongs to the world he has left.

A way back is kept open for him; and, though his old friends may know him no more, he has usually a chance of redeeming his position, perhaps under another name, in another land.

Upon Peace and his companions in crime arriving at Millbank, the first thing that was done on entering was to take the handcuffs off each convict; they were then told to seat themselves on a long bench in the passage.

Presently two chief warders arrived, accompanied by a medical officer and a clerk.

On their appearance the prisoners were told to rise and stand to attention. One of the chief warders walked along one line, and claimed more than one of the party.

By the time that certain preliminary preparations had been gone through, and the name, case, and crime of each prisoner had been entered into a book in the office, it was twelve o’clock, and dinner time.

The new comers were informed that presently they would be asked what religion they were. Each man might please himself what he chose to be, but what he elected he must stick to.

The bill of fare for each day of the week was read out to them. The allowance given to each person was quite sufficient to support life, and keep him in good health.

Luxuries were, of course, never thought of. Coarse plain food was all they had any right to expect, and certainly it was all they got, but the cost of prisons forms a very large item in the expenses of the country.

Up to the time the prisons were taken over by the Government, it appears that the cost of maintaining the prisoners, exclusive of convicts, had been slowly but gradually diminishing, and it is not improbable this movement will now continue even more rapidly.

It appears from the volume of judicial statistics lately issued, that the average for the year 1876-7, of £28 16s. 7d., calculated on the total cost, is less than the corresponding average for 1875-6 by £1 9s. 5d.

The average, omitting the extraordinary charge for buildings, &c., is less than the corresponding amount for 1875-6 by £1 4s. The average yearly charge per prisoner, depending in a great degree on the number of prison officials maintained, and the daily average of prisoners, varies greatly in different prisons.

It is, of course, affected also by extraordinary charges of buildings, loans, &c. The lowest average cost per prisoner for 1876-7, as for 1875-6, is at Salford County Prison, where, with a total staff of 65 officers, and a total daily average of 900 prisoners in the latter year, and of 66 officers, and a total daily average of 966 prisoners in 1876-7, the average cost per prisoner was £14 6s. 1d. in 1876-7, and £15 12s. 5d. in 1875-6.

In Durham County Prison, with a total staff of 42, and a daily average of 641 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was in 1876-7, £17 0s. 2d.

In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 42, and with a daily average of 625 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £17 17s. 6d.

In Preston County Prison, with a staff of 36 officers, and a daily average of 435 prisoners, in 1876-7 the average cost per prisoner was £16 14s. 10d.

In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 36 officers, and with a daily average of 405 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £19 12s. 10d.

The highest average cost for 1876-7 was, as in the previous year, at the Lincoln County Prison, where, with a total staff of 9, and a daily average of 12 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £107 10s. 11d. The average cost for the previous year, with a staff of 9 officers and a daily average of 9 prisoners, £133 19s. 10d. per prisoner.

The average cost per prisoner, in the following 13 prisons, in the year 1876-7, exceeded in each case the sum of £50――namely, Wisbeach; Hertford, County; St. Alban’s, County; Great Stukely, County; Newgate, City and County; Peterborough, Liberty; Oakham, County; Bury St. Edmund’s, County; Ripon, Liberty; Beaumaris, County; Cardigan, County; Dolgelly, County; and Presteign, County Prison.

The average cost per prisoner in the following four prisons, in addition to the three previously mentioned, in the year 1876-7 was in each case under £20――namely, Devonport, Borough, £19 16s. 3d.; Kirkdale, County, £18 1s. 3d.; Liverpool, Borough, £18 2s. 2d.; and Manchester City Prison, £17 16s. 7d. The different sources from which the prison expenses for the year were defrayed, and the amount received from each were as follows:――

From prison receipts, inclusive of profits of prisoners’ labour, £64,855, or 11·0 per cent. of the total amount from local rates and funds was 69·1 per cent. total, and from public funds £116,769 or 19·9 per cent. of total.

The principal and proportions for the year 1875-6, under various heads, were, from prison receipts, £65,387, from local rates, &c., £400,712, and from revenues £110,300.

It will be seen by the foregoing statistics that the criminal population of the United Kingdom absorbs a vast amount of money annually from the pockets of the ratepayers for the maintainence of convicts.

This is a lamentable state of things, but under existing circumstances there is no help for it.

After the rules had been read, Peace and his fellow-prisoners were ordered in batches of four or five into some cells, each man having given to him previously a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese of excellent quality.

Here Peace was kept for a long time, but he could hear that the officials had returned and were engaged with the fresh arrivals he had for his companions――three ruffians of the very worst type――these being indeed, London thieves, and he had as little to say to them as possible.

Not being pleased with his associates, he got up on a table under the window, and looked out on the Pentagon yard.

“What are you up to?” cried one of his fellow-prisoners. “Want to see as much as you can of the blooming place. An’ much good it ell do yer.”

Peace made no reply, but looked out. Walking round the yard, or rather the division nearest to the cell window, he observed a number of prisoners marching round the yard, about five or six yards apart.

In the centre stood an imposing-looking warder in uniform, with a staff like a policeman’s in his hand.

Each man was dressed in a short, loose, ill-fitting jacket and vest, and baggy knickerbockers of drab tweed, with black stripes one and a half inches in width. The lower part of the legs were encased in blue worsted stockings with bright red rings round them, low shoes, and a bright grey and red worsted cap. It struck Peace that they were very much like supernumeraries at a theatre, but all over the garments there were hideous black impressions of the broad arrow, the “crow’s foot” denoting that the articles belonged to her Majesty.

After inspecting the prisoners at exercise, Peace descended from the table, and stood silent and dejected in the cell.

Presently the door was opened, and he and his companions were ordered out.

Peace was directed to go to the end of the passage, where the principal of the receiving ward was standing. He had to undergo the usual formula of the bath. A bundle was handed him, which contained a complete suit of clothes of the same picturesque pattern as those worn by the prisoners he had seen exercising.

He was then called into a room where the doctor was, and here he saw the chief warder――an enormous man with the voice of a Stentor, who looked dreadfully stern and resolute, but who was, nevertheless, a kindly-disposed man enough――this he afterwards found out; there, to his surprise, he was shown a bundle which he at once recognised as the clothes, even to the hat and boots, he had worn before his conviction――his last habiliments of freedom.

“You know what these are, and whom they belong to, I suppose?” said the prison official.

“Yes, they belong to me,” Peace returned.

“All right,” said the other, throwing them into a corner, where a pile of similar bundles were lying.

After he had undergone the usual examination by the doctor, a card was given him with a number on it, which he was told was his number, to which he was to always answer, as prisoners left their names behind them.

All this he knew perfectly well from sad experience, but he was too artful to let it appear that he was well acquainted with prison life.

They would find that out in all probability quite soon enough.

When fully equipped, and feeling very uncomfortable, he was marched down a passage and through a door at the foot of a winding spiral stone staircase into the Pentagon yard, across this and through a gate or two in the dividing railings into a similar door, up a spiral stone staircase like the first one he had passed――one flight, two flights, three flights, to the very top where he was transferred by the warder who had conducted him so far, to the care of another warder, and he at once pointed out the way along the passage to a cell, the door of which he opened, and introduced him to the quarters he was to take up during his sojourn at Millbank.

The little ticket with his number was taken from him, and placed by the warder in a rack over the doorway. This done, he locked Peace in.

Each convict establishment has a governor, deputy governor, and one or more chief warders. At the time of Peace’s incarceration in Millbank it had no less than three, who had under them three grades of officials――principals, warders, and assistant warders.

The slang name for all the prison officials is “screws,” all are armed in some way, the leading officials wear swords, the warders and assistant warders are armed with truncheons, which are carried in cases at the side, much the same as those worn by the police.

When with a gang of men at outdoor work these truncheons are replaced by a short rifle and bayonet. In addition, there is at Dartmoor and other prisons away from London, the civil guard, armed with rifles and bayonets, who do military duty in guarding the place.

Millbank was so near to the barracks at Westminster that there was little need for a special guard. Every block of buildings and every ward in Millbank prison was in communication with each other, and all radiated from the centre of the whole establishment. Though to an outside observer it looked like a number of detached buildings, it was possible to visit every cell and every ward without once going into the open air.

The numberless windows which were seen on the outside of this prison were not, as many erroneously supposed, the windows of prisoners’ cells. These windows served to light the passages running between them and the cell gates and doors. Every cell had a strong iron gate, opening outwards into the wide strong corridor or passage, and a wooden door opening inwards to the cell. Opposite the door was a large window, about three feet square, looking into the inner yard of the Pentagon.

The round towers at the corner of each angle of every block of buildings, surmounted with pointed roofs, contained the spiral stone staircases leading from the ground floor to the top landing.

There were four stories of these cells, all of which were alike and of good size, being about ten feet square.

On each floor were sinks and water supply, and other conveniences for the wants of that corridor. Captain Arthur Griffiths has written an admirable work upon this prison, which he entitled “Chronicles of Millbank,” and the reader who desires to know more about a place which possesses an historical interest, cannot do better than consult that work.

The history of punishments is parallel to the history of civilisation, for every advance made in the direction of a humane and intelligent treatment of criminals has marked a progressive step in contemporary manners and modes of thought.

Among barbarous peoples the penal measures were barbarous; as the world has grown older and wiser punishments have become less cruel, and been based on wider principles.

At first the object of punishment, whether by death or torture, was vengeance; only after long years was it directed to suppress crime; and it is in these more enlightened days that the system has developed into one which, while it is assigned to correct the wrong-doer, endevours also to reform him, and prevent others from following his ways.

It seems at first sight surprising that confusing ideas with regard to the means and methods of punishment are the growth entirely of the present century; but so it is, and the work under notice most usefully reminds us of the various mutations those ideas have undergone, and of the immense change which has been made within a hundred years in the views of statesmen and philanthropists with regard to penal reclamation.

“The Memorials of Millbank” are, in that, a description, full of instruction and charged with interest, of the process of evolution through which our prison system has reached its present excellence.

Captain Arthur Griffiths begins his work with a picture of the condition of affairs in the time of Howard, long before Millbank was built or thought of, and a terrible picture it is he draws.

Prisons were overcrowded, ill-ventilated, damp, pestiferous. The gaol fever, a disease now happily unknown, carried off, according to Howard, “more people than were put to death by all the public executions in the kingdom.”

And those were times in which capital punishment was inflicted for the most trivial offences. Prisoners brought into court communicated the infection to judges, barristers, jurors, and spectators; and at Taunton in 1730 bench and bar and hundreds of people in court died from the disease.

The prisons were not only pesthouses: they were places of torture, and gambling, and vice. The gaolers were inhuman wretches, as mercenary as they were cruel, and their chief aim was to make their positions profitable to themselves.

Howard’s revelations stirred first of all the Duke of Richmond, who built a new and improvised prison at Horsham for Sussex; and soon after that, when transportation to the American colonies was abandoned, the Legislature resolved to build a gaol to which should be sent criminals heretofore ordered for transportation.

Here it was hoped, to use the words of the Act, “that solitary confinement, accompanied by well-regulated hard labour and religious instruction, might be the means under Providence, not only of deterring others, but also of reforming the individuals and turning them to habits of industry.”

This extract contains the seed from which, after long controversy and the failure of a scheme which honest but unpractical Jeremy Bentham attempted to carry out, the Millbank Penitentiary grew; and it contains, too, it appears to us, the secret of the repeated failures which governor after governor and successive Legislatures met with when the great experiment was under trial.

The cost exceeded £350,000, which was a much larger sum at that date than it would be to-day to expend in a philanthropic enterprise, and is a proof of the earnestness with which the Government embarked in the task; but the money was almost thrown away.

It was for a long time the old, old story of zeal without knowledge.

Ministers and their advisers made the mistake of overrating the capabilities and moral qualities of the class they had to deal with.

The committee of supervisors, who were virtually the rulers of the prison――which was another mistake――fell into a similar error.

The governor and officers seem to have done the same; and nothing but trouble was in store for Millbank for many years to come.

The story of the first volume is a sad one.

It is one long series of struggles between well-meaning but weak authorities and turbulent incorrigible prisoners in a chronic state of insubordination. Even this was not all.

The place was built on a faulty site; structural defects were constantly appearing, and the prisoners more than once were laid prostrate with a then mysterious disease, which turned out afterwards to be due to unsound sanitary and dietetic conditions.

Leniency was the key-note of the prison system. Men and women the most depraved, the most irreclaimable, were to be reformed by moral suasion. There was practically no punishment, no discipline, no order.

The governor was fettered by the supervisors, the officers were lax because there was no organisation, and the consequence was there was constant mutiny, escapes, or attempts to escape, which, despite altered arrangements and new regulations, continued for years.

It was not until long after――not until transportation to the new Australian colonies commenced――that this evil was cured, and it is instructive at the present juncture to read that it was cured by the use of the lash.

No other form of punishment was so efficacious; no other mode of correction so feared. The prisoners who witnessed the sufferings of their fellows appear to have been cowed.

The women, who were always worse than the men――and here Captain Griffiths receives ample confirmation in a work published by a prison matron in 1862――seem only to have been controlled when it became known that they too might be treated――though it does not transpire that they ever were――with the same severity.

Corporal punishment, however, was only needed to correct offences which it is evident a stricter discipline from the first would have prevented.

In the course of years the Government discovered how little was to be hoped from moral suasion. Time and experience brought wisdom in their train, and ultimately the old order changed, giving place to new.

The original scheme of a penitentiary was abandoned, the whole system was re-modelled, changes were made which we have not room to describe, and the prison was devoted to a different purpose and a different class of criminals――i.e., those on their road to the transport ships; and later on, when transportation was finally given up, as the first gaol of the convict under sentence of penal servitude, on his road to Portland or other establishments of the kind.

Captain Griffiths in his second volume interweaves with his narrative of Millbank some interesting chapters descriptive of the system adopted in transportation to the colonies and the mode of life of the convicts there.

A singular similarity exists between the errors of the one system and the other. In the earlier days of both the Government was too hopeful. They expected too much from the unpromising material they had to work upon.

A reaction from the horrible condition revealed by the labours of Howard carried them too far in the other direction, and it was the reaction from this which led ultimately to a complete reversal of the old scheme of secondary punishment, the abandonment of transportation, and the establishment of the systems we have at present.

Peace got on pretty well at Millbank; the warders were kind to him, and he behaved himself in the best possible manner, and his attempt to escape from Wakefield appeared to have been forgotten: anyway, it was never alluded to. It was some relief to the monotony of his prison life, when he was set to work with other prisoners to clean the windows of the establishment.

It fell to his share to work at the infirmary, and while engaged on the windows in that part of the prison, he felt very much depressed, for the sight presented to him was indeed a most piteous one.

To see fellow-creatures stretched on a bed of sickness is a sorry sight at the best of times, but when the bed is in a prison cell, with an iron gate at its entrance, securely locked, and the thought comes over you that the chances are that you may be in a similar position, it is enough to depress a man.

Peace was greatly affected as he, as noiselessly as possible, polished the infirmary windows.

He remembered at that time the accident that occurred to him in the rolling mills where he worked; and he remembered also his own long illness and tardy recovery after his leg had been set; but then he had a mother and sister to attend upon him, and he was a free man――in humble circumstances, it is true――but, nevertheless, free.

As he thought of being seized with illness in a convict prison, he shuddered.

The miserable patient, under these circumstances, has not one kind or sympathising face to smile upon him.

The chances are that he is rudely tended by some fellow-prisoner, and he has to take his chance――and a very poor one it is――as to the sort of man whom the authorities have thought fit to appoint as hospital nurse.

In most cases men who volunteer their services in cases of this sort do so for the purpose of shirking hard work, and but too frequently they feast themselves on the few little dainties ordered by the doctor, of which they rob the sick man when a warder’s back is turned. It is in their nature to do these sort of things; they have no compunction, no pity, no mercy. There are of course exceptions; sometimes indeed a convict makes an excellent nurse, but as we before observed the sick man has to take his chance; he has no voice in the matter. To complain would be of little avail; prison officials are so used to complaints that they take but little heed of grumblers, as they call them.

To be ill whilst a convict is sad――to die a convict is terrible, and yet there are hundreds, and indeed, thousands, who are doomed to such a miserable fate. When a convict is sentenced to be imprisoned for his natural life, it of course means that he is to die in prison.

To die at sea, and to be cast into the waves, rolled up in a hammock with a shot to carry the poor soulless body deep down where no mortal eye may see it, seems a sad and piteous fate. Anyway it is not pleasant to reflect on.

To be shot down, or mangled by the bursting of a shell while fighting one’s country’s battles, yields, at least, some satisfaction to those who risk their lives in honour’s cause; but to die a convict, to be buried in an unknown, uncared-for grave, thrust into a prison coffin, filled up with dirty sawdust, as Peace had seen them done at Dartmoor, so that the ragged old shirt given out to do duty as a shroud may be served for other purposes, is but a sorry end for a man who had once lived respected and beloved.

Peace was very glad when his window-cleaning job was over, he did not feel at all well, and the idea crossed his mind that probably he might be very shortly down upon the sick list, and be sent to the infirmary.

This reflection was by no means a pleasant one; however, in the course of a few days he was in better health and spirits.

Nothing after this disturbed the dull dry monotony of his prison life, but as the year was drawing to a close, he daily got more and more anxious to know what penal establishment he was to be drafted to after he had gone through his probationary term at Millbank.

He had gathered scraps of information from several prisoners who professed to know a great deal of the subject, but he did not place much faith in anything they said, for, as a rule, prisoners’ “yarns” are not particularly truthful; nevertheless, he listened to what they had to say.

One man, “an old lag,” said the next batch were going to Chatham, and it very soon transpired that he was correct in this surmise.

In about a fortnight after this Peace became acquainted with the station to which he was to be drafted.

While dinners were being served the chief warder said to him――

“8642, collect all your letters together. Tie up your work, and put all your flannels on.”

“Going away, sir?” said Peace.

“Yes,” returned the warder.

“Where to, sir?”

“Prisoners must not ask questions――it’s against the rules.”

“I shall know soon enough, I dare say,” growled Peace.

“Well, Chatham, if you must know,” exclaimed the warder.

“Thank ye, sir, I’m much obliged; I’m sorry to leave, though.”

“Daresay you are. There, no more words. Pass on.”

Peace now knew that the end of his quiet, though solitary, time was about to be brought to a close.

He dreaded very much being brought into daily and hourly contact with some of the ruffians and blackguards he had been able to keep at a respectful distance while at Millbank, but there was no help for it.

The batch had to finish the remainder of their respected sentences at Chatham.

Thirty of them soon found themselves in the same corridor in which they had been received upon first entering Millbank, and after the usual formalities had been gone through they started on their journey, and were soon whirled down by train to their destination.

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Chapter LXXXVI

LORD ETHALWOOD AND HIS ADVISERS――MR. CHICKNELL MAKES A PAINFUL REVELATION.

The commotion created by the marriage of John Ashbrook and Patty Jamblin had long since subsided and the bride and bridegroom returned to the old farmhouse.

The usual amount of visits were paid, and the “happy pair” were suffered to settle down into their own natural unobtrusive mode of life.

Meanwhile Mr. Chicknell had been very busy in the Divorce Court for the purpose of obtaining a decree nisi in the case of Gatliffe v. Gatliffe. The reader will remember that we left Aveline and Lady Marvlynn together discussing the all-important question in a previous chapter.

It appeared that the earl’s grand-daughter, however, had a will of her own. She would not consent to be made a mere puppet in the hands of others, and after her interview with Lady Marvlynn she reconsidered the matter, and boldly declared that the suit should not proceed.

The earl lost his temper――this was a very wrong thing for him to do, considering his years and high social position――but he displayed his anger to Lady Marvlynn, who was good enough to act as a convenient buffer to break the shock which otherwise might have been attended with much more serious consequences.

“She must have taken leave of her senses, the silly, wayward girl,” he cried, in a fury. “My dear Lady Marvlynn, you must give her a good talking to. Tell her I am greatly incensed.”

“I have told her so――I have talked to her, my lord,” returned her ladyship.

“Well, and what said she?”

“Ah, she has said enough in all conscience. I think her pride is wounded――her feelings are so easily worked upon, she is so very impressionable, so sensitive.”

“All this I know perfectly well,” interrupted the earl, “have known it for a long time past, but what of it? You surely don’t mean to tell me, Lady Marvlynn, that my grand-daughter is so unjust, so unreasonable, so undutiful, as to persist in offering an impediment to what she knows and believes to be essential to my peace of mind?”

Lady Marvlynn shrugged her shoulders, but made no reply. It was a way she had when in any great difficulty.

“I must request you to return me an answer, madam,” said the earl, with hauteur.

“I have striven――I have done my best, the very best I could, I am sure, my lord; you will acknowledge this?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But the poor child still clings to her husband.”

“Clings to her husband!” exclaimed the earl, in a perfect fury. “I say she must be mad――positively bereft of her senses; but, enough of this, if she persists in her obstinacy――well then, the tie between us is broken. I cannot, and will not, submit to this indignity. With her my word should be law.”

“And so it is, I hope.”

“We’ve a pretty sample of it now. Chicknell is in despair; he can’t move a step further in the business――nay, he declares he won’t. Am I to be bearded in my own house? Am I to be set at defiance? You must see yourself, Lady Marvlynn, I have strong reason for complaining.”

“I don’t deny it, my lord. Don’t be so excited, and listen calmly to me. Will you promise to do so?”

“Well, yes, of course I will,” said the earl, seating himself by the side of the library table. “Proceed, madam, I am all attention.”

“If my dear pet were convinced that her worthless husband was living in open adultery with a woman of doubtful repute――if she had indisputable proofs of this, then I think she would give up all thoughts of him for now and hereafter.”

“But haven’t you told her?”

“I have made her acquainted with as much as I thought it prudent to do.”

“But she has witnessed quite enough with her own eyes. Did you not tell me that this man was at the opera with the shameless hussy with whom he has taken up?”

“Really, my lord, you must pardon me for a moment. The fact of a gentleman and lady being seated side by side in the stalls of the opera-house does not in itself incriminate them. The lady might be a relative, a friend’s wife, a country cousin, or what not.”

“Ah, true――there is something in that.”

“Very well. As you admit my argument thus far, it is not in any way surprising that Aveline should refuse to believe her husband to be as guilty as we know him to be.”

“But hang it, madam, you can tell her, I suppose?”

“I can, of course; but I have not done so.”

“And why not, pray?”

“Ah, for many reasons. I love her as much as if she were my own child. You may believe me or not, Lord Ethalwood, but I do.”

“I do believe it――but what of that?”

“This: No woman ever quite forgives another for running down her husband or exposing his foibles, or his vices――if you like that term better. That is why I have not chosen to be the accuser in this case. You will acknowledge――albeit unwillingly, perhaps――that I am right.”

The earl made no reply.

He was silent for some time, and seemed to be much troubled.

Presently he offered his hand to his companion, who shook it warmly.

“I am answered, Lady Marvlynn,” said he. “You have taught me a lesson. What you have said is but a proof of your discretion――your perspicuity――your intelligence. You would have been overstepping the line which prudence and good sense draws for all of us. Questions like these are at all times difficult to deal with, and in my haste and zeal I had overlooked this fact, and I have to apologise to you for pressing you upon the point. I see now, my grand-daughter, who, to say the truth, has much of the Ethalwood in her, will not yield without good and sufficient cause.”

“And I admire her for it,” cried Lady Marvlynn, with some warmth.

“You are her friend,” said the earl, musingly. “A wiser and more truthful one no woman ever had.”

“I understand her better than you do.”

“Without a doubt. The Ethalwoods never understood one another. This has been the bane of their happiness.”

He sighed and leant his head on one hand. Then he repeated, in a solemn, melancholy tone――

“The bane of their happiness.”

Lady Marvlynn did not venture upon any remarks. Before her sat an honourable gentleman, across whose features a fleeting expression passed.

It would be difficult to define this; it appeared to be a combination of emotions, in which sorrow, regret, and disappointment were combined.

“I will bethink me,” he presently said, “as to what is best to be done in this business. As for my reasoning with her that it is not to be thought of; but doubtless I shall find some other way.”

“Let either Mr. Chicknell or Mr. Wrench have an interview with her, and convey to her the unwelcome intelligence. It will come better from them than either of us two,” said Lady Marvlynn. “It matters not what they say as business men.”

“You are indeed a wise counsellor,” cried the earl, tapping her on the shoulder. “Nothing could be better; the suggestion is an excellent one, which I will act upon immediately. Chicknell will be here in an hour or so, and I can arrange with him without further delay.”

Lady Marvlynn, feeling that the subject of their conference was at an end, rose, made a curtsey, and left the apartment.

When the lawyer arrived, which he did in the course of two or three hours after the foregoing conversation, he was made acquainted with the nature of the commission imposed upon him, to which he at once acceded.

The earl went out to pay a visit to a neighbour. Mr. Chicknell sought the Lady Aveline, who consented to receive him in her own apartment.

After much bowing and scraping, the astute attorney consented to bring himself to an anchorage on the soft velvet seat of a carved oak chair.

After a preliminary cough, he began as follows――“This little business which the earl, your grandfather, is so anxious to get settled, is at present in status quo, the reason being the disinclination on the part of your ladyship to act in concert with his legal advisers, and I have, therefore, my dear madam, taken upon myself the not very pleasant task of seeing you on the subject.”

“I am very glad to see you at all times, Mr. Chicknell,” said Aveline. “As a friend of our house, you are welcome.”

“Ah, thank you!” returned the lawyer, not very well liking her manner. “I felt assured that I should be. We cannot get on without your co-operation――indeed we cannot. Ahem! it’s no use attempting to disguise that.”

He laughed as if he had said something remarkably pleasant and witty. Aveline only nodded.

“It’s like driving a bent nail in an oak plank,” murmured Chicknell; “but no matter;” he then went on, addressing himself to the lady. “You see――ahem!――I have felt it a duty incumbent on me to learn your wishes with regard to the pending suit from your own lips. Am I right when I say that it was first instituted with your full consent?”

“Certainly not. I never did give my consent.”

“Dear me, that’s most unfortunate; but as we have proceeded thus far, I presume you won’t offer any opposition. You certainly ought not to do so.”

“Indeed! I claim to be the best judge in this matter, and do not care to be made a mere puppet in the hands of others. Pray, why ought I to give my consent?”

“Well, as your ladyship has put the question so plainly, I am bound to answer it. In the first place, I do not think you would be justified in opposing Earl Ethalwood’s expressed wishes, and in the next”――he paused――――

“And in the next,” cried Aveline.

“You are quite justified in getting rid of a man who has brought such discredit on you and yours.”

Aveline rose from her seat, her eyes flashing with indignation, and her whole manner was indicative of the most violent emotion.

“And pray, Mr. Chicknell,” said she, “who has deputed you to make such a statement? In what way has my husband brought discredit on me and mine? I have yet to learn that he has done aught to disgrace either himself or me.”

“You must pardon me, madam,” said the lawyer, in no way moved by the anger of his companion. “It is, to say the truth, no pleasant task I have undertaken; and allow me to say that if it is repugnant to you to hear the truth I will remain silent, and never again allude to a subject which is evidently most painful to you. We professional gentlemen have, at times, very unpleasant revelations to make, but I would not――nay, nothing could induce me to press a question which, possibly, you have no desire to hear.”

“I do not quite understand you, sir. But you have my full permission to proceed. Pray go on.”

“My dear young lady,” said Chicknell, in oleaginous accents, “you must learn the truth. Your husband is living in open adultery with a woman of more than doubtful repute. That fact is established. We have indubitable proof of it.”

Aveline turned pale, trembled slightly, and sank into a chair.

She made, however, no reply.

“You have heard what I have said?” said the lawyer, in continuation. “Indubitable proofs! If you doubt this I will bring an officer who will convince you of the fact.”

Still no reply.

“Mr. Gatliffe is, at the present time, living with a lady of the name of Laura Stanbridge.”

“He must be strangely altered,” said Aveline――“so altered that I find it difficult to believe that he should have so far forgotten himself.”

“We are dealing with facts,” returned the lawyer; “facts which have come to our knowledge by chance or accident. Nevertheless, such facts are quite incontrovertible. We have the clearest and most unanswerable evidence of your husband’s guilty intercourse with the woman Stanbridge, and I presume my word will suffice for the purpose, without entering into all the painful details.”

Aveline leaned forward, placed her elbow on the table, and, burying her face in her hands, she burst into a passionate flood of tears. Her hysterical sobs touched the heart of the lawyer, who placed his hand kindly on one of her shoulders, and standing over her, said in a sympathetic tone of voice:

“My dear Lady Aveline, I cannot express to you the sorrow I feel at seeing you thus borne down. Believe me, nothing but the imperative necessity of making the revelation has induced me to be thus outspoken. I had no other alternative left, and have been constrained to enter thus fully into this business. Do, pray, try and bear up, and meet the case with becoming fortitude.”

“You have said enough, Mr. Chicknell. You have convinced me. I feel hurt. My pride is wounded, but I shall not offer any opposition to the proceedings you have taken at the instigation of the earl, my grandfather. Release me as speedily as possible from this odious bondage. I desire to be disunited from a man who is so utterly unworthy of my consideration.”

“Do not think that I have sought you for the purpose of maligning the man who is at the present moment your lawful husband. He is not worthy of such a distinction. I say this most emphatically――he is not worthy of even a passing thought.”

“Enough, sir,” interrupted the unhappy wife. “It is hardly worth while pouring out your vials of wrath upon him. It will suffice for our purpose that you bring the suit to as speedy a termination as possible.”

“It shall be done, madam, as speedily as possible. Do not let this unfortunate business cause you any anxiety. Be of good cheer, and look hopefully to the future. Remember you are surrounded by friends who are deeply concerned in your happiness and future welfare. You will, I am sure, do me the justice to believe that I have your interest at heart, and that at all times you may rely upon, not only my advice, but upon my warmest and most disinterested friendship.”

“I do not doubt it, Mr. Chicknell,” said Aveline, drying her eyes. “And so you know now your course of action. Accept my best thanks.”

They shook hands, and the lawyer took his departure, very well satisfied with the result of the interview.

In the course of a few weeks the divorce was obtained without opposition on the part of Gatliffe, and Lord Ethalwood felicitated himself upon the fulfilment of the crowning wish of his life.

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LXXXVII. PEACE’S DISCHARGE FROM PRISON――THE RETURN HOME

We must pass over the period of Peace’s incarceration as a convict, and take up his history from the time of his discharge.

As the long looked-for day began to approach the prisoner, as is usual in such cases, was permitted to grow his hair.

Three months’ permission is given for this purpose; the regular once-a-week “clip” is no longer insisted on, as the prisoner has become what in common parlance is termed “a permission man.”

As the weeks pass by the hair grows. Peace had never at any time an abundant crop, and at this period he was nearly bald. Nevertheless, the few straggling hairs he had left were suffered to grow their full length.

One fine morning No. 8642 (George Parker, seven years’) was called out on parade. Peace fell out when he heard these welcome words. He was marched before a principal warder and the governor, and interviewed as to his intentions on discharge.

He was asked kindly enough by the governor where he was going to take his discharge to? What occupation he thought of following? If he had a wife, or family, or friends?

Peace said he was desirous of returning to his native town, Sheffield, in which place he had a wife.

A kindly admonition as to his future good conduct was given by the governor, who informed him that a gratuity would be given him upon the day of his release.

But a certain ceremony had to be gone through. Peace was drafted off with a batch of other permissive men to the photographers’ room, where the whole party had their cartes de visite taken.

On the Saturday morning preceding the day of liberation, another ceremony had to be gone through. The prisoner is taken to the store-room, called the tailors’ cutting-room; here he has to change his clothes, his prison garb is taken off, and, in its stead, a suit of clothes is furnished him, in which he is to enter the world again.

Peace was glad enough to have a new rig out, after which he was marched off by a prison official to an open space of ground adjoining the gaol; at this place some fifteen or twenty persons were assembled. This assembly of persons consisted chiefly of the detective police, who inspect minutely the man who is about to be discharged.

Peace bowed to the throng of detectives, who made some jocular remarks, the nature of which our hero understood but too well. “Ah, I see, No. 8642, name George Parker, sentence seven years.”

“Yes, sir,” returned Peace; “that’s quite correct.”

“Convicted of burglary, sent here from Millbank?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going when you obtain your discharge?”

“To Sheffield.”

“Well, you will have to report yourself every month; don’t forget that, Parker; if you do, you’ll get into trouble.”

“I won’t forget, sir.”

“Good.”

“Have you a business?”

“Certainly.”

“What is it?”

“I am a picture-frame maker by trade.”

“And a burglar by profession, eh?” and at this sally the speaker and his companions burst out into a hearty laugh.

“I’ve been in trouble, as you all know,” cried Peace, in an angry tone; “but that is no reason for my being jeered at. When a man’s down kick him is an old saying.”

“Well, then, we’ll say no more about it,” said the officer. “I didn’t know you were so thin-skinned. Take my advice, stick to your business, and don’t get into trouble again.”

“Thank you, I will remember your warning. I will not get into trouble again.”

After this Peace was fitted with a pair of boots, and his outfit, if it could be so termed, was now complete. He was informed that he would be presented with a gratuity of three pounds before he went out of the prison.

Any sum would be, of course, acceptable to begin the world again with. Three pounds is not a large capital, it must be admitted, but it is better than nothing.

In the due course of time Peace received a visit from the stewards’ clerk, his object being to obtain our hero’s signature on a stamped receipt for the whole of the munificent gratuity, and his signature also to several forms which he has to sign without revealing the contents of the aforesaid forms. This is a matter of no very great moment, for if he did peruse them the probability is that he would not be much the wiser.

[Sidenote: No. 46.]

After this ceremony had been gone through the clerk handed Peace a copy of “Her Majesty’s license to go at large during the remaining portion of his term of penal servitude,” in which her Majesty hereby orders George Parker, within thirty days from the date of this order to report himself, which is signed by the Home Secretary or his deputy.

This licence is given subject to the conditions endorsed on the document, upon the breach of any of which it shall be liable to be revoked, whether such conduct is followed by conviction or not. The conditions are of course very stringent; nevertheless, they are but too frequently evaded or broken despite the surveillance of the police. The reader will understand this when he is informed that the conditions are as follows:――“The holder shall preserve his licence and produce it when called upon to do so by a magistrate or police officer.” This for his own safety he generally does. “He shall abstain from any violation of the law.” This he does not always do, for ticket-of-leave men are constantly getting into trouble through lawless acts. “He shall not habitually associate with notoriously bad characters, such as reputed thieves or prostitutes.”

It frequently happens――more frequently than otherwise――that licence men do associate with disreputable characters.

“He shall not lead an idle, dissolute life without visible means of obtaining a livelihood.”

Most discharged convicts profess to have some honest calling, or a “stall” they term it, and it is putting too fine a point on the matter to dispute this fact for the police, in most instances, are well aware that the business or calling which these men profess to follow, is nothing more than a mere sham, but it is out of their power to prove this.

If his licence is forfeited or revoked in consequence of a conviction for any offence, he shall be made to undergo a term of penal servitude equal to the portion of his term which remains unexpired when his licence was granted.

We have discussed the question of licences, or men let out on ticket-of-leave, in a former chapter of this work.

“The ticket-of-leave men,” as they are termed, have been an endless source of trouble to the honest citizen and the police, and, as we pointed out, the whole system wants remodelling.

Another printed paper was handed to Peace which had superscribed on it his name and number. After this the following admonition was given:――

“Take notice, you are required by Act of Parliament to report yourself to the chief police-station of the locality to which you may go, within forty-eight hours of your arrival therein, and if you change your residence from one police district to another, you must report it to the police-station to which you last reported yourself, before you go. If you omit any of the above particulars, you will be guilty of a misdemeanour, and upon conviction will forfeit your licence.”

Peace was duly impressed with the importance of the document handed to him, which, however, he did not attempt to read.

After he had partaken of the dinner ration served to him, the cell door was unlocked for the Scripture-reader. This gentleman turned to the convict with a benign smile, and said in a soft tone, “And so, Parker, I have to congratulate you that your day of release has arrived. It cannot fail to be most gladly welcomed by you.”

“It is,” returned our hero.

Peace’s visitor handed him a Bible and prayer-book and said, “I hope you will profit by a careful study of these. I have as the rule dictates written your name, number, and date of your discharge inside the cover. These books are supplied to all convicts on discharge.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Peace, who, however, was by no means pleased with having books in his possession with a record of his discharge written therein; but he did not deem it advisable to make any comment on this.

“I hope you will lead a new life, and I am sure I am only echoing the sentiments of the gaol officials when I say we all wish you may prosper, so long as you keep in the right path.”

“You are very good,” said Peace, with a hypocritical whine which he knew so well how to put on.

The Scripture-reader after a few more remarks took his departure, and in the due course of time an orderly officer unlocked the door again and inquired if he was ready.

“I should just think I was,” returned Peace, hurriedly finishing his liberty toilette.

“All right――come this way then,” cried the officer.

Peace did not want a second bidding――he was soon outside the cell. The warder placed the hard round felt wide-a-wake on his head, and the truly wretched scarecrow, “her Majesty’s licence-holder,” was hurried to the entrance gates, where more signing was done, and the official copy of the “licence,” signed by one of the directors of convict prisons, placed in his hand.

This was the last ceremony he had to go through. He found an officer in prison uniform waiting to conduct him to the railway station, and the wicket being at length unlocked, the ticket-of-leave man and his conductor passed through.

Peace was once more a free man!

As the two proceeded towards the railway station, jeers and remarks were made by several passengers, which were in no way complimentary to our hero, but convicts on release have to bear these indignities, which, to say the truth, they are subject to, both inside and outside the prison walls.

The officer in charge of Peace presented the governor’s order, and obtained a ticket at the same rate as charged for soldiers.

The released convict had by this time regained his confidence. At the request of his conductor he entered the carriage.

The official did not leave him until the train was in motion.

While the train was at a standstill, he gave some excellent advice to his man――this is a way they have――good advice costs nothing――and it may be of service or not――in most cases it has but little effect upon the man to whom it is offered so unsparingly. The officer’s last words to Peace were, “Keep in the right path for the future, and mind you report yourself in accordance to the instructions.”

“All right! Thank you, sir. Farewell!” cried Peace, who was whirled along at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

After the train had started the passengers began to speak.

They conversed on the weather, the news of the morning’s papers.

One passenger, more curious than the rest and who was struck by the uniform of the officer, asked Peace if he belonged to one of the volunteer regiments.

Our hero endeavoured to evade the question by professing ignorance, but his questioner was pertinacious, and so the released convict was constrained to be more communicative.

He told his companion in the train the real state of the case――that he was a convict on release.

This piece of information caused some consternation. The eyes of every person in the carriage were scrutinising the speaker, upon whom they cast glances of suspicion.

Thoughts of robberies and murders flitted through their brains, and they, most of them, shifted their positions and placed their hands on their pockets.

“Dear me, how very remarkable!” exclaimed an old gentleman in the corner. “How singular! I did not know――ahem!――that persons of your class were permitted to travel in carriages occupied by respectable people.”

“I’ll get out at the next station and go into another carriage if you wish it,” remarked Peace.

“Certainly not! We don’t wish anything of the sort,” observed a broad-shouldered man, who, to all appearance, was, what is termed metaphorically, a “son of Neptune.” “At least I don’t.”

“Nor I!” cried another. “Sit where you are, my man.”

“I’m glad you are at liberty again, and hope the trouble you have been through will be a lesson to you, and teach you that honesty is the best policy.”

“I don’t intend to get into trouble again,” echoed Peace.

“Well said!”

The train rattles on, but despite these assurances some of the passengers are ill at ease.

The females bestow compassionate glances at Peace, whose costume causes him to be a marked man; it is in every respect so different to that worn by the other occupants of the carriage.

When the train stopped the old gentleman and two or three others in the carriage discovered that a change would be desirable.

They leave their seats and hurry forward and ensconce themselves in another compartment.

It is pretty plainly demonstrated to him that his room is liked better than his company; or, in other words, he is a man to be avoided.

“All right,” murmured Peace. “This is the usual course of things; and what a man has to submit to with the best grace he can. But it does not much matter. I’ll soon cast off this precious outfit and make up for a gentleman, and then nobody will be any the wiser.”

Before reaching Sheffield, Peace found his wife, his mother and son-in-law awaiting his approach.

The meeting was, of course, an affectionate one, and our hero, with three pounds in his pocket, returned once more to his humble home, where he had “a bit of a jollification,” as he termed it, and an indent was made in the three pounds he had brought with him.

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LXXXVIII. PEACE’S LATER CAREER――THE WHALLEY RANGE MURDER

After his return from penal servitude he followed his trade of picture-frame maker with renewed assiduity. He was very careful to duly report himself at the police station in the district, in which he resided, and it appears from all we can gather that the police treated him generally with the greatest consideration, and never hunted him down as it is termed. Indeed, they had a great reluctance to expose him or interfere in any way with him while following his ordinary avocation.

We have but little to chronicle in respect to Charles Peace from the time of his release up to the year 1876.

Presumably he was following an honest course of life, but we fear this was supplemented by occasional acts of dishonesty and depredation.

He, however, managed to steer clear of the law; and no conviction or even suspicion fell upon him till the year referred to.

It is said that for a short period he opened a provision shop in Hull, and that he left that town suddenly, for what reason does not transpire. After this he was again a picture-frame maker in Darnall.

We now propose following up the record of his career in something like consecutive order that the reader may fully comprehend the events which ultimately led to his conviction upon the charge of murder.

We have it from reliable authorities that at the time of the Banner-Cross murder, his mother――Mrs. Jane Peace――lived in Orchard-street, Sheffield, and she had not seen her son Charles――who by the way was her favourite son――for two years, on account of a difference arising out of his taking Mrs. Dyson to her house one night in 1874.

The precise date at which his intimacy with Mrs. Dyson commenced does not transpire.

Mrs. Dyson, herself, at the Leeds Assizes, spoke to Peace having lived next door but one to her and her husband when they resided in Britannia-road, Darnall, in the earlier part of 1876.

She knew him as a picture-frame maker, and he used to visit the Dysons, and had been, if he was not actually then, on terms of undisputed intimacy with the woman whose husband he afterwards murdered.

Before following the clue to this murder, we must give a brief record of another crime of a similar nature, which happened in the same year.

Without doubt Peace continued his lawless depredations to a great extent while residing at Darnall.

The Whalley Range murder caused great popular excitement.

An innocent man was convicted and was cast for death. He escaped suffering the extreme sentence of the law by almost a miracle.

At the time of the occurrence Peace was there to “work” some houses. He went to a place called Whalley Range.

He had “spotted” a house which he thought he could get into without much trouble.

He was always respectably dressed, so he declared, for he made a point of dressing respectably, and for this reason he knew the police never think of suspecting one who appears in good clothes.

In this way he threw the police off their guard on many occasions.

On the night of the fatal occurrence Charles Peace, in an easy, careless, jaunty manner, walked leisurely through the streets of Manchester.

He had not at this time his friend Bandy-legged Bill with him, or indeed any other accomplice; but he was a self-reliant man, whose object was to pick up what he could without the aid of a confederate.

While walking through the streets in Manchester he occasionally went between policemen, who were exercising their brains as to the burglar who had “done” some houses there.

Peace laughed in his sleeve. He knew the real culprit, but said nothing.

He took his way towards the house he designed to work, and as he went along he passed two policemen on the road.

“I may tell you,” says he, in his confession, “I did not go to any house by accident; I always went some days, sometimes weeks before, carefully examining all the surroundings, and then, having ‘spotted’ a likely house, I studied the neighbourhood both as to the means of getting in and as to getting away.”

He walked boldly on until he arrived at the house which was to be the scene of his operation.

The house stood in its own grounds, which were inclosed by a wall, and in some parts a shrubbery.

When the sun shone, and nature was in her best mood, it was most picturesque and lightsome, but in the dead hours of the night it was singularly dreary. This, however, did not matter to Peace, who was bent upon “cracking the crib,” as he termed it.

Upon arriving at the place of his destination, he considered for a few moments, and then determined upon his plan of action.

His object was to get into the grounds which surrounded the habitation in the dusk of the evening, and then wait a convenient time to effect an entrance into the house.

There were policemen about whom Peace managed to dodge for a time.

They had, however, observed him, and were, in consequence, on the watch.

This fact he was not aware of; had he been so, the chances are that he would not have made any attempt on the house that night.

He, however, walked into the grounds through the gate, and before he was able to begin his operations, he heard a step and a rustling behind him. He became suddenly alarmed, and turned sharply round, when, to his dismay, he beheld a policeman, whose figure was the same as one of the two he had passed on the road. The constable in question was making the best of his way into the grounds.

He had evidently seen Peace, turned back, and followed.

Peace came to the conclusion that he could not work that night. He therefore doubled, to elude the constable.

For a moment he succeeded, and taking a favourable opportunity, he endeavoured to make his escape.

With surprising agility he sprang up on the top of the wall which inclosed the grounds, but a fresh misfortune now befel him.

As he was dropping down and had cleared the premises, he almost fell into the arms of a second policeman, who must have been planted in the expectation that he would escape that way.

The policeman made a grab at our hero, who was by this time driven to a state of desperation, for he was under the impression that he would be captured, and then his previous convictions would be brought against him, and he would be sent to penal servitude again.

Peace was nettled that he had been disturbed, and his blood was up and all his worst passions in the ascendant, for he had “spotted” the house for a long time, and it had been a favourite project of his to rifle it of its most valuable and portable contents.

“You stand back, or I’ll shoot you!” cried Peace, in a voice of concentrated rage.

But the ill-fated young man was brave, and bent upon doing his duty――such officers are a credit to the force, and cannot be too highly commended――but alas! the poor fellow paid a fearful penalty for his gallant conduct.

He would not stand back and let the burglar pass, so Peace stepped back a few yards and fired wide at him, for the purpose of frightening him; but the brave young fellow was not to be intimidated.

Peace, in his whining hypocritical confession, declared――

“That he had a great repugnance to taking human life. I never wanted to murder anybody. I only wanted to do what I came to do and to get away.”

Amiable man!

“But it does seem odd after all that I should have to be hanged for having taken life, the very thing I always endeavoured to avoid. I have never willingly or knowingly hurt a living creature. I would not even hurt an animal, much less a man. That is why I fired wide at him. But the policeman, like most Manchester policemen, was a determined man. They are a very obstinate lot, those Manchester policemen. He was no doubt as determined as I was myself, and you know when I am put to it I can do what very few men can do.”

This is Peace’s own account of the encounter.

After he had fired wide at the ill-fated young man, Cock, the latter seized hold of his staff, and was evidently bent on capturing the ruffian. He rushed at Peace, whom he was about to strike.

The burglar now saw that he had no time to lose. He was determined not to be captured, and was bent on effecting his escape at all hazards, even if it was at the sacrifice of human life.

He discharged another barrel of his revolver, in the hopes of disabling the arm of the officer, who held the staff.

The ball entered the unfortunate man’s breast, and the poor fellow, with a deep groan, fell to the earth.

Peace managed to make his escape.

Policeman Cock had received his death wound, the bleeding from which was chiefly internal.

His comrades came to his assistance and raised him up, but he was in such acute agony that he begged of them to leave him alone.

He was, however, removed, and very shortly afterwards breathed his last.

Peace got clear off, and no one for a moment suspected that he had any hand in the murder.

Suspicion fell upon some young men in the neighbourhood――the brothers Habron. The police, when once they have fixed their minds upon any theory as to the guilt of a person or persons, cling to it with the utmost pertinacity.

The Habrons were aroused from their beds on the fatal night, soon after the commission of the crime of murder.

They slept in a cottage or shed which stood on the grounds, where they worked as gardeners or agricultural labourers, the brothers being in the service of a Mr. Deakin.

William Habron, it was suggested, had threatened to shoot Policeman Cock if he did anything to either him or his brothers; and it was moreover alleged that he had on many occasions displayed great animosity towards the deceased. So the police were under the impression that he was the guilty person.

The trial took place in August, 1876.

The principal, perhaps the only, points condemnatory of William Habron when tried were――firstly, his threats uttered against the unfortunate officer; secondly, his going to the shop of Mr. Moore in order to ask the price of a revolver, and of some ball cartridges; thirdly, that a man wearing a certain shaped coat and hat, similar to those worn by Habron, was seen by two persons near the scene of the murder; and, lastly, the footprint which corresponded with Habron’s left boot.

These facts, though circumstantially bearing upon the case in the eyes and minds of the police authorities――eyes that were absolutely prepared, before a single examination took place, to look upon the brothers Habron as the guilty parties――were still too flimsy to any unprejudiced mind to form any solid foundation for placing a man’s life in jeopardy, unless well supported by far more grave and weighty evidence.

Indeed, Mr. Justice Lopes, in his charge to the grand jury, pointed out that no firearms had been found in possession of the prisoners, that there was no evidence against John Habron at all, and the only evidence that could be adduced against William was that of wearing a dress similar to that seen, on a dark night, by some persons near the spot, his having used threats, the footprints, and his inquiry for cartridges which he did not purchase.

Mr. Justice Lopes would evidently have not been astonished had the grand jury ignored the bill.

Before commenting on the evidence brought forward under the supervision of Superintendent Bent, it would be just as well to mention one important speech of that officer’s, which forms a key at once to his whole working of the case.

He says, “On hearing of the murder I immediately suspected the Habrons.”

That Cock was foully murdered none, of course, could doubt; but who fired the fatal shot could not fail to be a matter of serious doubt to any person who read the particulars of the affair in the daily papers whilst the sad event was under investigation.

F. Wilson, a witness on the trial, deposed that John Habron told him that if ever the “Little Bobby” (their nick-name for Cock) did anything to either him or his brother he would shoot him.

Mrs. Carter, wife of the landlord of the “Royal Oak,” said that if the said “Little Bobby” did not stop persecuting him and his brother, they would shunt him through their “gaffer,” Mr. Deakin, as he would not be the first policeman they had shunted.

Mrs. Fox gave evidence that John Habron (who was under the necessity of appearing at the police-court on the Monday, to answer the charge of drunk and disorderly conduct, preferred by the deceased) said to her, “If he does me to-day I’ll do him on Wednesday.”

James Brownhill deposed to John’s threats to shoot the officer.

The savage threats made by the acquitted John, and the expression used by William, must have been, to say the least of it, frightfully overrated to bear a construction of murder, and yet that construction was put upon it the result of the trial of this ill-used young man shows.

The next point which was supposed to bear upon the guilt of William Habron is that of his having gone to the shop of Mr. Moore, the ironmonger, to ask the price of and to examine some ball-cartridges (the revolvers were brought out and shown him by the shop-man, M‘Clelland, unasked for).

Here the witness cannot swear whether it was on Monday or Tuesday the transaction occurred.

But he swore to the man, although he had probably never seen him before in his life, nor, in the ordinary way of business, would he take any more notice of him than he would of any other casual customer.

And, moreover, the other servants in the shop, although having had the same facilities of recognition, did not think it the same man, and declined to confirm M‘Clelland’s statement.

In addition to this, he neither purchased cartridges nor pistol; so that the visit to Mr. Moore’s shop, as a piece of evidence, even if made by Habron, is of no value whatever.

The little item of finding two percussion caps, introduced by Superintendent Bent, was evidently a superfluity, as Mr. Deakin, the employer of Habron, says the caps might easily have been in the waistcoat pocket when he gave it to Habron, as he had been using his gun just before, and had probably put some caps in the pocket.

The actual bullet extracted from the body of the unfortunate policeman was pronounced by an experienced gunsmith to have been fired from a No. 442 pin-fire cartridge, which was the largest size but one then made.

The third standpoint in the case made out against William Habron is that of dress and general appearance, which bore a similarity to the dress and general appearance of the man seen near the scene of the murder by two witnesses.

J. M. Simpson, who had been walking and conversing with the deceased, had only just left him when he met this man; he described him as an elderly man, and declared that he walked with a stooping gait.

Police-constable Beanland, whose evidence was perhaps the most important, under present circumstances, in the whole case, said that the man was about twenty-two years of age, and walked quite erect; and from general appearance he thought it must have been William Habron.

The man under notice, says Beanland, went along Seymour-grove to Mr. Greatorex’s gate, and he there lost sight of him; and on going to the gate he found it open. He went in at the gate, and examined Mr. Greatorex’s premises, but found all right, and then heard two shots, and found the deceased on the ground at West Point.

We next come to that conclusive evidence of Habron’s guilt as established by Superintendent Bent――the footprints.

He deposed to the examination of the footprints with great exactitude.

He was totally unable to count the nails in the outside row as they were so closely together, but on the inside row they were thicker nails in one line, and the same number of indentations were visible in the footprints; and there were two middle rows of nails and two nails in the toe; the heel iron was worn, and there were three nails in it.

That Mr. Justice Lindley did not think the evidence conclusive against William Habron, the following conclusion to his summing up will testify. He said:――“With regard to William Habron, was there any evidence that he was on the spot where the murder was committed on the night in question? There was the evidence, such as it was, of the witness Simpson and Police-constable Beanland, and they had the evidence of the footprints, and he asked them to satisfy themselves that the impression was the impression of William’s left boot. If they were of opinion such impression was not that of William they would have but little difficulty in dealing with the case. If they were, on the contrary, satisfied the impression was made by William’s boot, then came the next question.――What other evidence is there to show when it was made? For that was a serious conclusion for them to make, because, according to the evidence for the defence, he could not have been there the day previously; and the question was, the print would not have been there if not made recently. He then reviewed the evidence in their favour: Firstly, they were of good character. Secondly, when arrested they were where they ought to have been――in bed. Third, no trace of firearms had been found.”

After the verdict the learned judge did not, as is usual, express his concurrence in the jury’s opinion, but simply said――

“You have been found guilty of murdering Nicholas Cock, and it is my duty to pass sentence upon you,” and again, a few moments after, “I shall simply discharge my duty by passing sentence upon you.”

Notwithstanding the doubt existing after the trial and sentence as to Habron’s guilt he had a narrow chance of being hanged, and he would certainly have been doomed to penal servitude for life had not Peace, in a fit of remorse, told the truth about the whole business while under sentence of death in Armley gaol.

Peace had the audacity and hardihood to be present at the trial of William Habron, and looked complacently on while an innocent man was being condemned to death for a crime he (Peace) had committed.

“Some time afterwards,” observed Peace, “I saw it announced in the papers that certain men had been taken into custody for the murder of the policeman Cock. That greatly interested me. I always had a liking to be present at trials, as the public no doubt know by this time, and I determined to be present at this trial. I left Hull for Manchester for two days, not telling my family where I had gone, and attended the assizes at Manchester for two days, and heard the youngest of the brothers, as I was told he was, sentenced to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life. Now some people say that I was a hardened wretch for allowing an innocent man to suffer for the crime of which I was guilty; but what man could have gone and given himself up under such circumstances, knowing as I did that I should certainly be hanged for the crime?”

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