LXVIII. GILES CHUDLEY IN PRISON…

LXVIII. GILES CHUDLEY IN PRISON

Giles Chudley had ample funds at his disposal, and he told the sagacious Mr. Slapperton not to spare any expense in preparing his defence and securing the services of a clever counsel to conduct his case when the trial came on.

Mr. Slapperton had several interviews with the prisoner after his committal, and in common with many others was at a loss to account for the amount of money he had in his possession.

Some averred that Chudley had rich relations, who had come forward handsomely in the hour of need.

He had friends――that is quite certain, but they were not related to him. The reader will remember that at the time of Chudley’s capture there were two strangers in the parlour of the “Lord Cornwallis.” One was a young swell, the other a broad-shouldered, square-headed man.

The young swell was none other than the boy Alf Purvis, who now assumed all the airs and graces of a fashionable young gentleman, and who, moreover, was one of the most accomplished pickpockets in London. The other, the man with the broad shoulders, was the London “cracksman,” who was introduced to the reader when Laura Stanbridge and young Purvis paid a visit to that delectable establishment known as a thieves’ haunt in Little Mint-street, Whitechapel.

These two personages had effectually concealed Chudley in various parts of the metropolis after he had committed the murder in Larchgrove-lane.

They had supplied him with funds to go abroad. In point of fact, they were about to see him on board of a vessel at Liverpool, but imprudently chose to pay a visit to the hiring fair.

The result of this act of folly we already know.

Purvis detested the Jamblins, and he, as well as Laura Stanbridge, thought Chudley had done a meritorious act by ridding the world of young Mr. Philip; anyway, they befriended his assassin, and supplied him with funds, both before and after his capture.

Mr. Slapperton, after having received the necessary instructions for the wretched man’s defence, spoke most confidently of the result of the trial. He told his client that the chances were clearly in his favour, and that in all probability the jury would return a verdict of “Not Guilty.”

Giles, however, was of a different opinion. He was an ignorant low-bred ruffian, but he had a certain amount of low cunning, which, to say the truth, is a qualification that most criminals of his type generally possess. However, he put as good a face on the matter as possible, and affected to believe what his solicitor told him.

But he was reflective, and thinking of certain plans which he had formed. His low cunning now came out with additional force.

One burning thought was for ever in his brain; it was this:

“How could he effect his escape?”

If he could succeed in doing this, there were those outside who would effectually conceal him from the bloodhounds of the law.

As far as this was concerned the prisoner was not far out in his reckoning.

The reader will remember that in No. 28 of this work we gave a chapter on mysterious murders, and cited many cases in which the perpetrators of crimes of this nature have successfully eluded the vigilance of the police――one of these instances being a murder which was committed at Chingford by a man named Geydon, who in many respects was similar to Giles Chudley.

Since the publication of these cases in a number of this work, issued only five weeks ago, Geydon has given himself up.

For twenty-two years he has, despite the £200 reward offered by Government at the time of the murder, remained under cover.

This, to say the least of it, is a remarkable circumstance, and it is still more remarkable that we should have brought the matter so recently under public notice in this work.

Giles Chudley, as we have already intimated, was bringing all the intellect he had to bear on the one cherished idea which had taken possession of him.

The sessions would come on in about a month. He had that time before him, which he was determined if possible to make use of. In a month there were thirty days, in these thirty days there were seven hundred and twenty hours; a third of the time would be devoted to sleep, to meals, and to times when he could not work, but what of that? There were plenty of hours left for him to accomplish his purpose.

And if all went on well he would accomplish it.

Having come to this resolution he watched and waited for a brief period, never hinting to a living soul that he had any fear respecting the issue of the forthcoming trial.

He assumed an air of cheerfulness, and spoke confidently of the result. He said his innocence would be proved, and that he hoped to leave the court without a stain on his character.

After his trial he judged rightly enough that he woald be confined in a stronger cell, and have a warder night and day with him, who would watch him as they watch men who are doomed to die, and whom despair so often inspires with unnatural strength and cunning.

Both these qualities he possessed in a remarkable degree; the last-named prompted him to allay suspicion, and to make everybody around him believe that he had no fear for the future.

He sent a message to the governor, requesting to see him.

The governor was a particularly kindly-disposed man, and was indulgent to a fault. He came at once.

“Do you wish for anything, my man?” he said, addressing himself to the prisoner.

“I’m very dull, and doan’t know what to do wi’ myself,” said Chudley. “You were kind enough to say that I might have books and papers.”

“I didn’t know you took an interest in books or their contents, or that you cared about reading. However, I am glad to find I’ve misjudged you. You can have what books you require from the circulating library. You’d better pay a month’s subscription, and then you can look over the catalogue, and select those which take your fancy.”

“Thank you, sir. How am I to get them?”

“The messenger will fetch whatever you require.”

“I shall read a goodish lot o’ books,” said Chudley, smiling. “Was always fond o’ reading.”

“Oh, yes; just so――I dare say,” remarked the governor, carelessly.

“And I can’t sit here all by myself wi’out having summut to do.”

“Certainly not; besides, they will keep you out of mischief. Idle people are always mischievous.”

“Out of meescheef!” cried Chudley. “Well, I loike that; what meescheef can a poor devil loike me do?”

“You might scrawl on the walls, or tear down the rules, you know,” observed the governor, with a smile.

“Oh, I might, sartenly, but I aint loikely to do nuffin o’ the sort. I hope I know how to behave myself in prison or out o’ prison.”

“I dare say you do, my man. Is there anything else you want before I leave?”

“Thank ’ee, sir, that be all.”

The governor despatched the messenger to the nearest library, and then left the cell. As he passed along the passage he called the turnkeys before him.

“I can’t make out that man,” he observed. “What can be his reason for asking for books? Just you keep an eye upon him.”

“We are sure to do that, sir; but he don’t give much trouble, and seems to make sure of getting off.”

“Oh! he does――eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That may be put on. I wouldn’t put too much trust in him. I may be mistaken; but I believe him to be a very artful, cunning fellow. I say again, keep your eyes upon No. 9.”

The turnkeys promised to do so, but they could not very well see any reason for mistrust or doubt.

At four o’clock Giles Chudley was summoned to chapel, and was ushered into a long line of fellow-prisoners, clad in the uniforms of convicted crime.

All the officers accompanied the prisoners into the chapel in the manner we have described in a preceding chapter.

The warders stood in the gallery above the seats of the convicts, every movement of whom they commanded with their eyes.

It seemed to Chudley, however, that he was the leading object of attraction, for glancing carelessly round the building, as people usually do when first entering a place of worship, he observed several pairs of eyes accompanying his own in whatsoever direction he turned them, and also that several more were fixed upon him in one long steadfast glance.

He could not help noticing this, at which he felt greatly annoyed. He had not calculated the deep interest men of every denomination take in the actions and demeanour of a murderer.

The glance he had taken at the most noticeable features of the chapel, cursory as it had been, put him in possession of the fact that the windows of the building were only protected by one bar, which fell down the centre, and which left an opening on each side sufficiently small to prevent a sudden escape and sufficiently large to admit of a slim man squeezing through with time and trouble.

He was in a state of feverish anxiety. He clenched his teeth, and endeavoured to prevent his emotion being perceived by the eyes in the gallery.

To deceive whom he did not look round any more, giving his attention not to the chaplain, for that would have been a transparent act of hypocrisy, and sufficient in itself to have excited suspicion, but to the title-page of the prayer-book and to other indifferent little matters, as any one else who had been sent to church by compulsion might have done.

But his mind was actively employed, and his whole thoughts were engaged upon his pet project.

He was trying to guess first what the chapel windows opened out upon; secondly, whether the chapel door was locked at night.

An answer to the first question was soon made by the rattle of carriage wheels, which he could hear distinctly, and sometimes he fancied he could catch the faint hum of voices and footsteps, which gave him hopes of escape and liberty.

There was not the least question about the chapel being close to the street or some public thoroughfare; if he could only get there he could easily escape. But he had seen that there was a lock on the door――a massive lock which might give him a great deal of trouble, and take him hours to pick with such rude instruments as alone he could possibly obtain.

Besides, he was by no means an adept in the manipulation of locks, and this he bitterly regretted; but, nevertheless, he did not despair.

Happening to look on the floor he could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw a good-sized needle there.

It had probably been dropped by one of the female prisoners, who at the regular chapel hour sat together in a large pew, surrounded by a red curtain, but occupied the seats of the male prisoners when attending the school class which was held in the chapel once a day.

He considered for some little time, not knowing very well how to act; the needle would be of service, and he must obtain it by some means.

A few minutes after this he happened to drop his hymn-book. He picked it up again directly, and with it the needle, which he secreted in his shirt sleeve.

As he returned the hymn-book to the ledge of the pew, he took care to display the palms of both his hands, that no one might suppose they contained anything besides his book.

No one who knew Giles Chudley would have given him credit for possessing so much acuteness; but the situation in which he found himself called forth the latent powers of his mind, which had heretofore lain dormant.

As the convicts and other prisoners were being marshalled out of chapel, Giles blundered against the door, apparently by accident, so that it almost shut.

He took hold of the lock to swing it open again, and, in so doing, slipped the needle into the keyhole.

“Can’t you see your way out?” cried a warder.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; it was an accident,” returned Chudley.

“Forward! this way,” said the official, and the line of men marched on.

All was well so far. It was evident that the warders did not suspect that anything was amiss.

He could examine the lock the next day as he went out, and if the needle was still there it would be a proof that the door had not been locked.

The contrivance was an ingenious one, but then we should remember that men whose lives are at stake have their wits sharpened in a remarkable degree.

Chudley returned to his cell. He opened his books, disfigured them with notes on the margin, much to the disgust of the librarian, and littered them together as if he had been diligently employed with them; but he was too excited to read; he could not even sit or remain still for any length of time; he paced to and fro, thinking and muttering to himself.

By day and by night the same thought haunted him.

At dusk a turnkey came in and lighted his gas. As soon as he heard the key in the lock he sprang to his stool, and was poring over his books before the door was opened.

He had the cunning of the serpent, and flattered himself that he could assume anything or conceal anything while the great lock was being turned by the gaoler.

“It is a most fortunate thing the lock makes such a noise when turned,” he murmured. “I do hope they won’t oil it.”

But as yet he did not see his way clear for the accomplishment of his object.

The whole of that night, and on the following day also, he was cudgelling his brains for some solution to the grand and all-important question.

It seemed almost like wasting precious time, but he knew that it would be folly to begin working with his hands till his plans were matured and his calculations had been fully made.

The half-hour of evening prayers seemed to be an age.

He quivered all over with impatience and anxiety.

There was no help for it――he had to wait patiently. The time having expired, he passed out with the others as usual. As he did so he thrust his finger into the key-hole. An icy tremour shot through his frame.

The needle was still there. Never surely did so insignificant an object have such a powerful effect upon a man as did this little needle. It whispered into his ears delusive words of hope and comfort, of escape and freedom.

If he could only work through his cell door into the corridor, from which the chapel was entered, the rest was an easy matter. He felt assured this could be accomplished, and was confident of his ultimate success.

But much remained to be done. His plan of operations was simple enough in theory, but it had to be put into practice.

It would be no very difficult task to turn his bed-clothes into a rope, and when this was done he could let himself down from the chapel window.

Upon his return from chapel he found Mr. Slapperton awaiting him.

The lawyer had a number of questions to put respecting the leading points in the case. He had a long conference with his client, and as heretofore spoke hopefully of the result of the trial.

Giles Chudley assumed an air of confidence, which, to say the truth, he was far from feeling. However, he humoured his legal adviser, but said nothing about the scheme he had in his head.

After Mr. Slapperton had left, Giles knelt down before the door and scrutinised the lock.

After a minute examination of the same he came to the conclusion that it would be easier for him to dig a hole in the wall close to the lock, to wrench the staple away, and then force back the bolt as if it was being unlocked by a key.

He felt assured that this would be the best plan, but as he was rising from his knees he discovered something in the centre of the door which strangely enough had entirely escaped his attention before.

There was a small round grating a little larger than a man’s eye: a flap of iron hung before it on the other side.

Giles was astonished, as well he might be, at the discovery, and still more so at it having escaped his notice.

While he was staring at it and fingering it with a considerable amount of curiosity he heard a soft step, so soft that he did not think it was so close to him.

“Some one on the watch,” he murmured, as his heart beat audibly.

The flap was gently raised and its place was taken by a large brown eye, which sternly surveyed the interior of the cell.

As if satisfied with the impression it had made, the eye disappeared, and the iron flap descended as noiselessly as it had been raised.

Giles Chudley felt relieved when the scrutiny was over.

“Ah, ah,” he muttered, “I did not reckon on this, but I am glad I made the discovery. This is a hound that does not bark; I must act with caution.”

He resolved to begin work as soon as it was dark, and watched the shadows one by one as they fell through the little window upon the door of the cell.

Having matured his plans he was burning to put them into practice.

When once outside the walls of his prison-house he would be safe.

So he thought and fondly hoped; but how to get out was the question.

He waited till the turnkeys, who brought the prisoners their suppers of bread and gruel, and lighted their gas, had gone their rounds.

He then wrenched off one of the hooks, upon which his bed was suspended at night, and crept cautiously towards the door.

He was afraid to begin, for the sounds of voices met his ear, and he judged that some of the prison officials were about. He was very soon convinced of this, for the voices became more distinct.

He was constrained, therefore, to await for a more favourable opportunity.

Deeply mortified at this circumstance he heaved a deep sigh, and sat himself down upon his wooden stool.

He felt supremely wretched, and endured an hour of almost insupportable agony. During this time he stared vacantly at the white flame which flickered from the gas-pipe, and calculated what he should do when he had made his escape.

When he heard a clock strike eleven he sprang from his seat, and grasping the hook with which he hoped to obtain his freedom firmly in his right hand, he again knelt before the door.

Not a sound broke the stillness of the night. He set to work vigorously, and struck the hook into the stone. A cloud of white dust flew from it, he raised his weapon again, when the noise of a footstep fell upon his ear.

He paused and listened. It was a slow, regular step, like that of a sentry on guard. He did not move, but waited patiently till the sound had passed, till it had grown faint, till it had become inaudible.

This was a most unfortunate circumstance. It required all his skill and address to baffle his janitors.

One false step and all his schemes were scattered like leaves before the autumn blast.

He felt sick at heart. There was a haze before his eyes, and horrible lights flickering, and strange noises murmuring.

Something seemed to be swinging to and fro inside his head like the pendulum of a clock; big drops of perspiration oozed from his temples.

He was now very well assured that the corridor was watched by both day and night, and it was therefore impossible to force the door without running the risk of discovery――it was impossible to enter the chapel without being seen.

He was baffled, and could have cried in the agony of his despair.

He must resort to some other means.

He felt his way back to his seat, and sat there till the grey light of morning shed its cold wan rays into his cell.

The light, ghastly as it was, appeared to inspire him with strength and hope, for he now rose, drove the hook back into the wall, removed the white dust which was scattered on the floor, and, suspending his bed to the hooks on each side of the cell like a hammock, flung himself upon it, and, wore out with watching throughout the livelong night, fell into a sound sleep.

His first night’s experience had not inspired him with much hope; on the contrary, it had almost driven him to despair; but there is an old saying, that a drowning man will catch at a straw, and Chudley, despite the difficulties that were in the way, still clung tenaciously to his fondly-cherished scheme.

The turnkeys in attendance on him observed nothing remarkable in the demeanour of No. 9, except that he was always occupied with his books; so busy was he with them that he hardly honoured the prison officials with even a cursory glance when any one of them entered his cell.

This was most remarkable in a man of his class, and the officials could not help noticing this.

“He’s a queer sort of customer,” said one――“one of the oddest chaps I ever came across. I sometimes think he hasn’t got his right change.”

“Ah! don’t you run away with that idea,” said another turnkey. “He’s a jolly sight more artful than people suppose.”

“Well, but the fellow takes such strange fancies. Sometimes at his books, sometimes he’s writing away like mad, and yesterday he wanted parcels and big sheets of white paper, because he must try his hand at drawing. I suppose he thinks himself a sort of genius.”

“That man is a mystery,” said the deputy governor, joining the men, “but more knave than fool――mind you that. Keep your eyes well upon him.”

It is possible, despite the difficulties and impediments in the way, that Giles Chudley would have succeeded in making his escape had it not been for one circumstance, which proved fatal to him.

It was this.

In the same prison was confined a man who was charged with piracy and murder on the high seas. He was a ruffian of the most pronounced type, and if report spoke truly he had committed no end of atrocities; but report, we must remember, is not always to be relied on.

Nevertheless the nautical miscreant was most unquestionably a bad lot.

Upon being brought to the gaol he gave himself all the airs and graces of a West-end swell, and found fault with everything and everybody.

He said the cell in which he was confined was dripping with wet, and gave him the ague. He was in consequence of this transferred to the cell next to the ill-fated Giles Chudley.

After being immured in this a few days, he said it was worse than the other.

The turnkeys were sick of listening to the man’s complaints. At length he said he wanted to see the governor.

“Oh, you want to see the governor, do you?” said the turnkey in attendance, with an air of irony. “What do you want to see him for? Make him apply to her Majesty for better dinners, I suppose?”

“Don’t you be so cheeky, young fellow,” observed the pirate, “’cos it’s no use your trying to bullyrag me. Never mind what I want to see him for, that’s my business. I can see him if I like――I read it in the rules; o you shut up. If you don’t go and tell him I’ll report you.”

“I never said I wouldn’t tell him, did I?” and the turnkey as he banged the door in a rage.

“I ain’t a-goin’ to stand any of their nonsense,” muttered the pirate. “I know what discipline is, an’ I’ll see it enforced, if needs be.”

“Well, No. 8, what is the matter now?” said the governor, at he entered. “Anything amiss with this cell?”

“I don’t much like it. ’Cos why――I can’t get any sleep o’ nights.”

“Indeed! Not well, I suppose; you had better let the doctor see you.”

“I don’t want no doctor――I want peace and quietness.”

“And I hope you have both.”

“No, I aint. There’s some of your men at work in the yard below all the blessed night, and I can’t sleep for the noise.”

“Eh!” ejaculated the governor. “Indeed――men at work all night; that’s contrary to my orders.”

“Well, all I know is, they are there. All night they are a-scratching and a-scratching, like a lot of big rats.”

“I think I know who it is,” remarked the governor, in a careless manner. “Just under the window here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s where it is――the exact spot.”

“Ah, the vagabonds, they will work out of hours and disturb people. I’ll see and put a stop to them. When do they begin――about dusk?”

“Some little time after nightfall, and they go on till it’s light. I never hear it in the day time.”

“I am glad you have spoken of this, my man. You won’t hear it again. If you do send for me.”

“All right, and thank you,” returned the pirate.

Seven days had elapsed since the night on which Giles first began putting into practice his plan of escape. On the eighth day the prisoner was still in bed, although it was half-past ten o’clock. He was aroused by the unlocking and opening of his door, but he did not move from his hammock.

He was a little surprised, however, upon beholding the governor, accompanied by two turnkeys, enter the cell.

The governor, who, like most governors of prisons, was a retired military officer, and on this occasion he was arrayed in his best uniform, looked more than usually severe and imposing. He twirled his heavy iron-gray moustache, and glanced suspiciously around the cell.

“You are taking it easy,” he observed, addressing the prisoner. “Do you not know, sir――and if you do not it is time that you did――that to be in bed at this hour is against the rules and regulations?”

“I know it, sir,” said Giles, springing out of his hammock, and muddling on his clothes, “but I doan’t feel at all well, and ha’ had very little sleep all night.”

“Oh, that I can readily believe,” observed the governor, in a tone of sarcasm. “Not well――eh? Perhaps you are over-fatigued.”

Chudley was greatly alarmed at this last observation.

“Eh, do you hear, my man?” inquired the governor.

“I don’t see how that can be. I aint had nuffin’ to tire me,” returned Giles.

“Haven’t you? Well, there may be other reasons.”

At a signal from their chief the two turnkeys proceeded to search the bed-clothes with great care. They also searched the clothes the prisoner had on, and those lying on his stool (for he was but partially dressed).

They found nothing, however, to excite their suspicions.

The governor was evidently disappointed.

“No instrument or weapon of any sort,” he murmured.

“No, sir, nothing. Nor do we miss anything from the cell.”

The governor, who had been standing with his arms behind him in a Napoleon-like attitude, appeared to be lost in reflection.

While the examination of the garments had been taking place he watched the countenance of the prisoner with the eyes of a lynx. He had succeeded in intercepting one furtive glance.

“Umph! You miss nothing, eh?” said he.

“No, sir.”

“How about the hasp to the window?” The turnkeys looked astonished when they found that it was not in its proper place.

“It must be concealed somewhere, and has been taken away for a specific purpose. What that purpose is we can readily guess.”

Giles Chudley felt as if about to faint.

“What have you done with the hasp?” said the governor to the prisoner.

“Me, I aint seen nuffin’ of it; somebody must ha’ taken it away afore I came here.”

The governor shook his head.

“No, my man,” he said, “that story won’t do. It is concealed somewhere, I have no doubt.”

The turnkeys turned over all the things and made another search, which was as fruitless as the first.

Their chief contemplated the window with some curiosity.

“Can’t one of you climb up to that?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir, certainly; that’s easily managed,” returned one, who, addressing his companion, said, “give us a back, Jewett.”

The latter obeyed, and the other of the turnkeys, who was the lighter of the two, sprang upon his comrade’s back and clambered up to the window.

The panes were made of fluted glass, which were very difficult to see through. In addition to this a louvre light, or “copper light,” as the prisoners call them, was hung before the window.

It was a great shade made of galvanised iron, which prevented the prisoner from seeing anything else even when the window was opened.

This, however, was never allowed. There was an express rule and punishment for climbing up to the window. The prisoners had to content themselves with the mouthful of fresh air per day which was admitted by the grating.

It must, however, be admitted that there was abundance of air for them as a rule. There is seldom or never any reason for complaint as far as ventilation is concerned.

“Search the louvre light!” said the governor, and he looked Giles Chudley hard in the face as he gave this order. At the same time he twisted his moustache with a sort of malicious hilarity.

Chudley’s knees knocked together.

The turnkey drew forth the hasp, which he held forth triumphantly. It had been chipped at the end, and was covered with dirt. It had evidently been used on the prison stones.

[Sidenote: No. 35.]

The governor tapped at the wall with his Malacca cane. After two or three minutes’ sounding he came upon a part of the wall which yielded to his stick. Both the turnkeys sprang forward and grabbed at it with their hands.

Giles Chudley fell upon his stool, and, covering his face with his hands, groaned aloud.

An opening in the wall was discovered almost large enough to admit a man.

The hole had been pasted over with sheets of white drawing paper, smeared with prison gruel, which made admirable glue; and these, when powdered over with the white dust of the stone, became not an imitation but a fac simile.

An exclamation of surprise proceeded from the turnkeys and their chief.

“Ah!” exclaimed the latter, “we now know the reason for the pirate being so disturbed at night. This is no more than I expected. We have made the discovery in good time.”

“It has been cleverly managed, sir,” observed one of the turnkeys.

“Certainly, very clever indeed; but all is of no avail.”

The three prison officials, however, could not refrain from admiring the masterpiece of industry and art. They remained for some time examining the aperture in the wall.

Presently the governor turned towards Chudley, who sat on his little stool the very personification of despair, and said in a severe tone――

“Since you have been under my charge you have had every indulgence it was possible for me to give, consistent with my duty as governor of this prison. What return have you made for this? The answer is but too apparent. With the basest ingratitude for all the kindness shown to you, without the slightest consideration for me, you have striven secretly to effect your escape. Had you succeeded I should have been disgraced and severely censured. You are a worthless fellow.”

“I be sorry for what I ha’ done, and ask you to forgive me, but for all that I be doubly sorry that I ha’ bin found out. Liberty is sweet, but it aint o’ no yoose talking about that now,” returned Chudley.

“I will take good care another such an opportunity is not afforded you. Henceforth you will be confined in a stronger and more commodious cell, and I warn you not to make another attempt to escape; indeed, it will be my duty to see you have no chance of doing so. Dogs that bite us when we fondle them must go to dirty kennels and rusty chains. Dixon, you have your orders.”

The turnkey touched his cap, and said “Yes, sir.”

“And see that my instructions are attended to. The prisoner is a dangerous character; he has the cunning of the serpent. Keep watch and ward over him. Do you understand?”

“He shall be well looked after, sir.”

The governor turned upon his heel, and strode majestically out of the cell.

Chudley did not seem to be aware that the prison’s chief had taken his departure.

The wretched man sat on his stool almost in a state of stupefaction.

He had drained the cup of bitterness to the very dregs, and did not appear to care what became of him. The misery that had fallen on him was supreme and overpowering.

The turnkeys spoke to him, but he did not answer or take any notice of what they said.

One stepped forward, and shook him roughly by the shoulder.

“Now, then, get up and stir your stumps. Do you hear?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, aye, I hear. You mun ha’ it all your own way. What do ’e want me to be after?”

“Get up, man, and follow us,” was the answer.

“It doan’t much matter where I be; one place is as good as the other,” he answered, rising from his seat, and casting a woe-begone look round his narrow prison-house.

He was so broken down that he hardly had strength enough to follow his janitors from the cell.

They took him down a flight of steps through a yard. In this yard was a covered building fitted up with little cells, each of which contained a crank and a prisoner.

Chudley heaved a deep-drawn sigh, and passed his hands across his eyes, which were filled with tears.

The turnkeys retained him there for a few minutes to see the prisoners at work, and then conducted him to a corner of the yard in which there were two iron doors.

One of these was unlocked, and he was forcibly thrust into a low, damp cell, the walls of which were covered with damp, and which emitted a cold, earthly smell, as if it now tasted the sun and fresh air for the first time.

It was in a cell similar to the one in which he now found himself that the pirate had been confined previous to his being transferred to the one next to the cell Chudley had just left.

He sat down upon the rough stones, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

He remembered then that he had been within a few hours of liberty――he had been robbed of his life when he had almost grasped it with his hands.

The thought was agony, and he uttered a low, plaintive cry.

Besides this, he had seen his fellow-prisoners at work; he had seen how they obeyed the orders of men who spoke to them, not with words, but with gestures and with bells.

He knew his life in the prison had been one of indulgence and comparative luxury, when contrasted to the poor wretches he had seen in this part of the gaol.

Their infamous dress, their white faces, their servile compliance, had filled him with terror and dismay.

Hope――the last solace of the wretched――seemed to suddenly take wings and fly away.

He looked up at the window, which was little less than one great iron bar; he sounded the walls, so thick and strong; he breathed the air of his new cell, and it chilled him to the bone.

“Am I to remain in this miserable place?” he inquired.

“Yes, until your trial comes on,” replied one of the turnkeys. “Don’t blame us; it’s all your own fault.”

“But if I promise to remain quiet and behave better?”

“The governor won’t believe you. It aint likely, I should say.”

“But I will promise. Tell him to be merciful. I be sorry for what I ha’ done.”

“No good your saying that. He’s lost faith in you. You’ve nobody but yourself to blame.”

Chudley groaned and said no more.

The door was shut with a loud bang, the lock was turned, and the prisoner was alone.

Two hours afterwards, when the turnkeys came in with his dinner of gaol soup and his prison bread, they found him crouched in the farthest corner of the cell, gnawing his hands, and uttering low groans.

He was also trembling all over, and his eyes had a lack-lustre vacant expression like those of a madman.

They exchanged glances and shook their heads, and when the prisoner was shut in again they threw out hints that he might endeavour to commit suicide.

To say the truth, they were not very far out in their reckoning; Chudley had thoughts of suicide at that time, but he had not the means to put it into practice.

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LXIX. AT BROXBRIDGE HALL――THE EARL AND HIS LAWYER

“I suppose you have heard the news, my lord,” said Mr. Wrench to Earl Ethalwood, “the prisoner, Chudley, has attempted to escape.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the earl, in a tone of surprise. “No I have not heard anything about it till this moment; but I hope and trust he was not successful.”

“No; it was discovered only just in time. A few hours later and he would in all probability have succeeded.”

“Miserably-guilty wretch!” ejaculated the earl. “Give me the full particulars.

Mr. Wrench entered into a detailed description of the events which have been described in the previous chapter. When he had concluded he said――

“It is a pretty convincing proof that the prisoner is guilty, and will prejudice self in the eyes of the judge and jury.”

“Ah, no doubt; but the evidence is conclusive, and cannot lead but to one conclusion. What say you?”

“Yes, it is pretty clear for the matter of that; but one never knows what may take place――juries sometimes take such singular freaks in their heads. From what I have been able to gather, Mr. Slapperton is going to offer evidence to prove an alibi.”

“Which he will fail in doing. Take my word for it, Mr. Wrench, this as well as other rumours we have heard have not truth for their basis. The man is guilty enough. My brother magistrates agree with me in that opinion. As to Slapperton, he is not worth notice. He’s a noisy wrangler, who is bent upon making as much display as possible for the purpose of gaining popularity; and in this respect it is just possible that he has succeeded to a certain extent. There are, and I suppose always will be, a certain class of persons who admire a blatant, unscrupulous lawyer.”

“Oh, there can be no question about that, my lord――none whatever,” returned the detective.

“I am glad you agree with me in this. Well, we acted wisely, I think, in committing the prisoner without any adjournment. I do not hold with protracted examinations. It has been truly remarked that, under the old system, an inquiry into a criminal charge before a magistrate was less an investigation of the entire circumstances of the case than an examination of the prisoner. Certain broad facts were stated, certain leading witnesses were examined, and the prisoner was then requested to explain himself. In serious cases he was closely and sharply questioned; and abundant testimony as to this practice may be found by turning to the newspaper reports of the proceedings before the magistrates in the cause celèbre of the murder at Gill’s Hill. Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert, being suspected of the murder of Mr. Weare, were examined by the bench as to their complicity, and, their evidence being considered unsatisfactory, they were duly committed for trial.”

“I am not able to speak from my own personal knowledge,” said Mr. Chicknell, “as it was before my time; but I have carefully read the reports of the case, and I may say that it is much to be regretted that the practice of questioning the prisoner has been discontinued. Now we always treat great criminals with so much consideration and deference that they must not be annoyed, or their feelings hurt by being asked questions. The modern system is virtually to induce the prisoner to hold his tongue very tenaciously indeed, while the lawyers are encouraged to be as discursive and verbose as they please. The value of the evidence one way or the other is heavily discounted. The real facts of the case get mixed up in an inextricable tangle, heavy expense is entailed on the country, and almost ruinous costs are incurred by the prisoner.”

“But what sense is there in these forensic wrangles?” said the earl.

“They may be, and doubless are, very fine sport to the legal gentlemen engaged in the case, but they are essentially futile, and in the end are detrimental to the interests of justice.”

“There is hardly an instance of a case being heard without them,” said the detective. “Of course it is not my business to comment on the practice in these cases, but I have been compelled to listen with exemplary patience to wordy passages of arms between astute and sometimes irate barristers and witnesses quite as cunning of fence, but better able to keep their temper.”

“You are a martyr, Wrench――a suffering martyr,” exclaimed Chicknell, bursting out into a laugh, in which the earl joined.

“I don’t put it so strong as that, sir. It is the magistrate who is the martyr. He is bound to sit patiently while a multitude of perfectly irrelevant matters are introduced, discussed, and squabbled over. It is as clear as noonday that his decision cannot be influenced one way or the other by these interminable debates; still the lawyers, being paid to talk like Mr. Slapperton, are praiseworthily anxious to earn their fees.”

“But touching this man――the prisoner, Chudley,” inquired the earl, bringing the discussion to an end――“he will be well looked after now, I suppose; more rigid measures will be adopted by the prison authorities?”

“Oh, there is not the least doubt of that, my lord. There will not be the most remote possibility of his effecting his escape.”

“He appears to be a much more acute, daring fellow than we were led to suppose.”

“The skill, perseverance, and ingenuity he has displayed have surprised everybody,” answered the detective, who, after some further conversation, took his departure.

“And now Mr. Chicknell,” said the earl, shortly after Wrench had left, “in dealing with the Larchgrove murder I am actuated by a sense of justice and my duty to the public as a magistrate. There is a private matter which more immediately concerns me――doubtless you will be able to guess what this is.”

“You allude to your grand-daughter, I presume,” observed the lawyer, in an undertone.

“Precisely――you guess rightly; but the matter rests more specially with the young man she was imprudent and indiscreet enough to marry.”

Mr. Chicknell nodded. He thought that was the safest course to adopt, very well knowing to what his client’s observations were tending.

“I say again the matter rests more with this young engineer――this――ahem, Gatliffe.”

The attorney nodded again.

“You see, Chicknell,” said the other in a confidential tone, “I really don’t think matters can go on thus. There is an imperative necessity to bring them to an issue. Aveline is now――if I may make use of the term――naturalised; she feels her position――is proud of it, and has, I hope, nothing to regret――she certainly ought not to; but still something remains to be done, not only to secure her fealty to me, but happiness for herself.”

“Happiness?” repeated the lawyer.

“Certainly, Mr. Chicknell; most undoubtedly――happiness, contentment, peace of mind, or whatever other term you may choose to make use of to convey my meaning. We will not quarrel about words, which, after all, are but signs or symbols for the expression of ideas, passions, or sentiments.”

“I understand your meaning. Pray proceed, my lord.”

“Well, then, to begin with. I, as you already know, have placed my grand-daughter under the charge of an accomplished lady, who has so well instructed her that she is now well versed in all the usages of good society. So much so, indeed, that she is pretty generally acknowledged to be, if not a highly-cultivated, certainly a well-bred young woman.”

“No one in the world would attempt to dispute that, my lord.”

“This being so, it is desirable that she should never have the chance to return to her husband, or any of his associates. Consequently, a legal separation is an imperative necessity.”

When the earl had come to this part of his discourse he regarded his companion with a look which seemed to pierce him through.

“Ah,” murmured the lawyer to himself, “he’s boring at the old subject.”

“Do you hear what I say? An imperative necessity!”

“Certainly, my lord. The chief question is, how it is to be accomplished.”

“It is easy enough if set about in a proper manner. Have you seen this young Gatliffe?”

“I have, more than once.”

“Well, and did you make any proposition to him? Did you carry out my expressed desire?”

“I did, my lord.”

“With what result?”

“He seems to me to be perfectly indifferent. He is quite willing to resign all claim to his wife; but, to say the truth, he is so strangely altered, so utterly broken down and apathetic, if I may so term it, that――――”

“Well, what? Speak unreservedly, Chicknell.”

“That I pitied him.”

“Bah!” exclaimed the earl, in a tone of ineffable disgust. “Pity, indeed!”

“You told me to speak unreservedly,” observed Chicknell.

“Ah, true, I had forgot. Well, you have done so. But now to business. Will he consent to a separation?”

“Certainly; he has told me that.”

“Aveline has many admirers. It would afford me great pleasure to see her united to some scion of the aristocracy――somebody in her own sphere. This is my most earnest desire, and this is sure to come to pass if she can be released from the odious bonds which bear so heavily upon her.”

“If she desires to marry again we must obtain a divorce.”

“Precisely; that is what I desire.”

“Ah, that’s another matter,” observed the lawyer. “It can only be obtained upon one or more of these pleas――cruelty, adultery, or desertion.”

“Well, can’t you plead one of these?”

“Yes, but we have to offer sufficient proof, and this we are unable to do, as far as I can see at present.”

“Hang it, Chicknell, surely there must be some way of getting over this difficulty?” exclaimed the earl, in a tone of irritation. “It must be done.”

“I don’t see how. Certainly it would be an unopposed suit. Gatliffe would not offer any objection.”

“I will settle a handsome annuity on him for the remainder of his life. Tell him that.”

“I have done so.”

“And what said he?”

“It is not a money question. Virtually he has given up all claim to his wife, and he is willing to resign her legally, but he will not receive one shilling for so doing. There is a great deal of chivalrous spirit about him, which, I must tell you frankly, I greatly admire; but chivalry is one thing, and the law of England is another. You, as a magistrate, must be perfectly aware of this.”

“I have no belief in the chivalry of a person of his class; but we are not here to discuss fanciful and fabulous forms of chivalry. You must obtain a divorce at any cost――mind you that.”

Mr. Chicknell laughed.

“You are very positive, my lord,” he observed. “I suppose you would not like me to manufacture evidence, as it is termed.”

“Certainly not. The end can be obtained by some other means; only I tell you again, Aveline must be released from the tie which is, to say the truth, the very bane of her existence.”

“I will consult my partner, and determine how to take action in the suit. I will then communicate with your lordship.”

“Enough. So let the matter rest for the present. But pray hurry on the matter at as early a day as possible.”

“And now, Chicknell, having arranged this business thus far, let us return to the prisoner Chudley. The assizes will soon be on, and the case will be taken as early as possible. You know, I suppose, that Miss Jamblin has been staying with us――the reason for this being change of scene. Aveline is very partial to her, and I think it best that they should be out of the way when the Larchgrove-lane murder case comes before the court; and I have arranged that they should both go to my house in the metropolis, and stay there till this painful business is over. Chudley will of course be convicted.”

“I should suppose so, but I will not answer for it, as Wrench says――and he has had a pretty good insight into matters of this sort. Juries take such strange crotchets in their heads. Still it is fair to assume that he will be convicted.”

“In any case the two young ladies had better be out of the way.”

While the foregoing conversation was taking place in the reception-room of the grand old hall, Patty Jamblin and Aveline were in the pleasure grounds.

They had for a companion and protector a Mr. Frank Wrexford, son of Sir Mathew Wrexford, the baronet from whose house Henry Adolphus was coming on the night of the murder.

Patty, pale, silent, and thoughtful, was no longer the sprightly, mirthful girl, who had been the light and life of Stoke Ferry Farm, but she had greatly improved in health and strength since she had been at the Hall.

Young Wrexford, who was an Oxford oarsman, persuaded the young ladies to permit him to give them a row on the lake in the pleasure grounds of Broxbridge. While plying his oars he kept up an animated conversation, told them a number of amusing anecdotes, and paid marked attention to the earl’s grand-daughter, who, however, did not appear to offer him any encouragement.

Aveline, like a true Ethalwood, was proud, and it was not everyone she took to.

The boat sped on over the glassy surface of the lake.

“I should like to see you both in better spirits,” said Wrexford; “but past events, I suppose.”

“It is hardly worth while, or, indeed, prudent, to refer to past events,” cried Aveline. “Let us look to the future.”

“Ah! that is always the wisest course. The past is out of your reach, and cannot be recalled; the future may bring us unclouded sunshine, and a recompense for the past.”

“I am sure it’s very kind of you to take compassion on us, poor creatures,” observed Miss Jamblin, hardly knowing very well what to say.

“It is a pleasure――an indulgence――on your part to trust yourselves with so poor a waterman as myself,” returned the young man; “but say when you would like to go on shore.”

The ladies said they were in no hurry, and in about half an hour after this the boat was put in shore. The rower held the prow, and offered his arm to each lady as they alighted. He then left them to pay his respects to the master of Broxbridge.

“He’s very nice――isn’t he?” said Patty to her companion.

“Pretty well――middling,” returned Aveline.

“I do not quite understand all he says,” observed Miss Jamblin.

“Oh, you’ll understand his fine speeches and metaphors in good time――that is if you know him long enough. He’s well enough, but not altogether my sort.”

“Why, what’s the matter with him?” inquired the unsophisticated farmer’s daughter.”

“I don’t know that there’s anything particular the matter with him, but he’s artificial, that’s all.”

Henry Adolphus now came into the grounds and informed his young mistress that the earl wished to speak to her and Miss Jamblin.

Both young ladies hastened into the hall.

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Chapter LXX

THE TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF THE LARCHGROVE-LANE MURDERER――THE PLEA OF WITCHCRAFT.

The day at length arrived upon which Giles Chudley was to be tried, and there were many who believed he would get off. The court was crowded to excess, and when the prisoner entered the dock those who had known him in an earlier day were astounded at the miserable appearance he presented.

His features were lined, thin, and haggard, and he was but a shadow of his former self. Nevertheless, he strove to bear up bravely under the terrible ordeal.

To use a common but expressive phrase, “you might have heard a pin drop” when the counsel for the prosecution rose to open the case.

He did so in a fair, impartial, and masterly manner, neither stepping to the right nor the left, to dwell unnecessarily on the leading facts, either for or against the prisoner.

Whatever opinion we may form of wrangling attorneys, third orand fourth-rate barristers, who, in many cases, are so particularly pertinacious and obtrusive in inquiries at our police-courts, there can be but one in respect to a leading counsel, whose business it is to conduct the prosecution, or who is retained for the defence upon the trial of a prisoner for a capital offence. The arguments on both sides are pretty generally fine specimens of calm and subtle reasoning of cultivated intellects.

And we have no reason to complain of the judges of our land. If there is one thing Englishmen have to be proud of, it is the wisdom and honesty of their judges.

We need not go over the case again. It will suffice to declare that as it was presented before the judge and jury at the assizes, it was much stronger and more compact and complete than when heard before the bench of magistrates. There were two additional witnesses whose testimony corroborated those who had already been heard in respect to the prisoner’s identity.

Mr. Slapperton instructed counsel, and he was greatly hurt at the latter not entering more fully into his favourite plea of mistaken identity; but the gentleman retained for the defence had too good a knowledge of law to allow himself to be dictated to by a provincial attorney.

Two men were brought from London as witnesses for the defence.

They swore positively that the prisoner was in their company in the metropolis on the night the murder was committed.

They were two unprincipled scoundrels who had been produced by Alf Purvis and Laura Stanbridge to perjure themselves, in the hope that they might save the prisoner from the dreadful fate that awaited him.

Nobody in court believed one word they said, and their testimony was rather prejudicial than otherwise; but Mr. Slapperton would insist upon their being called.

Many of my readers will remember that a similar coarse was adopted in the Muller case.

Two women swore that he was in their company on the evening upon which Mr. Briggs was murdered.

There was not a shadow of truth in their statement, and, as in Chudley’s case, nobody believed them.

The counsel for the defence, seeing that the question of Chudley’s identity was fairly established, had no other course left open to him than to strive, by every means in his power, to reduce the crime to manslaughter.

He argued, therefore, that a quarrel had taken place in the lane between the prisoner and the murdered man; that the latter had struck him several blows with his riding whip (the prisoner’s cut lip and the loss of two of his teeth established this fact), and that, after this assault, Chudley caught hold of a hedgestake, with which he defended himself.

This, under all the circumstances, was the best defence that could have been made, and it caused the jury to deliberate one hour and a half before they delivered their verdict.

It is possible it would have had the desired effect had it not been for the murdered man’s throat being cut.

At the expiration of the time already mentioned the jury returned into the box.

Upon being asked by the clerk, “How say you, gentlemen? Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”

“We find him guilty,” answered the foreman. “Guilty of wilful murder.”

“And that is the verdict of you all?”

“It is.”

The prisoner was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed upon him, when to the surprise of those assembled in court he entered into a long rambling statement, which, to say the truth, was little else than a specimen of ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry.

He said that he was not guilty of wilful murder――that a “cunning woman,” whom he declared to be a witch, had cast her spells upon him, and that she, and she alone, was answerable for the crime that had been committed.

The gist of his argument was that he was bewitched, and was therefore in no way a free agent.

He, however, admitted that he had slain his young master, who was, as well as himself, under the spell of the person whom he was pleased to call a witch.

The judge said that it was difficult to conceive that at the present period such gross ignorance could exist. He besought the wretched man to prepare for the fate that awaited him, and passed sentence in the usual manner, which Chudley listened to with the utmost composure.

No one had anticipated that Chudley would put forth such a miserable plea in the vain endeavour to cover his guilt.

But it is in vain for us to endeavour to conceal the fact that the belief in the supernatural exists still to a large extent in the country towns and villages of England.

Our ancestors, even up to the commencement of the eighteenth century, were strong believers in the existence of witchcraft, and it is not surprising that they were so, for it is a fact our ancient law-books are full of decisions and trials upon the subject.

All histories refer to the exploits of these instruments of darkness, and the testimony of all ages, not merely of the rude and barbarous, but of the most enlightened and polished, give accounts of these strange performances.

We have the attestation of thousands of eye and ear witnesses, and those not of the easily-deceived judges only, but of wise and grave discerners.

Standing accounts had been kept of well-attested relations.

Laws in most nations have been enacted against practices in witchcraft. Those among the Jews and our own cases have been determined by judges, who, as regards other legal matters, are revered, and their names handed down to us as legal oracles and sages, and to all appearance upon the clearest and most decisive evidence, and thousands in our own nation as well as others have suffered death for their vile compacts.

Those who are labouring, either as individuals or in social institutions, to raise the level and improve the tone of life among the mass of the people, are repeatedly confronted by disheartening evidence that gross superstition and ignorant credulity still exist amongst us to a lamentable extent.

Even comfortable farmers with their wives and children, small shopkeepers in the country towns, and working men and women in large towns, are to be found among the dupes of fortune-tellers and witch-finders.

Whether, through the agency of School Boards, education will reach down deeper into society than it does at present the next generation must show; but nothing less than mental improvement, whether by school, by healthy literature, or other agencies, will cure the evil.

It is a few years over the century and a half since the last execution for the “crime of witchcraft” took place in these islands.

Caithness was the scene of this legal murder, and the victim was a miserable old woman, who was done to death by order and warrant of David Ross, sheriff of the shire.

It was the last tragedy of something like four thousand, for this is the computation of those who were sacrificed to Caledonian superstition between the Act of Queen Mary “Anentis Witchcraftes” in 1563, and the final brutality perpetrated in 1722.

We are assured, indeed, that the glamour of the ancient necromancy has not yet died out among our northern neighbours. Just before the rebellion of ’45 the Dissenters published an Act of Presbytery, formally denouncing the repeal of the penal statutes against witchcraft as “contrary to the express law of God,” and the reason of all the misfortunes that afflicted the nation.

It is curious, by the way, to note how prominent priests and preachers have been in battling the magicians, and with what particular ferocity of spirit they urged the crusade.

While the Popes invoked the tortures of the Inquisition and promulgated the famous Malleus Maleficiarum, or “Hammer for Witches,” the clergy after as well as before the Reformation took their cue from the persecuting Pontiffs.

Even in the United States they led the merciless war against the children of Satan, and pious fanatics, like Cotton Mather and the minister of Salem, were guilty, with the best intent, of barbarities unspeakable.

We find it boldly stated by the author of the “Waverley Anecdotes,” that the doctrine urged by the Dissenting Presbytery in the time of the Young Pretender is still taught from the same pulpits, and believed in by the far larger number of their adherents.

This appears very startling. But it is quite explicit, as is the further allegation that a belief in witches prevails even at the present enlightened period among the lower orders in Scotland, “whatever may be their religious persuasion.”

This is a strange and scarcely credible character of a canny, shrewd, and hardheaded race. However, the land of Ossian has been an eerie place from remote ages. In this region of mists and mountains the very atmosphere favours diablerie, and fosters the supernatural.

Shakespeare’s terrible trio will keep Scotland and sorcery linked in deathless association long after the lingering faith of the credulous shall have died out like the credulities that have waxed, waned, and faded ever since mankind had intelligence enough to colour with poetry the harsh and bare realities of life.

Scotchmen claim King David as a compatriot; they have as good a right to the Witch of Endor. Probably, if the truth were known, they are not singular in their superstitious conservatism. It is not yet a hundred years since a witch was burnt at Glarus, in Switzerland.

In the year of the great French Revolution a judicial execution for witchcraft took place in the Grand Duchy of Posen.

Here in England we did better and worse. We stopped hanging witches half-a-dozen years sooner than the Scotchmen.

But it is only sixteen years ago since we drowned a reputed wizard in a pond at Hedingham, in Essex.

It has been our aim throughout this work to give the reader a faithful view of certain flections of society as they exist at the present time.

Superstition is still rife in the land, and Chudley’s plea is but an average sample of the ignorance and bigotry which still exist.

As a proof of this, we cite the following case which was heard only a few weeks ago at the East Dereham Petty Sessions:――

A young man named William Bulwer, of Etling-green, was charged with assaulting Christiana Martins, a young girl living near the Etling-green toll-bar.

The complainant said that Bulwer came to the toll-house, abused her with language of the foulest description, and struck her with a stick, without any provocation from her. Defendant, called upon to account for his conduct, told the magistrates that complainant’s mother, Mrs. Martins, was a witch, that she had charmed him so that he got no sleep from her for three nights.

He went on, “One night, at half-past eleven o’clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went out and found a ‘walking toad’ under a clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I could not rest; she put this toad there to charm me, and I got no rest night nor day till I found this ‘walking toad’ under the turf. I got the toad out and put it in a cloth, and took it upstairs and showed it to my mother, who threw it into the pit in the garden.”

The witness further informed the bench that the witch “went round this here ‘walking toad’ after she had buried it, and I could not sleep.”

Her daughter he believed to be as bad as the mother, and hence his natural indignation, loss of temper, and act of violence. Their worships appear to have been taken seriously aback by this extraordinary story.

The chairman asked the police superintendent if he knew the witness and could answer for his sanity. Superintendent Symonds answered that he could do so with perfect confidence.

Mr. Bulwer may be a thoroughly rational being in all other matters save witchcraft, and he even here is quite coherent from his own point of view and according to his lights. It was in grim earnestness of conviction that he denounced as “bad enough to do anything” the witch who had the wickedness “to go and put the walking toad in the hole, like that, for a man which never did nothing to her.”

We have no doubt, moreover, that the defendant expressed his sincere opinion when he declared that Miss Martins’ mother was “not fit to live,” because she “looks at lots of people, and she will do some one harm.”

Clearly Mr. Bulwer sees in Mrs. Martins a sorceress endowed with the awful gift of the evil eye, a baleful glance from which is potent enough to sour the milk or spoil the butter, to blight an infant from beauty and health into a puny changeling, and even to sow the seeds of slow decay in the robust frame of manhood.

Mr. Bulwer very properly resents the disposition of this enchantress to exercise her diabolical spells upon him, and if he were allowed to take the law into his own hands we should in all likelihood find him adopting an old-fashioned and summary mode of self-protection.

It will hardly cure a rooted belief, such as that by which this yokel is possessed, to fine him twelve and sixpence for assaulting a witch’s daughter.

Moreover, the magisterial decision, besides displaying an irritating indifference to the danger in which he stands, must seem doubly harsh to this young man, since it was imposed in face of his offer to bring the “walking toad” into court as evidence for the defence.

The brick which proved the house Jack Cade lived in was not more conclusive testimony.

This case of witchcraft at Etling-green will appear the more remarkable if we just apply a brief comparison.

The last execution for witchcraft in England was that of a Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, who were hanged at Huntingdon in 1716 for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings and raising a lather of soap.

This was the sort of diabolism those weird sisters used to work, and such was the machinery they used.

Thus, in the two most frightful cases of witch-torturing in Scotland――those of Janet Comphat and Bettie Laing――the overt act was of a kind to raise more than a doubt of the sanity of those who believed it.

The Pittenweem witch, Beatrix Laing, after many a Walpurgis and much riding of broomsticks with impunity, ordered nails from a blacksmith named Patrick Mourton.

Being otherwise occupied, he refused to make them, whereupon she went off muttering. A week afterwards the honest blacksmith, passing the old woman’s door with another man, saw a vessel with water outside the threshold.

In this vessel there was a burning coal, and the dreadful portent striking the terrified Mourton with an impression that it was a charm being wrought against him, he concluded, in the vein of William Bulwer, that the witch was not fit to live.

So he gave information, and Beatrix Laing, having been first tortured with the boots, the capsie-claws, the pilniewinks, and other instruments conducive to confession, was ultimately, by the ministers and magistrates, delivered over to the rabble, who had “three hours’ sport” before they finally tormented the life out of her.

When we read of a parish, gathered, with the connivance of its clergy, to press a wrenched old woman to death under a door, and then drive loaded waggons backward and forward over her body, on the suspicion that she has been, by demoniac arts, causing the crops to fail, the kine to perish, and the fair and happy to pine and die, it seems that the Christian Englishman of the First George was quite another being from his descendant of the Victoria era.

But this case of Martins v. Bulwer shows that there are good folk among us yet who believe in witchcraft, and would, if they had their way, make short work of its professors.

It was noticed that the sixty or seventy persons who lynched the suspected wizard in Essex, in 1863, were all of the small tradesmen class, not a single agricultural labourer being concerned in the tragedy.

Perhaps it is too soon to expect that a superstition which was gravely treated by a British monarch only two centuries earlier, and which fired judges like Sir Matthew Hale and jurists like Sir Thomas Browne to hang scores of women whose only crime was being old, ugly, eccentric, or morose, should have entirely disappeared from the masses of the population.

Nevertheless its existence, especially as William Bulwer betrayed it, is well worth the study of those social reformers who wish, as their cant has it, to exalt the people before correcting their ignorance.

That witchcraft in this country was believed in, and punishable by death, is borne out by our judicial statistics.

Barrington estimates that the judicial murders for witchcraft in England was thirty thousand in two hundred years.

Matthew Hopkins, the “witch finder,” caused the judicial murder of about one hundred persons in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, in 1645-7.

Sir Mathew Hale burnt two persons for witchcraft in 1664.

Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire preserved the superstition about witchcraft later than any other counties. Seventeen or eighteen persons were burnt at St. Osyths, in Essex, about 1676; and two pretended witches were executed at Northampton, 1705, and five others seven years afterwards.

In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, as already stated, were hanged at Huntingdon for the same offence.

Credulity in witchcraft abounds in the country districts of England.

On the 4th of September, 1863, a poor old paralysed Frenchman died in consequence of being ducked as a wizard at Castle Hedingham, in Essex, and similar cases have occurred since that date.

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LXXI. THE LAST HOURS OF THE CONDEMNED

The wretched criminal, Giles Chudley, during the period which elapsed between his condemnation and execution, was deeply impressed with the awfulness of his position. He was, nevertheless, calm and composed.

The prison officials declared that he was remarkably docile, and exhibited a capacity and eagerness for instruction, which was singular in a man of his type. He was visited by his aged mother and sister, and the interview was, as may be readily imagined, of a painful character.

Throughout this terrible trial, however, he preserved his fortitude and resigned demeanour with a singular absence of excitement.

The chaplain of the gaol zealously continued his ministrations, and the unhappy man appeared to profit materially.

He was communicative to his spiritual adviser, and said that he was perfectly satisfied with the verdict of the jury and the sentence which had been passed upon him.

At the same time he declared that he should never have committed the crime for which he was about to suffer had it not been for the spell which had been cast upon him by the “cunning woman,” who he declared was nothing more or less than a witch.

He said he was perfectly assured that he was in her power for months before the commission of the murder, that she it was who caused him to be in Dennett’s-lane when Ellen Fulford met his young master.

Before that she had set Peace on to him, and it had always been a matter of surprise to him that she had not caused him to take Peace’s life, which he believes he should have done had he not left Broxbridge so suddenly.

The superstition and bigotry of the man was one of his most remarkable characteristics.

There were a number of persons who sympathised with the unfortunate misguided man, and a petition was prepared by the industrious Mr. Slapperton, praying for a respite of the culprit.

As is usual in cases of this description a goodly array of signatures was attached to the document in question.

It was not, however, deemed advisable to make Chudley acquainted with the efforts which were being made on his behalf――efforts which, it would perhaps be needless to say, were entirely futile.

The petitions of this nature almost invariably follow a conviction for a capital offence.

It is astonishing how illogically and irrationally some persons reason upon the punishment of death.

We have one broad fact to deal with――namely, that all that a man hath he will give for his life; that no fear can operate on him like the fear of death; that every man calculates upon the chapter of accidents bringing up something in his favour as long as he lives and breathes; and, in fact, the words which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Claudio are not more eloquent than true.

Remove this powerful deterrent, or restrict its operation, and we must be prepared for very mixed results.

At the present time each case is taken on its merits, and the chances are that no man is ever hung now for what is understood to be “murder of a second class.”

There is no valid reason for asserting that the substitution of imprisonment and hard labour for death, as a punishment for murder, would more effectually deter men from the commission of that crime. Nothing that has been brought forward by the abolitionists leads us to believe so, and the direct testimony of those best acquainted with the criminal classes negatives such a supposition.

It is generally admitted that the most reckless and violent have a thorough fear of the gallows, which secondary punishments do not inspire. It will perhaps be answered, “why not hang for everything?” If death be the best deterrent, and society has the right to inflict it, “Why not bring the coiner and forger to the gallows as of old?” The answer is that murder is a crime so pre-eminently hurtful to society that it is advisable to distinguish it by a punishment above all others, and by one which may be held up before the eyes even of a man who is undergoing the most extreme sentence for a minor offence. Secondly, the crime of murder is contradistinction to ordinary crimes of larceny, or fraud, and is generally the offspring of that kind of savage disposition, which only the fear of death will effectually control. If the opinions of those conversant with prisoners are to be taken, there does exist a salutary fear of the death penalty among the worst class of the population.

A man will rob a house and waylay a traveller, but in the heat of his act, or in the very height of his fury, he will know how to hold his hand and avoid the actual killing of a human being.

It is said, and, we do not doubt, with perfect truth, that the reason why the proportion of murders to minor offences is so small――why the deed so often stops short of the capital offence, even at the risk of leaving a witness of the scene――is, that there is among the criminal classes the very strongest fear of actually causing death.

They know that the pursuit will be far more keen if a murder be in question, and that, if caught and convicted, a very different doom awaits them.

If this be the effect of the law, it is certainly a most important advantage to society, and one that certainly should not be thrown away in deference to either sentimental humanity or the vague theories of abstract justice.

In his speech at Mr. Spurgeon’s Big Bethel Mr. Bright used the following strong language on the subject of capital punishment:―― “Notwithstanding such defence as can be made for it the gallows is not only the penalty but the parent of murder.” As this remark about the gallows is founded on a delusion, to some extent popular, it may be as well to devote a few lines to its refutation.

The idea that the gallows is the parent of murder is founded upon the statistics which show the decrease of that crime since the abolition of capital punishment for minor offences.

The abolitionists say that since murder has decreased in proportion to the restrictions placed upon the exercise of the last penalty of the law it would decrease still more if that last penalty were altogether abrogated.

This conclusion is, however, a transparent non sequitur. It is obvious that when burglary, sheep-stealing, and other offences were punishable with death a housebreaker or other criminal would resist to the last, even to death, in order to escape detection.

[Sidenote: No. 36.]

He knew that whether he murdered his captors or not his punishment would be the same, and consequently it was his intent to carry deadly weapons with him and to use them if interrupted.

Punishment was not sufficiently cumulative, and, after a man had arrived at a certain degree of crime, he knew that no offence, however great, could add to the penalty consequent on detection.

Thus it happened that a highwayman or burglar was indifferent whether he took your money or your life, or both, and thus the restriction of capital punishment to the offences of murder alone restricted also the frequency of the crime itself.

Peace often declared that he never took human life if there was any means left open for him to escape without having recourse to such a dreadful alternative.

He was, perhaps, the most reckless scoundrel of modern times, but “fired wide,” as he termed it, to frighten his pursuer, whose life he had no desire to take.

It is very questionable indeed whether he intended to kill Mr. Dyson when he fired at him, but in this case he seems to have lost himself, and to have been worked up into a sort of furious kind of madness; but his conduct, as far as the murder of Mr. Dyson is concerned, does not accord in any way with his former acts.

If, however, capital punishment were altogether abolished the completeness of the chain would be destroyed, and offenders whose crimes had already occasioned them to fear penal servitude for life would be encouraged again to resort to violence in order to escape detection.

It has been shown conclusively, on more than one occasion, that the punishment of death, while best for the protection of society, could not be compared in cruelty with the alternatives suggested by the would-be abolitionists. The horrors inflicted upon a man by immuring him in a living tomb without hope are too horrible to contemplate.

The deterrent effect exercised by the punishment of death mainly consists in its appearing more rigorous than it is; its real severity is much less than is supposed.

It is, perhaps, true that the cold-blooded premeditating murderer commits his crime with the full knowledge of the punishment he must suffer. This, however, is no argument for the abolition of capital punishment.

For such men our laws are not made, and it is best that such wretches should be destroyed like beasts of prey.

The evidence of prison governors and warders before the Royal Commission went to show that the lives of turnkeys and warders would not be safe from such men, devoid of hope; and the idea of holding out to them any expectation of being once more let loose upon society is quite out of the question.

Shortly after the condemnation of the wretched man, Joe Doughty presented himself at the prison gate with an order from the sheriff to see the prisoner. He was at once conducted into the cell in which Chudley was confined.

“I could not rest without seeing ye,” said Joe Doughty. “I want ye to say you bear me no ill-will. What I have done has been done in the cause of justice, an’ it warnt no fault o’ mine that ye be in your present position. What say ye, Giles? Speak, man.”

“I don’t blame you, Joe. I never have done so. It be right that I should be brought to justice, an’ ye did nothing more than your duty. I wish, when ye laid hands on me in the parlour of the ‘Lord Cornwallis’ that yer grip on my throat had been a little harder. I should have been spared a world of anxiety and misery.”

As he spoke he gave his hand to Doughty.

“You bear me no ill-will?” cried the latter.

“No――none whatever. I bear no ill-will to any mortal man. Why should I? I forgive as I hope to be forgiven.”

“Ah, that be good――I’m glad to hear ’ee say so. I was that angry when I saw ’ee in the ‘Cornwallis’ that I could ha’ killed thee then and there, for I was as savage as a meat hatchet; but that be all over now. We ha’ known each other for goodish many years, Giles, ha’ worked together for Lord knows how long, an’ I be sorry for this bisness. How came ’ee to do such a thing?”

“How?” cried Chudley, “Dunno myself. I was bewitched. People won’t bleeve me when I tell ’em, but I was, Joe. I was under a spell. How is Nell Fulford?” he inquired, suddenly.

“She be broken down, but is better nor what she were――a deal better, I think.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the prisoner, “When I saw her a talkin’ to Mr. Philip in Dennett’s-lane my heart seemed to be a fire loike, an’ my head was all of a whirl. I could see she were a listnin’ and a listnin’ to what he were a sayin’. I could see she had eyes and ears only for him. And this drove me wild loike. And then――――But you know the rest.”

The miserable man covered his face with his hands and heaved several deep sighs, which seemed to shake his frame to the very centre.

Joe Doughty placed his hand gently and mildly on the shoulder of the prisoner, and said, in a broken tone――

“Ye must bear up――indeed you must. There be one above who sees and knows all our hearts, and he will not desert ’ee, he will not desert a truly repentant sinner, Giles. Mind ’ee that, mate, and think o’ that while ’ee have time. Do ’ee understand?”

“Aye, aye, I understand.”

“Well, then, be mindful o’ what I ha’ bin sayin’.”

“I ha’ bin mindful of it; and Mr. Jamblin, how be he, and Miss Jamblin?”

“Ah, they are neither of them much to boast of. The old gentleman is sadly broken. He looks ten years older.”

“Does he?”

“Ah, more――a goodish bit more than ten years. He’ll never be the same man again; but I won’t pain ’ee by talking about him or his. What be done can’t be undone, and it aint o’ no use trying to call back the past, because the past don’t belong to no man. Think o’ that, Giles, ask for forgiveness. Is there any request you have to make――anything you wish me to do for ’ee? I pledge my word to carry out your wishes as far as lies in my power.”

“I dunno that I want ’ee to do anything,” said the prisoner, hesitatingly. “I have done with the world, but still I should loike ’ee to see Nell Fulford, and tell her that if I had not loved her so much I shouldn’t have been so jealous.”

“Oh, it will never do to tell her that, Giles. Better say nothing about it now.”

“Well, perhaps you be right. Well, then, ask her to forgive me.”

“She will do that, poor girl, without the asking.”

“An’ she was fond o’ him?”

“Of who?”

“Mr. Philip.”

“Ah, surely, that she were――more’s the pity.”

“Yes, more’s the pity for all of us.”

“I will tell her what you say.”

“An’ you may tell her and maister that I aint so much to blame as people suppose. I never meant any harm to Mr. Philip, and never should ha’ dun any harm to him if the witch who had me in her power had not made me go to Dennett’s-lane on that fatal night.”

He still insisted that he was in the power of an evil counsellor at the time he committed the murder, and this belief he clung to even when he ascended the scaffold.

It was not simulated――not a paltry excuse to cover his guilt but a species of bigotry or superstition, which could not be eradicated.

Joe Doughty made no reply to the last observation. He knew perfectly well that it would be useless to argue the question with his companion, who throughout his life had been most obstinate and self-opinionated on the questions of evil spirits.

“Well,” said Joe, after a long pause, “ye be goin’, let us hope, where there be no warlocks, witches, gnomes, or evil speerits o’ any sort, so let that pass. Ha’ ye anything else to say――any other request to mek?”

The prisoner hesitated.

“I dunno as I have.”

“Think agen, I be in no hurry,” said Joe. “I haint in no hurry.”

“Noa, nuffin else,” said Chudley, “only do’ee speak a good word for me to maister and Miss Jamblin. I should loike to see un once more afore I dies.”

“I will tell ’em what you say, but can’t promise that they will come,” said Joe.

The two men shook hands cordially, and, after a few more words of counsel and consolation, Doughty passed out of the cell, and returned to Broxbridge.

He was greatly relieved in his mind at having seen the murderer of his young master. He had done his best to bring him to the bar of justice. Nevertheless, deep down in his heart there nestled a feeling of regret.

Bad man as Chudley unquestionably was, now that he was condemned, Joe Doughty could not rest satisfied without “making it up wi’ him,” as he termed it, and hence his visit to the gaol.

The governor and prison chaplain took special pains to impress upon the wretched man the fact that there was not the slightest chance of his gaining a reprieve, and Chudley had said nothing to indicate that he had any hope that his life would be spared.

It was thought, however, by those in attendance on him that he scarcely realised the full extent of the crime of which he had been found guilty.

Strange as it may appear, people took an interest in the prisoner, Giles Chudley; and there were many who believed that her Majesty’s prerogative ought to be exercised in his case.

The venerable vicar of Broxbridge, Canon Lenthall, paid a visit to the prisoner, and did his best to bring him to a sense of the great change which awaited him. Chudley listened to the admonitions of the reverend gentleman, but still persisted that he had been a mere puppet in the hands of a wicked and designing woman.

The worthy vicar, upon returning to Broxbridge, made the earl, Mr. Jamblin, and his daughter, acquainted with the mental condition of the wretched man.

A long consultation and conversation took place, and a day or two after this the porter of the gaol in which the condemned man was confined, while looking out of his lodge, saw a gentleman and lady crossing the street towards him.

The lady was pale and sad-looking, the gentleman was tall and broad-set, with the ruddy sunburnt face of a man who had spent his life in the country and open air, but his step had lost its elasticity, and lines of sorrow were observable on his features.

He was draped in black, which farmers in the country believe to be the proper and fashionable costume for Sundays, holidays, and visiting days.

It was easy enough for anyone to divine that these two persons were bent on some mission which was new and strange to both of them.

The farmer made a formal bow to the porter, whom he believed to be governor at the very least, and handed him a sealed letter.

The porter said in a careless tone――

“An order from Lord Ethalwood.”

The farmer nodded.

“An order to see the gaol?”

“If you please.”

“Certainly――pass on.”

The farmer and his daughter did as they were directed. They happened to meet the head turnkey in the quadrangle――he received them with a grin of recognition and respect. He knew them both, and guessed the reason for their paying a visit to the prison.

He had so great a respect for both that he would have shown them over the gaol, even without an order from Lord Ethalwood or any one else.

The two strangers were none other than Mr. Jamblin and his daughter. This the reader has doubtless already divined.

They had never been inside the walls of a prison before, and were awe-struck as they were shown all the mechanical wonders of the place.

Mr. Jamblin inquired if he could see the condemned man, Giles Chudley.

The head turnkey, who had been expecting this, like a cunning fellow as he was, affected to be surprised. He raised his eyebrows and gave a short cough.

“See the condemned man?” he murmured. “This is not a visiting day; besides, I must have an order from one of the visiting magistrates.”

“Lord Ethalwood told me he had given me the order,” returned Jamblin.

“Oh, I see,” observed the turnkey, looking at the paper. “Yes, he has included it in the visiting order. It’s all right Mr. Jamblin. You can see the prisoner; this way, if you please.”

He descended some steps, and the farmer and his daughter followed him.

“In what state of mind does this guilty man appear to be?” inquired Patty.

“He isn’t so restless as he was, miss,” said the turnkey, “not by a long way, nor is he so unruly. Before trial he was awdacious to be sure, made a desperate attempt to escape, cut through the wall, and nearly got away.”

“Did he, though?” exclaimed the farmer.

“Ah, that he did, and no mistake. After his attempt at escape we handcuffed him――it was by order of the justices we did it,” he added, cautiously.

“And quite right, too, I should say,” returned Jamblin.

“Yes, quite right, sir. Well, he was that stubborn that when we came to look at his handcuffs after three days we found them shaved down as thin as a sixpence just by rubbing ’em together. That was just before his trial, and after his trial he seemed so meek and quiet that the deputy-governor said I might take him out for a walk in the yard with the darbies or the slangs on. And would you believe it, sir? You see that high wall there. I assure you I only turned my head for a moment, and when I looked round he was right on the top of the wall. How ever he got up is a marvel to me. He must have climbed up at the corners like a cat.”

“Dear me, is it possible!” exclaimed the farmer. “I shouldn’t ha’ b’lieved it on him unless you had told me.”

“Fact, sir, I assure you, though none of us said anything about it to the authorities. However, when he was up there,” continued the man, with a laugh, “he had only to come down again, which he did without a murmur, and went on with his walk as if nothing had happened.”

“What an odd thing!”

“Yes, strange――wasn’t it? But you see he must have thought that this here was the outer wall, instead of which it’s the drying-yard between that and the street, and another wall topped with revolving iron spikes. Oh, he was precious artful.”

The prison chaplain came out of the cell as they approached it. The turnkey touched his cap.

“Been to see the prisoner, sir?” said he.

“Yes; he’s bigotted and superstitious to the last degree, but he is deeply sensible of the great crime he has committed, and of the change which awaits him.”

The chaplain passed on.

“Oh, father, perhaps we had better turn back,” cried Patty, in a state of alarm.

“Nay, nay, gell,” returned the farmer; “as we have come thus far, we may as well see un; it be our only chance, and as he told Joe that he would loike to ha’ a last look at us, why it be our duty to see ’im.”

“You need not be afraid, miss,” said the turnkey, “he’s calm enough now, and is quite resigned.”

“Oh, he be――be he?” said Jamblin.

When the farmer and his daughter entered the cell they inhaled a cold mephitic atmosphere like that of a funeral vault; one pale ray of light filtered through the iron bars; faint and solitary as a last hope, it could not illumine the whole of the cell.

They found themselves in the most horrible of twilights――the twilight of a dungeon.

When their eyes become accustomed to this sombre light they beheld a man seated on a rough wooden stool; he was ironed hand and foot; he was frightfully thin, wan, and worn; his eyes wore a hollow dejected look.

Mr. Jamblin failed to recognise in the miserable prisoner the stalwart ploughman who for years had been in his employ; he shuddered, the change was so awful.

When Giles Chudley recognised the two visitors he gave a start which resembled a spasm.

“We’ve coom, Giles,” began the farmer, in a voice broken by emotion.

“I know it; ye ha’ coom to upbraid me,” interrupted the prisoner. “Go on――I deserve it, maister. You, too, whom I ha’ most injured, be coom, too.”

“Not to upbraid ye,” observed Patty. “It is not likely we should pay ye a visit to do that.”

The felon condemned to death gave the speaker a smile of welcome, and, rising, presented his clumsy seat to her.

She hesitated for a moment, and then sat down.

The turnkey, with the instinctive delicacy of nature’s gentlemen, stood as far from them as he could. He would have left had it not been against the prison rules.

Duty compelled him to be present――not to obtrude.

There was a silence for several minutes; neither of them knew what to say. It was Patty who spoke first. She rose from her seat and drew back to the side of her parent, upon whose shoulder she placed one of her hands as if to support herself.

For, to say the truth, the poor girl was deeply moved, and trembled in every limb.

“We have come to you, Giles,” said Patty, in a low sweet musical voice, “to tell you how sorry we are that you should have brought yourself to this, and we hope that before――before you die――you will try and drive out all malice and hatred towards us from your heart, as we have driven all from ours.”

The convict made no reply. He looked intently at the speaker, and then seated himself once more on his stool.

“Ye hear what my daughter ha’ bin sayin’,” observed the farmer. “What answer ha’ ye to mek?”

“You forgive me, then?” said the prisoner, in a low breathless tone.

“Aye, surely; it aint loikely we should do otherwise. It be but natural when ’ee’s about to leave the world. We do forgive ’ee.”

“Yes,” said Patty softly, “we forgive you from our hearts.”

“Heaven bless you! Heaven bless you!” cried the prisoner, as he wrung their hands with his, which were chained. “I thought that you would when I asked Joe to tell you I could not leave the world without asking your forgiveness.”

“Ah!” he said, in continuation, “you do not know how bitterly I have been punished for my cowardice and treachery, and this be the consequence,” he ejaculated, glancing at his chains.

Patty sighed――the sight was a painful and touching one.

The prisoner went on telling them how he had been in the power of an evil woman, and how he had been driven to desperation on that fatal night, and what miseries he had endured since then.

As he gave this recital they closed their eyes that they might not see his face, which was distorted with agony.

The door of the cell was suddenly opened, and the venerable Canon Lenthall entered.

“I am glad you have consented to see the prisoner,” he said, addressing himself to the farmer and his daughter; “glad for many reasons.”

The farmer nodded and said, “It was not loikely, after what you told us, that we should fail to coom. But he be sadly altered.”

“Ah, sartin sure I be,” said the prisoner, with a hoarse laugh. “You see the chill of the grave be already upon me; man’s hopes and man’s heart canna’ live for ever, though the hopes be high and the heart be young. I may die before the gallows claims me――think o’ that.”

“I hope you are in a better frame of mind and are embued with a due sense of the awfulness of your position,” observed the canon.

“I be all that, reverend sir. Perhaps you will tell me――you who are so good and so religious――why I have been saved so long, why I was tempted to commit so dreadful a crime, and why I am doomed to die on the scaffold?”

“We cannot understand how the corn grows in the earth,” said the vicar, “how birds fly in the air, how insects crawl across a ceiling, how then can we understand the mysterious ways of the Creator?”

“You are right,” returned Chudley, sharply. “I have probably bin created, like thorns and nettles, for some mysterious purpose.”

“That may or may not be,” returned the vicar. “Providence is like the sun――when we first look at it we are dazzled and blinded; we believe that it is faultless. But art and science――those dangerous tutors of man, which teach him little, but which cannot teach him much――show him that there are spots upon the sun, apparently so spotless, and, perhaps, if he could understand the nature of these apparent blemishes he would worship with greater faith the majesty and effulgence of the Deity.”

The prisoner looked at the speaker and bowed his head reverently.

The words he had been listening to had a visible effect upon his superstitious, ignorant mind.

“It be a blessing to hear ’ee talk,” he murmured.

“Has your mother paid you a visit?” inquired Patty.

“Yes, she war the first to coom. I ha’ seen her,” said the culprit, in a softened tone.

“I’m glad of it,” said Patty. “You will not be angry with me if I ask you something?” she added.

“Angry with you?”

She hesitated, and then said――

“If I ask you whether you do fear the tribunal which awaits you in the other world.”

“Fear!” he cried, in a husky voice. “What wretch is there condemned to death who does not quake at the sound of his own voice――who does not shudder at his own thoughts? When pepple are wi’ me, though they be my gaolers, when the sun shines upon me, though it be wi’ only one pale ray, I feel that I can look the worst in the face, but when I be alone, and in darkness――――” He paused, as an icy tremour ran through his frame. “I could silence the turnkeys both by words and a bold front, but I cannot silence my own conscience――that’s not possible. Night arter night I reproach myself for my crime. Night arter night a band o’ pale specters, the witch at their head, flit past me, and point at me wi’ their thin bony fingers, and reproach me wi’ their red and sunken eyes. Oh, it is horrible, surely.”

“And do you never pray to be released from these dreams which come from remorse?” said Patty Jamblin.

“It is too late to pray now. My prayers would not be listened to.”

“You are mistaken,” said the vicar. “The prayers of a repentant sinner are always heard and answered.

“Ah, I do not know how to pray,” he muttered. “No one ever taught me that.”

“I will teach you,” said Patty Jamblin, and she knelt down upon the pointed stones and raised her hands towards the one ray of light which faint but beautiful fell like the eye of the Omnipotent upon her upturned face.

Slowly and sullenly the criminal fell upon his knees. The farmer also knelt, and the turnkey bared his head and lowered it, that he might listen to the prayer.

Soft and melodious as the murmurings of distant water, the farmer’s daughter’s voice rose from the depths of that dark cell, and pleaded with Heaven for the sinner’s soul.

The fountains of that hard and ignorant man’s heart were at length opened, and tears flowed from his eyes for the first time.

Patty ceased, then the venerable vicar, in a solemn and sonorous voice, gave utterance to an extemporaneous but beautiful prayer well adapted to the occasion, and after this Giles Chudley became an altered man.

Jamblin and Patty left, but Canon Lenthall remained with the prisoner for an hour or more after they had taken their departure.

It was thought strange by many who were acquainted with all the dramatis personæ connected with the tragedy in Larchgrove-lane, that Giles should never at any time have expressed a wish to see Ellen Fulford.

Without doubt he was devotedly attached to the girl, having been an admirer of her for the best part of his life, and there can be but little question with regard to the motive for the commission of the crime for which he was about to suffer.

Everybody attributed it to jealousy, and this was a righteous conclusion.

Nevertheless, Chudley did not request to see her, or send any message by those who would have delivered it.

After his interview with his master and his daughter, he seemed content, and did not appear to have a wish for further visitors.

Mr. Slapperton, it might be said, almost forced himself into his presence.

The only effect of the lawyer’s visit was to disturb and distract the wretched man’s thoughts from other and more weighty matters. But the irrepressible Slapperton was heedless of this.

As the time for the final day drew on he was informed by the governor that he could not be permitted to see the prisoner any more.

At this Slapperton was greatly incensed.

Since his interview with Patty and her father, Chudley had eaten well and slept well every night till the night of Saturday, when it was noticed that he did not sleep so soundly.

To the last he maintained that he was under a spell and in the power of a witch.

He occupied the same cell in which he had been confined, and was never for a moment left alone; and at night, in addition to the warder sitting up with him, another officer was patrolling in the corridor outside the cell.

The books he was supplied with were a Bible, a Prayer-book, “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” a Scripture picture book, and “Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.”

When the governor and the sheriff announced the day appointed for the final act of the law being carried out, he evinced no further emotion than a low moan, and then said he was quite prepared to meet the dreadful fate that awaited him, and which he knew was inevitable.

On Sunday night, the condemned man, after being visited by the chaplain, who was unremitting in his attendance on the culprit, was locked up at the usual hour, eight o’clock. He partook of supper, and afterwards had some beer.

He asked if he might be allowed to smoke, and being answered in the affirmative, he lighted his pipe, which he seemed to greatly enjoy.

At a little before nine o’clock, the night warder took charge of him.

After conversing for some little time Chudley retired to rest. He gave no trouble――so his attendant said.

After going to bed he sank into a peaceful slumber, from which he did not awake till past four on the Monday morning.

He opened his eyes and stared round the cell, and, upon his eyes meeting those of the warder, he said――

“What is the time now?”

“Ten minutes past four,” was the answer.

“Oh, no later than that?” he returned.

He then went off to sleep again, and did not wake till he was aroused by the entrance of the chief warder. It was now six o’clock.

Giles Chudley got up and dressed himself with more than usual care.

He was asked if he would have any breakfast, and said he could not eat anything, but he, however, had a cup of tea.

Soon after this the governor of the prison entered the cell, and said, “Chudley, the time approaches, and we want you.”

“I am ready, sir,” returned the prisoner, who was then introduced to Calcraft.

At the sight of the grey-headed man, with dark malicious-looking eyes, the unhappy wretch trembled.

“Get it all over as quickly as possible,” he whispered to his executioner.

Calcraft nodded. He never was a man of many words――that is, when engaged in his professional duties.

He was the very antithesis of his lively successor, Marwood, whose manner is brisk, cheery, and self-reliant. Calcraft, on the contrary, was morose, and as close as an oyster.

Chudley offered no resistance to the process of pinioning, which was performed with the hangman’s usual skill.

A leathern belt, about an inch wide, was buckled round the culprit’s waist, and to this his wrists were fastened down by small but stoutly-made straps.

His arms were fastened just above the elbows, and drawn back as far as it was possible to do so without giving him unnecessary pain, and then connected with the belt round the body.

The procession to the gallows was then formed. It consisted of the chaplain, the governor, the under-sheriff, and another gentleman whose name did not transpire.

When the prisoner appeared on the scaffold there was a low murmur like the moaning of the sea from the immense crowd assembled in front of and around the gallows.

Chudley was deathly pale. A glance at his face showed that he was suffering intense agony, and it was only by the exercise of a powerful control that he was able to bear up and meet his fate with anything like fortitude.

He took a hasty glance at the upturned sea of faces before him.

He then gave a piercing look at the uprights and cross beam, and pendant rope now swinging lightly in the morning breeze.

The sight of the ghastly engine of death seemed to unman him.

He trembled violently, and those who were near him afterwards declared that his hair stood literally on end. Presently he appeared to recover himself somewhat, and he placed himself under the beam, on the spot pointed out by Calcraft, and indicated by that functionary by a chalk mark. The chaplain, who stood about a yard and a half from the culprit, went on with the burial service, while the other members of the sad procession ranged themselves behind the doomed man.

Chudley again scrutinised the faces of the spectators in front of him, but he was unable to recognise any person whom he had known. He was too affected to single out any.

Calcraft lost no time in making the preliminary arrangements, and, stooping down, he fastened a strap round the wretched man’s legs.

As soon as he felt the hangman’s touch, Chudley seemed as if about to swoon; he gave utterance to a short prayer, and swayed his hands to and fro in a manner which was piteous to behold.

The executioner next proceeded to adjust the rope round the man’s neck, but he displayed none of that professional coolness which he was usually credited with. He was agitated and nervous, and it was some little time before he could adjust the noose to his satisfaction.

At length, however, this task was accomplished, and stepping back a pace he produced from his pocket a white cap which he drew over the prisoner’s head.

The miserable convict during the whole of this painful period of suspense was ejaculating appeals to the Almighty for mercy in a muffled voice, the pitiful tones of which will long ring in the ears of those who heard it.

He was scarcely able to stand upright by reason of the shaking of his limbs, and when Calcraft, after putting on the white cap, left him for the purpose of pulling the fatal bolt he nearly fell backwards, but quickly by a powerful exertion of will he resumed an erect position.

The chaplain repeated “I am the resurrection and the life,” the fatal bolt was withdrawn, and the man fell like a plummet.

There was of course the usual “thud.” It is impossible for any newspaper reporter to describe an execution without making use of that expressive and favourite word.

His struggles were terrible to witness, and it was quite four minutes before they ceased, and he could be fairly pronounced to be dead.

He was hung with what is called the short drop――which Calcraft invariably made use of. He declares to this day it is by far the most humane and preferable of the two.

Within the last few weeks we have been favoured with long dissertations upon the various modes of putting criminals to death.

A morning paper has given space in its columns for the insertion of several letters under the heading of “Bungling Executions.”

The gallows is a dreadful alternative to have resort to, but it is one which cannot be safely dispensed with till some other mode of putting criminals to death is substituted.

No doubt the ghastly apparatus of the scaffold, the halter, and the drop is a shocking topic for public discussion, but the controversy, crude and well-nigh grotesque as it is in form, opens a field for inquiry, the consideration of which calls for curious attention.

It so happens that at the present moment there are only three nations in Europe which retain the undeniably clumsy and barbarous custom of putting human beings to death by suspending them to a beam with a rope round the neck.

Those three nations are Great Britain, Russia, and Turkey. France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece employ a highly-perfected guillotine. Spain and Portugal adhere to the swiftly-killing and painless garotte. Germany, in the rare instances in which capital punishment is inflicted, uses the sword.

We share with our estimable ally, the Turk, and with despotic Russia, the honour of strangling malefactors in the good old conservative fashion.

Impalement seems to have been abandoned, the bowstring appears to have fallen into disuse, and the gallows appears to offer an additional advantage in the circumstance that the patient can be hanged first, and decapitated afterwards.

The apparatus in Turkey is that fine old institution, the gibbet, to which a malefactor can be at once strung up without any nonsense in connection with long and short drops, the efficacy of which have been so frequently discussed by the press of this country.

We have been hanging rogues and others in England for considerably more than a thousand years, but it should be extremely humiliating to us as a civilised, scientific, and mechanically ingenious people that we are as inexpert hangmen as in the days of the Saxon heptarchy.

It would be as well if half a dozen mechanical engineers and practical anatomists were commissioned by the Home Secretary to draw up a succinct report on hanging――distinguishing between the phenomena of strangulation and those of vertebral dislocation, and deliberate on the question of long versus short drops.

Marwood has declared on more than one occasion that his method is the most merciful one that has ever been put in practice; but the veteran Calcraft denies this assertion.

The public at large are perhaps indifferent as to whether an assassin dies from a broken neck or from strangulation, but there is a widely-spread feeling that no more physical pain than is absolutely necessary should be inflicted on the miserable wretch.

Marwood’s system should be subject to careful tests and exhaustive analysis, and if it is pronounced efficient he should enjoy immunity from further criticism.

If, however, the man’s method is faulty he should be directed to execute his victims in a more workmanlike style.

In any case, the recent discussion on “Bungling Executions” may be of service, as it is not improbable that advancing civilisation may some day devise a better mode of carrying out the last dread penalty of the law in a more satisfactory manner than that adopted at the present time.

A few French medical men revived some short time ago the strange paradox of the elder Sue――the famous anatomist, whose son was the author of the “Mysteries of Paris,” “The Wandering Jew,” and other popular works of fiction――that the action of the guillotine is not so painless as people have been led to imagine, and that the sensation does not cease for some moments after the head has been separated from the body. Dr. Sue’s arguments have been long since ably, and it would seem conclusively, refuted, and the fact that decapitation, skilfully performed, is an operation of anything beyond instantaneous pain to the criminal has been once more distinctly affirmed by the most eminent scientific authorities in France.

After this resuscitated dispute died away, Professor Haughton, of the University of Dublin, came forward with a learned and exhaustive disquisition on the economies of hanging, and on the best way of killing a murderer without causing him unnecessary agony. The Professor quoted a statement of the surgeon of Newgate that under Calcraft’s regime he had frequently seen the criminal struggle for more than twenty minutes before he became inanimate.

The retired executioner may be left to fight his own battles as regards his aptitude of putting people out of the world.

Those who know him best are perfectly well aware that he is not likely to trouble himself about what people say; but the medical officer of Newgate――we are not aware to what particular one Professor Houghton refers――is doubtless aware that convulsive muscular action may be prolonged for some minutes after the suspended culprit has ceased to experience any sensations.

Professor Houghton tells us that the “old system of taking the convict’s life by suffocation is inhumanely painful, and necessarily prolonged, and revolting to the spectators whose duty it is to be present;” that the object of an effective execution by suspension should be the immediate rupture of the spinal column through the fall, and that the use of the long drop, which by habit has become known as the Irish method, is not only much preferable from a humanitarian point of view, but is the only method by which the desired object can be effectively attained.

It may be as well to hint to the professor that, to judge from an illuminated Anglo-Saxon manuscript in the “Harleian Miscellany,” the severing of the cervical vertebræ occupied the attention of our ancestors centuries ago.

Every executioner, from Derrick to Brandon and from Brandon to Jack Ketch, has done his best to break the criminal’s neck, either by sitting astride his shoulders as the culprit was swung, or by pulling his legs from beneath.

As regards the long drop, a few years since the Irish method was but too painfully manifested at Dublin by the fact of a criminal who was given too long a rope and too sharp a fall so that his head was completely severed from his body.

Suffocation was never “systematic” in cases of hanging in this country, and the custom is immemorial of adjusting the knot of the rope under the sufferer’s left ear, in order that death might be instantaneous.

Professor Haughton thinks that Marwood has done wonders by placing the knot under the criminal’s chin, but a Spanish executioner could very much improve on Marwood’s method by exhibiting the capacity of that compact and efficient machine for rupturing the spinal column, called the “garotte.”

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

LXXII. CHARLES PEACE LEAVES DARTMOOR

We must now return to our hero, who, probably many of our readers may think has been left too long unnoticed; but it will be remembered that we left him in good hands. He was well looked after, and month after month wore sadly away, until at length the time approached upon which Peace was to regain his liberty.

He had been very diligent and well behaved, and had earned the requisite number of marks.

Discharges take place in various ways, but Peace was not at all particular about the method or manner of his liberation, provided he left the cheerless walls of Dartmoor.

As we have stated in a preceding chapter, when a man is first of all convicted, his clothing is confiscated, and on his discharge the prison authorities give him other garments in place of those which have been taken from him.

This is part of the prison arrangements that requires reform, and which, doubtless, will be seen before long.

At the present time two courses are adopted.

If a man joins the Prisoners’ Aid Society, he has a small sum allowed to him, which is handed over to the society to purchase clothing; but if he does not, an outfit is given him, but this bears upon it unmistakable evidence that the man has been a convict.

This is neither fair nor just.

It is true the clothes men leave Dartmoor in are cut well, made well, and in most instances are tolerably good fits, but the material is of the very worst quality, being a shoddy imitation of tweed, with a twill or pattern printed on it, and any one would be at no loss to know where it came from, for there is nothing like it made outside the walls of a prison, and such stuff is hardly worth making up into garments, for it is rotten, and will bear no time.

A good serviceable material might be obtained at a trifling more cost, and the discharged prisoner would then have a rough suit of clothes which he would not be ashamed of wearing.

It is ridiculous to measure a man, and spend skilled labour in cutting and making well-fitting garments which will not hang together for a month.

The under clothes there is very little to find fault with, the stocking and flannels are as good as need be. The materials of the boots in general are of a good quality, and the workmanship excellent.

As far as the hat is concerned nothing can be much worse.

But taken altogether the rig out is most unsatisfactory, indeed; so worthless is it, that if a man were to go straight from prison to Monmouth-street or Petticoat-lane, and is lucky enough not to be caught in the rain, the dealers in new and second-hand clothes will allow him the magnificent sum of six, or at the most, seven shillings for the whole turn-out of coat, vest, trousers, hat, and handkerchiefs.

They are sent abroad, as no one in this country will buy such rubbish.

Due attention has not been given to this subject by the executive.

Men when they leave prison should have every possible inducement for them to return to an honest course of life.

The prisoner who goes to the Prisoners’ Aid Society in London is not compelled to accept the clothes which the gaol officials provide.

He is sent up to town for discharge, and the society, out of the funds at their disposal, buy him some decent garments, which he is not ashamed of appearing in.

Peace, however, did not belong to any society of this nature.

When he was discharged from Dartmoor he had, therefore, no alternative than to leave the prison in the clothes furnished him by the authorities.

When he was about to leave he was informed by the governor that a letter had reached the prison, which was addressed to him. It contained an enclosure (a Bank of England note for twenty pounds).

The letter was singularly short and ambiguous. It was as follows:――

“Accept the enclosed from an old friend and companion. Turn from your evil courses, and take heed of the future.”

Peace was surprised at the contents of the epistle, and still more so at the enclosure. He could not divine from whom it had come. At first he was under the impression that Earl Ethalwood had sent it, but upon second consideration he dismissed the thought from his mind. The earl would not have been so secret――there was no reason for his being so.

It must have been sent by some friend; possibly Laura Stanbridge had forwarded him the amount, which was, of course, most welcome and acceptable.

In this, however, he was mistaken. The letter and enclosure had been forwarded by his quondam companion, Bessie Dalton, who had, however, at this time changed her name as well as her mode of life. We shall have to refer to her in a future chapter.

Peace was, as a matter of course, greatly delighted at being so suddenly and unexpectedly put in possession of the sum, which would suffice for his more immediate necessaries.

He asked one of the warders if he could get the note changed for him before leaving Dartmoor.

The warder mentioned the matter to the governor, who gave Peace gold for the note.

And shortly after this our hero bid farewell to his prison associates, and was conducted with several others to the station by two warders.

Two of his companions were bound to London. Men who have been convicted in the metropolis are sent there for discharge. If they are Prisoners’ Aid Society’s men they travel up in convict’s dress, and one or more warders go with them, as the case may be. And, strange to say, a marked difference is made in the treatment of the discharged prisoners.

Those who are convicted in the provinces leave Dartmoor without handcuffs, and with the hands and limbs free, as Peace did on this occasion. Those who have to be taken to London for discharge are manacled and handcuffed, as if fresh caught. Why is this?

No man going up to London for discharge is likely to run away from a warder; he would be a fool if he did, for until he is completely discharged he has no licence, and if he did abscond he would be liable to arrest as a convict at liberty without leave.

All the convicts know this, and it is not at all likely they would infringe the rules when they were within a few hours of liberty.

The handcuffing of a man under such circumstances is quite unnecessary. It is worse than this, being in short an indignity which is at once cruel and useless. So long as he has any time to serve, and there is any inducement for him to run away, chains and fetters are perhaps needful; as a convict in a convict’s dress few would recognise him.

When he goes to London on his discharge journey he has grown his hair, beard, and whiskers.

He travels with other people who are also bound for the metropolis, who, seeing him with the darbies on, know very well that his ornamental bracelets are not the insignia of honour.

The chances are that they may take particular notice of the man, and one may possibly see him at work a week or two afterwards, and view him with repugnance, if not with disgust; anyway they would look upon him as a person to be studiously avoided.

This is hardly fair to the discharged prisoner, who should certainly, upon regaining his liberty, be permitted to have a fair start in life, and every facility should be offered him to return to an honest course.

Before leaving Dartmoor every prisoner has his photograph taken, and his carte-de-visite is supplied to the various police offices he has to go to for report.

On Wednesday all the prisoners for discharge that week have arrived in London, and in the morning a number of detectives come and take stock of them. The men stand in a row, and the detectives from Scotland-yard and Old Jewry, together with policemen from other stations, come and make themselves fully acquainted with the men who are to be let loose in their districts.

Each man is compared with his photograph and the written description of him. Of some men the police take no notice, or very little; others they take special care to become thoroughly acquainted with in every particular, and examine them most carefully. They know perfectly well who are likely to be in their hands again.

This ceremony, until very recently, took place in the Queen’s Bench Prison in the Borough――that old-fashioned prison for debtors, Chancery victims, and first-class misdemeanants; the prison from which Johnson, the celebrated smuggler, escaped; the place of which Sheridan said no man’s education was completed until he had been in the Bench; but the place around the walls of which so many associations cling, is now a thing of the past; its final doom was determined on some time back, and, like Temple Bar, it will live only in the remembrance of the public through the agency of contemporary chroniclers.

For a long time before its final doom it had undergone a remarkable change; it was neglected, forlorn, and its old glories had passed away.

[Sidenote: No. 37.]

No longer were its walls marked out with racquet courts――in the olden days the imprisoned debtor could not have lived without the racquet court――but debtors and Chancery victims were no longer confined there.

After the abolishment of the Imprisonment for Debt Act, it was abandoned, and shorn of all its former attractions――for it had attractions without doubt. It was used as a soldiers’ prison, and so it continued for some time, until at length that was discontinued, and the poor old Bench fell further into decay; it was merely used as a place from whence to discharge convicts.

Men leaving Dartmoor on Monday night arrived at the Bench, or Queen’s Bench, on Tuesday morning, where they remain, doing nothing, till the day of their discharge, which takes place one day during the same week.

Prisoners on licence, generally termed ticket-of-leave men, have to report themselves once every month at the police-station of the district where they reside, and to show how they are earning their living.

As a matter of course it is not at all likely any of them will pronounce themselves thieves by trade or profession; and everyone has what is termed a “stall,” that is, he professes to be some handicraft or trade by which to designate himself, and which, in most cases, is mere subterfuge――a blind or stall to his real proceedings.

The police are well aware that the pretext is a shallow one, and that in all probability the man has returned to the dishonest course of life which he followed before conviction, but the farce has to be gone through.

If a man moves from one district in London to another he must within four-and-twenty hours of his arrival report himself at the nearest police station, so that watch and ward may be kept over him.

The stoppage of transportation brought the administration of criminal justice to a dead lock. To meet the difficulty the Ministry prepared and passed with all speed a measure, since known as the first Penal Servitude Act.

As a final acknowledgment that it was England’s duty to consume her own criminality, and for the sanction which it gave to various important principles, this Act (which became law in the autumn of 1853) has, notwithstanding, many serious flaws, very valuable provisions.

In the course of execution, however, it was stultified into complete failure.

Altogether the first Penal Servitude Act was a complete failure, and in the session of 1856 it was found necessary to reconsider the whole question. The session was too far advanced to allow the report presented to be transformed into an Act that year, but when Parliament met again in February, 1857, the requisite bill was the first ministerial measure introduced, and in spite of the Chinese wrangle and the dissolution it became law before the end of June.

There is little fault to be found with the second Penal Servitude Act.

To lengthen the sentences according to the old scale, to make some portion remittable, to permit the issue of licences, was all required from the measure, and all this the measure accomplished.

The notion that prevails at the English Home Office is, that a discharged prisoner’s best chance is to obtain a situation under false pretences.

That he could never obtain employment if his felonious antecedents were known, and that his dismissal from any place he had procured under a false character would be the immediate result of their discovery, is taken for granted; and perhaps, while the English convict prisons remain what they are, and the public distrust of their reformatory power continues in consequence unabated, this belief is well grounded.

It is probably true, therefore, that the acknowledged ticket-of-leave and the avowed police surveillance might possibly impede a man’s return to honesty.

As far as Peace was concerned, however, it was a matter of no moment.

He had numberless opportunities afforded him to pursue an honest course of life, but it was not in his nature to be otherwise than a hardened criminal.

There is no question about this; albeit his character in other ways is of a most indefinite and contradictory nature.

Though Peace has given evidence of having a thorough contempt for human suffering, it is asserted that “he could not kill a mouse” if he had been requested to do so.

He further declared that if he had to kill his meat he should have to go without it all his life. Whether from curiosity or interest he had studied carefully the major portion of the Scriptural writings, and read opinions on them, and manifested much skill in controversy on theological questions. One afternoon, when Peace lived in Brocco, he had a long conversation with the Rev. Dr. Poller on religious topics.

On the departure of the vicar of St. Luke’s Peace thus summed up his ideas on the subject――

“I believe in God and I believe in the devil, but I don’t fear either.”

Peace took his standpoint on this that “man was the creature of circumstances,” and supported his argument by quoting authorities on the subject.

From his youth upwards he had been fond of curiosities.

He regularly visited the Museum, and as each addition was made to it he inspected the new object of interest with care. Anything with carving upon it came in for a large share of his attention.

But he revelled among the models most, and if there was one branch more than another in which he excelled it was the making of models of cathedrals and monuments in cardboad, which he embossed and traced with a variety of patterns.

There is one at the present time in Sheffield――a memento of the deaths of four members of his family.

It is about a yard in height, and made of cardboard, the outlines of the embossed work on it being traced with silver.

It represents a monument after an ecclesiastical design, like the main turret in Gloucester Cathedral, and has every pinnacle cut as cleanly as though carved in ivory.

It is mounted on a slab, approached on all four sides by steps――these and the slab being covered with black velvet.

There are four tablets sunk in the lower squares of the monument, one on each side, and on these are placed the names of the relatives deceased.

As a speciman of workmanship, it is without equal in its line in Yorkshire.

Peace expressed his intention of adding to the attractions in the Sheffield museum.

He decided on constructing one of these “monuments,” and of presenting it for exhibition in that institution.

Those whose memories it was to perpetuate were the Rev. Canon Sale, the Misses Harrison, and the “Christian poet,” Montgomery, whose names he would have engraved on tablets to be placed in the sides of the structure as already described.

He actually commenced the work, and would have completed it, had he not taken to other courses.

After receiving his discharge Peace made the best of his way to London.

One reason for this was that he was not so well known in the metropolis as at Sheffield, and before returning to his native town he was desirous of making a change in his costume; the other reason was that he had for his companions two convicts who were discharged at the same time as himself. One of these was the housebreaker who had been convicted at Manchester for burglary; the other was a regular London thief, whose acquaintance Peace had made in the parade ground of Dartmoor――the last named was a cheery gossiping gentleman, who appeared to be on good terms with himself and everybody else.

“Well, we’ve all done our dose,” said the London thief, whose name was Baxter, “and are glad enough to leave that blooming place. I hope neither on us ’ill see its dark walls again, and bad luck to it. I think it’s the worst prison as ever I was in. Why Millbank’s a king to it.”

“Ah! I never was at Millbank,” said Peace.

“Oh, no, s’pose not――you aint a London man, and may be that this is your first lagging. Ye see I’ve had some ’xperience――been to all sorts of places. Lord, a bloke gets used to it in time. I did a seven year stretch before this, and was at the Gib three out of it.”

“At where?” inquired Peace.

“At Gibraltar.”

“Ah! indeed. How did you like that?”

“Oh! got on there like a ’ouse a’fire. Bless you, that is somethin’ like a stab. Why I was as jolly and ’appy as a sandboy; had it pretty much my own way. Why they serves you out bacca there regularly every week, and precious good stuff it is, and no mistake; but, ye see, I was fortunate, I was,” said the speaker, in a more confidential tone――“very fortunate. I was servant to one of the officers, and a right-down good chap he was. I was as right as the mail till the cholera came; then it went ’ard with a good many, me amongst the rest.”

“The cholera, eh?” exclaimed Raynton, the burglar.

“Yes, an’ a blooming time I ’ad of it. Ugh, it makes my blood run cold to think on it now; Ye see, it aint like no other disease――it’s down upon you like a thousand of bricks afore you know where you are. It don’t give a fellow no time, and I tell ye I was that frightened at the sights I seed that I didn’t know whether I stood on my ’ead or my ’eels――it’s a fact. You’ve no idea what it is like at the Gib. I’m told it was bad enough here, but it couldn’t be anything to compare to what it was there. I never seed anything like it. Why I’ve stood next to a bloke in the morning at early muster, and helped to bury him the same night.”

“Oh, gammon and all,” cried Raynton.

“No gammon about it, old man. I’ll take my Bible oath on it. You don’t understand it. Don’t yer know that the place is so blooming hot that a chap won’t keep, and what’s the consekence? He’s got to be buried at once.”

“And were you an officer’s servant all the time? inquired Peace.

“No, not all the time. You see, the cholera cleared off a lot of the prisoners――they died like rotten sheep. And not only the convicts but the sojers as well; and so as my guv’nor couldn’t find any one else he took me. Ah! he was a good sort, surely. I was precious sorry when the time came for me to leave the island. Before I was an officer’s servant I worked in the galleries a making casements for the guns, and precious hard work it was; but it was better than the work at the quarries at Dartmoor; besides, there wasn’t that strictness and cursed ceremony. At the Gib a fellow could say his soul’s his own, and that’s more than he can say at Dartmoor. At Gibraltar we also made great tanks to ’old the water. Some of the boys couldn’t stand the wet, but I didn’t so much mind it.

“It certainly was owdacious at times, but you see we warnt dressed in different sort of togs; we had white canvas jumpers and trousers.”

“Ah,” said Peace, “and you needed a costume of that sort, I dare say; but did anyone ever manage to escape?”

“Did anyone? I should just think they did too. You see the Spaniards were very good as far as lay in their power; they’d always help a bloke if he was once over the lines. Say what ye like about the foreigners, they’re a jolly sight better than our people in many ways――a precious sight. They aint like the blarney fellows about this place who pounce upon a poor devil, and give ’im up directly for the sake of a paltry five quid that the Government gives ’im. It’s every man for hisself and God for us all in this country. Still Dartmoor is better than Chatham.”

“I thought you said it was the worst place you were ever in,” observed Raynton.

“It’s the worst place I’ve been in for a goodish while, but when I said that I forgot Chatham. It certainly aint so bad as that――leastways, not to my thinking. There’s many a bloke there as is druv to suicide――it’s such a ’ell upon earth. I hope I shan’t have to go there again. One chap, while I was at Chatham, threw hisself down in front of the engine as works the trucks of earth out of the new dock, and was cut in two. Poor fellow, he’d been bashed (flogged) twice, and the warder had been going on at him so that he couldn’t stand it any longer, and so he ups with his pick and chucks it straight at him on the shoulder. Just as he’d done this he sees an engine coming, so he saved ’em the trouble of ‘bashing’ him again. He chucked himself in front of it, and in a second or so all was over. Poor fellow, he was not half so bad as they tried to make him out, but he was nervous and irritable, and couldn’t stand being jawed at during the whole of the day. Ye see many of the men at Chatham are drove into being regular devils by being constantly nagged at by the blooming officers. It aint in the nature of man to stand being continually bullied, as some of the poor devils are. Them as ’as got pluck in ’em turns savage, and small blame to ’em; but them as ’aven’t knocks under, and does the meek and mild bisness, same as I did. But it’s hard lines, either way――precious hard lines――and no mistake; and lots ov ’em die, and it is considered to be a ’appy release; but lor, I don’t expect either of you two know the ins and outs of prison life as yet,” said the loquacious Mr. Baxter.

“We neither of us profess to have the experience that you appear to possess,” returned Raynton. “Have you ever been to Portland?”

“Have I? I should rather think I had! Well, let me tell you. Portland is a precious deal better than Chatham, though Portland aint altogether what you may call an inviting sort of place――far from that.”

Peace and the burglar, or the other burglar we ought to say, smiled at this last observation. The speaker’s manner was so naïve, there was a careless, free-and-easy, confidential tone assumed throughout his discourse, which was rather amusing than otherwise.

The fellow was as callous, and as utterly devoid of all moral principle as it is well possible to conceive. He talked of the crimes he had committed, and of the various terms of punishment he had undergone, as a soldier might tell of his escapes on the battle-field, or the wounds he had received in the service.

He was but one of many of the same type to be found at Dartmoor, Spike Island, Portland, and other convict establishments.

It is true men of this class, while undergoing penal servitude, have the benefit of the ministration of the chaplain, who in most cases does his best to impress upon them the error of their ways, but it is a sad reflection that many, and indeed most, of these wretches are beyond the reach of moral or religious influence.

At Millbank there is a service, or rather was――for the prison is now no longer in use――of the Holy Communion once every three months.

At Dartmoor there is a Communion regularly every Sunday, and the prisoners take it in turns.

Every man was invited to join by the chaplain, who no doubt meant well, but it is very questionable whether his beating up for recruits in the way he did was judicious, as many men attended with the idea of currying favour by so doing.

Peace, who throughout his life professed to be a religious man, was most constant in his attendance; he affected to be remarkably devout. The hypocrisy of the man formed a very large element in his strange and diversified character.

The conduct and language of many of the other convicts gave evidence that they had no real or sincere appreciation of the solemn and sacred service they took part in. Indeed, most of them were in entire ignorance of its nature, and were like a set of puppets going through a performance.

Disgraceful scenes frequently occurred, even in chapel, but it would be in no way edifying to the reader for us to give a detailed account.

Of them it will suffice to note that there are at Dartmoor and other convict prisons in this country wretches, monsters in human form, who seem to be of a different organisation to ordinary men.

The outside world and inexperienced in matters of this nature can have no notion of the barbarous nature of some of the prisoners, who are mere brutes in mind and demons in heart.

To describe them and their crimes when at large and their conversation and acts within the prison walls would so disgust the reader that he would throw aside this work with horror and disgust.

Neither is it necessary or proper to pollute the minds of our readers by entering more fully into a subject which is both painful and depressing to dwell upon.

There are, of course, degrees of morality, or rather immorality, even in the most depraved, but it is pretty generally acknowledged by prison officials that the worst characters generally belong to the class known as roughs, and the worst of all are the London roughs.

Their language, habits, and mode of life are so radically bad that they may be pronounced irreclaimable, and for this reason: they were debased and utterly lost before they reached man’s estate.

They are literally wild beasts, whose animal instincts predominate to the almost total exclusion of any intellectual or moral feeling, and with them kind words or good counsel must necessarily be thrown away.

There is but one mode of effectually dealing with them――brutes they are, and as brutes only can they be punished and coerced, and that is by the lash.

We have strong objections to flogging in the army and navy, but consider it to be the only efficient way in dealing with garrotters and ruffians who commit savage assaults upon either man or woman; in short, it is the only punishment that they dread, or that can exercise any influence as a preventive for crimes of this nature.

The man Baxter had passed through almost every gradation of crime; he had been a thief from his childhood, and so he remained upon reaching man’s estate.

He was, however, not an unmitigated ruffian.

To say the truth, there was more of the sneak about him than the ruffian. As to moral principle, he had none.

His favourite “lay” was pocketpicking, and this he had practised to an extent which might be said to be almost unlimited.

He was very communicative to Peace and Raynton, the three companions in crime being the only occupants of the carriage.

“Well, old man,” said Raynton, “you’ll be a little more careful how you ‘sling your hook’ after this dose, I expect.”

“I shall be as careful as possible, but lor bless ye, a cove may be as careful and artful as blazes, but he’s bound to be ‘pinched’ sooner or later. Can’t be helped, it’s part of the business.”

“That’s right enough,” remarked Peace; “but what places do you work as a general rule?”

“I used to do all sorts of places, but my ‘lay’ lately has been chiefly in the churches or chapels. I used to tog myself up in black with a white ‘squeeze’ on Sunday, and go to two or three different places of worship. I dare say you’ll be a little surprised when I tell ye that I’ve ’eard all the crack preachers in London, and, except when the May meetings were on at Exeter Hall I never went crooked any other day but Sunday. I used to do a bit in the smashing line; that was when I had a clever partner――but she’s dead and gone now.”

“She! Did you have a woman for a partner?” said Raynton.

“Why, of course; I’ve had several. I never had nothing to do with any ‘Moll’ who couldn’t cut her own grass” (earn her own living).

“Oh, I see.”

“But after she turned me up――which she did long afore she died――I stuck to the light-fingered business. You see, every man has his own particular ‘lay.’ Some go to public meetings, to races, fairs, and such like, but I always stuck to the churches and chapels, and did a quiet respectable business. A cove does better in the high church, where there’s a lot of show and singing. The people there have got plenty of money, but I took precious good care not to go to one place twice within a month; but then you see there’s plenty of them, and so there’s no call to be too hard upon one establishment. But you must have a crowded congregation, else it’s not a morsel of good trying to work it; besides it aint safe.”

“Safe or not,” said the burglar, “it seems you got ‘pinched’ in one of your pet places.”

“Well, in course I did; but blokes have been ‘pinched’ everywhere and anywhere. As I told yer before, we can none on us guard against that. A cove makes a great haul sometimes at a race-course or railway-station a deal more than he might do in a church, but he runs greater risks, unless he’s very fly indeed; but guess both of you have been working on a different ‘lay.’ I never succeeded in ‘cracking a crib;’ it’s out of my line. Haven’t got the nerve for it I s’pose.”

Peace and Raynton exchanged glances. They were neither of them bright specimens of human nature, far from it; but still it seemed to strike them both at the same moment that they had been listening to a man who spoke of pocket picking and earning a living at it as if it were a recognised and legitimate trade.

They both smiled, after which the conversation appeared to lag.

It was presently brought to an end, or rather turned into a different channel by two passengers who entered the carriage upon the arrival of the train at the next station.

Upon the three discharged prisoners reaching the metropolis they repaired to the nearest and most inviting-looking hostelry about.

They drank each other’s health in a most cordial and convivial manner, which was quite touching to behold.

Mr. Baxter was most profuse in his protestations of friendship and good fellowship, and said he hoped as how they were not going to part for good and for all, but that he hoped to meet them, not on the Rialto, but at some of the accustomed haunts where gentlemen of his profession were wont to congregate.

Peace and Raynton both declared that they hoped to have the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Baxter on a future occasion.

That gentleman thereupon said that he might be able to put them up to a dodge or two, and that if he could it would afford him great pleasure to be of any service to both of them.

At length they succeeded in shaking him off.

Peace and Raynton walked on together for some little distance――they were chums or cronies who understood each other pretty well; a sort of friendship, if it could be dignified by such a term, had sprung up between them.

“Which way are you going?” said Raynton――“eastwards or westwards?”

“Westwards,” returned Peace.

“Ah, just so, the very opposite direction to the one I am about to take. Well, old man, we’ve borne our ‘prisonment together, and have been on pretty good terms, all things considered. I suppose you are like myself, not quite certain as to your future course of action, but I suppose you don’t mean to turn me up――cast me on one side now that you are a free man?”

“Certainly not, Raynton, far from that.”

“Well, then, before we part I’ll just give you my address, or rather one where a letter will be sure to reach me. If you do write, be careful how you word it, for I’ve a wife and two kids to look after, and it’s as well to keep the missus in the dark as to where we first met.”

“All right,” returned Peace, “you needn’t be afraid of my saying anything――that is, anything you don’t want me to say.”

Raynton wrote down the address, which he handed to his companion, after which they repaired to another house, where they had a parting glass, and wishing each other better luck for the future they separated.

Peace, as we have already seen, had ample means at his command for his immediate wants.

He now began to reflect a little, that he might determine how to shape his course.

He glanced at the suit of clothes which had been furnished him; then he shook his head. He did not like them, and the first thing therefore was to get a new rig out.

He walked rapidly on in the direction of a new and second-hand clothes shop, kept by a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion.

He knew the shop perfectly well; it was about a mile from the spot where he had parted with Raynton.

But it was rather late, and possibly it might be closed. There would, however, be no harm in seeing.

He hastened on, and in the due course of time arrived in front of the shop, which was open.

Peace entered. An old Jew poked his head out of a small back room in the rear of the shop, and upon observing Peace came forward.

“Vat can I do thish evening for you, my friend? Coat, vest, troushers, or vat?”

“I want a suit――a regular rig out,” said Peace; “and you must give me what you can for the suit I’ve got on.”

The Jew placed his hand on the collar of the coat Peace wore, and then made a face.

“Yes, I know; that will do,” said our hero. “See what you’ve got. I want, in the first place, a black frock coat.”

“New, or second-hand?”

“New, if you’ve got one to fit me.”

“Ve alvays manage to fit our customers. Got something to suit everybody.”

“Well――look sharp.”

Peace tried on one garment after another until he succeeded in finding one that fitted him.

The same process had to be gone through with trousers and vest, for the accomplishment of which he was conducted into the private room.

“There,” cried the Jew, in a tone of triumph――“couldn’t be better if they’d been made for you. Never saw a better fit; you look quite the gentleman.”

“Stow that! I don’t want any of your gammon,” cried Peace. “I’m not going to give you three pound ten for duffing things like these, so don’t you think it.”

“S’help me goodness they were never made for the money!” said the Israelite. “I shan’t get five shillings out of the bargain. No――I wouldn’t deceive you――not five shillings.”

“Get out! I shall give you two pound ten and the suit I’ve taken off.”

“Vat, theshe! they’re not vorth carrying avay. Shoddy, nothing but shoddy. Never saw such rubbish in the whole course of my life.”

“You know where they have come from, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, I think I can guess. Her Majesty made you a present of them.”

“Right you are, and that’s why I want you to have them. Now then, don’t keep tossing them about. What are you going to allow me for them?”

“Five shillings――not a penny more, and then I shall be loser. Not a farthing more than five bob. Oh, they are not vorth puying at any price; only, as you’re a customer――and――――”

“There, that’ll do; shut up. Will you take the two pound ten or not.”

“I can’t――pishness is pishness; but, at the shame time, one mush live.”

“I’ll take two pound fifteen――there!”

“Peace buttoned up his coat, looked at himself in the glass, and felt that he cut a respectable figure; so, without further haggling, he gave the Jew the required sum, and strode into the shop.”

“You look all the gentleman except――――”

“Except what?” exclaimed our hero, freely. “None of your nonsense――except what?”

“The hat.”

“Ah, that’s true. Have you got one?”

“Yes. A pot hat or a pilly cock?”

“A pot hat.”

When Peace was fitted with a hat he strode out of the shop with all the airs and graces of a man of fashion.

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

LXXIII. LAURA STANBRIDGE AT HOME――A CONFERENCE AND A SCENE

The reader will remember the young scapegrace, Alf Purvis, who was driven from Stoke Ferry Farm with the hare round his neck. He had now grown up to a slim, handsome young man, with an almost feminine cast of features.

His education was by this time completed. His instructor and trainer, Laura Stanbridge, in conjunction with her lawless associates, had transformed the country lad into one of the most expert and daring young London thieves of the period.

Alf was lost, irretrievably lost, and no one who knew him at the farmhouse could recognise him as the boy who gave such trouble to Mr. Jamblin. He was so completely metamorphosed, personally as well as mentally.

We have had, during the progress of this work, occasion to give the reader some little insight into the lives and careers of juvenile and adult pickpockets.

Alf Purvis was the most accomplished one of the whole fraternity. He had a certain amount of education, was quick-witted, aristocratic in his appearance, and was, therefore, a dangerous person to be let loose on society. He had, moreover, for his accomplice a woman, even more dangerous than himself――a sort of harpy or beautiful demon, if such a term can with propriety be applied to one of the softer sex.

Alf Purvis frequented places of fashionable resort, and had the faculty of obtaining an entrance to select coteries in a manner which was altogether unaccountable.

He was, in short, the George Barrington of his day. His manners were so soft and winning that he was able to deceive and hoodwink his betters.

It is terrible to think of the change which had come over the farmer’s boy.

Let us pay a visit to the house at the back of Regent-street. It was one of those hours of the night in which honest folk are asleep, and fools revel, and thieves work.

The vermin of society, like the vermin of the woods and fields, shun the light of Heaven, in which they see the effulgence of an Omnipotent power.

A man, with his face muffled by a cloak, was walking quickly through the courts and alleys which join Regent-street to Piccadilly.

The last of these passages ended in a mews, which we have already described.

Upon his arriving at this place the pedestrian came to a halt, and, glancing furtively around, he affected to be expecting somebody.

Drawing himself under the wall, he looked round till he saw a shadow on the pavement, and heard a step quick, cautious, and as stealthy as his own.

He looked round again, and seeing no policeman in sight, he gave a low whistle, and as soon as it was responded to, advanced into the middle of the road. The other man did the same, and then said in a whisper――

“Any crushers?”

“No; the man on the beat has passed a few minutes since――the coast is clear.”

“Make tracks then.”

The two men went down the yard, and thence into a narrow deserted street, in which stood the house in the occupation of Laura Stanbridge.

They knocked in a peculiar manner at the door of the house, which to all appearance was uninhabited, for shutters were up before all the windows.

Any one, however, who supposed the habitation was without an occupant would be greatly mistaken.

The knocks were heard and answered on the instant.

A maid servant opened the door, when, without a word, the two men went in.

The girl looked the door after them, bolted it top and bottom, and finally secured it with a chain, which made it resemble the door of a prison.

All this had been done in the space of a few seconds.

“Is the missis in, my dear?” said one of the men, in a tone half husky and half oleaginous.

“Yes, sir,” returned the girl. “I think she’s been expecting you; or, if it’s not you, it’s somebody else. You will find her in the little parlour.”

The men looked at one another, nodded in a mysterious self-satisfied manner, and entered the room.

The little parlour in which they found themselves was furnished in a grotesque and peculiar style. The chairs were all of a different shape, size, and pattern. The carpet would have suited a large dining-room in some palatial mansion, and the paper a summer boudoir; while the dark oak bureau, in one corner of the apartment, frowned with all the sternness of antiquity upon a new and fashionable maple-wood cabinet in the other. As to any furniture en suite, as the modern advertisements have it, that was altogether out of the question.

The pictures, however, which disfigured the walls were all of the same caste and quality, equally indifferent in morality and art.

They consisted of portraits of celebrated criminals, executions, highwaymen stopping carriages and coaches, smugglers attacked by the preventive men, and pirates committing atrocities on the high seas.

“I thought she said her mistress was here,” observed one of the men.

The other shrugged his shoulders and said, “She aint far off, I’ll wager.”

They took off their capes and comforters and sat down.

Both these personages have been already introduced on the night Laura Stanbridge paid a visit to the thieves’ haunt in Whitechapel.

One was the “Smoucher,” the other was the “Cracksman,” and perhaps such another pair of scoundrels could not be found in the metropolis.

The Smoucher threw himself into a chair with the perpendicular back of the Elizabethan age――the Cracksman luxuriated in the soft depths of the latest patent spring.

Presently the sounds of footsteps were heard in the passage, and Miss Stanbridge entered. She was dressed in the height of fashion, and certainly looked what might be termed captivating.

“Glad you’ve come,” said she, with a smile. “You managed to get here without meeting with any impediment?”

“It was all fair sailing,” returned the Smoucher. “No Queen’s service men to overhaul us, but we took care to come by different roads, and walked the quiet sides of the streets.”

“Where’s the Prince?” inquired the cracksman.

The Prince was a nickname they had given to Alf Purvis――now, however, no longer Alf Purvis, but Algernon Sutherland.

“He’s not come, but won’t be long, I expect,” said Miss Stanbridge.

“Oh, in course he’s not here,” cried the cracksman. “Aint likely. He’s dancing after some pretty face, and forgot all about our chapel, and all about the traps, too, I s’pose. I never saw such an owdacious chap. He’d follow a girl into a police station if he fancied her.”

Laura Stanbridge tapped the ground impatiently with her feet. It was evident enough that she was vexed.

“What business is it of yours?” said the Smoucher. “I make it a rule myself never to interfere with a young man’s private affairs.”

“I aint a saying anything against him,” observed the other man, “only I ’spose there’s no harm in speaking one’s mind. Concerning the women the Prince is as weak and wivery-wavery as a cabman that’s lived on Haymarket gin.”

“Well, and if he is, what of that? It’s his only fault. He’s a star――a regular out and outer. What wonders he’s done for us already. Why, he knows more than any of us, and he’s little more than a lad now.”

“Ah, he’s a right down good un――a regular stunner,” cried the cracksman, with the enthusiasm of a true connoisseur. “He did that last job to rights.”

“Lord, missus,” said Miles Slann, the Whitechapel cracksman, “if yer’d been there yer heart would have melted to see how he walked into them safety locks. Chubbs are puzzlers to him, but at the hanky-panky business, the light-fingered part of the profession, there aint any one to touch him.”

“Ah, he’s very clever――there isn’t the slightest doubt of that,” said Miss Stanbridge.

“Clever! I just think he was. He does yer credit, and it’s a good thing yer picked up with him when he was so young. He’s been well taught, and I say agen he does yer credit. He does all on us credit,” repeated Mr. Slann, in a still more forcible manner.

“Don’t speak in so loud a tone, you noisy wretch!” exclaimed Laura. “Can’t you say what you have to say in a lower tone?”

“Oh, I beg pardon, I forgot. We are not in Whitechapel now, but among the aristocracy. I forgot.”

“Well, don’t forgot next time,” suggested the Smoucher.

“All right, governor. It’s a way I’ve got, ’specially when I am speaking of the Prince; but Lord bless him he never keeps his own long. His blunt is blewed as soon as it is got.”

“Hush!” cried Laura Stanbridge. “I hear his step――he has come in by the back way.”

“Oh, you know his step――do you?”

“I should think I did. Silence, hark――yes, ’tis he!”

A tall, slim, young man entered the room. His features were almost womanly in their grace and beauty, but there was an expression upon them which it would be impossible to define, and which seemed to emanate from the eyes more than from any other feature, which were of a cold and cruel grey.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” said the young thief. “I know I am a little late, but it couldn’t be helped, and so now to business, pals,” he said, in a clear, sharp voice, every tone of which bespoke promptitude and decision. “You’ve both of you been too rash. There’s no doubt, after that last job which you made such a mess of, that the blue bloodhounds will soon be after you.”

“We shall be chanted in the leer (advertised in the papers) to-morrow,” said the cracksman, in the brutal language of his craft. “We must speel-to-the drum (go into the country), captain.”

These men, old in crime, already recognised him as their master.

“Yes,” he replied, calmly, “you must make up your minds to go into the country, or to cross the herring pond. You are too well known in London to remain here with safety.”

“Well, we must hook it, I s’pose,” said Miles Slann. “There aint no help for it. Look here,” he said, in continuation, addressing himself to his younger companion, “you were born and bred in the country, though nobody would believe it, to look at you now. Are there any “plants” to be made there nowadays?”

Mr. Algernon Sutherland crossed his legs in a symmetrical manner, and passed his hands through his flowing locks.

“Umph!” he ejaculated. “I hardly know how to answer your question. In the country dwell a race of men called farmers, who utterly disbelieve in banks, those nefarious institutions which have extinguished highway robbery――the high art of our profession――in order that they may pillage percentage from the million, and, by breaking now and then, utterly ruin the fatherless and the widows. But these farmers, who are honest fellows in the main, ride home from market at a particular season of the year with a twelvemonth’s income in their pockets, which season is the autumn, now close at hand.”

“Oh, aint that fortunate?” cried the Smoucher. “But are there no banks in the country, then?”

“Plenty for gentlemen and tradesmen, and those exceptional farmers who prefer such custody to that of their own clumsy cudgels and rusty blunderbusses. However, they are all compelled to have large sums of money in their houses for the payment of their labourers on Saturday night.”

“Just the place for our money,” cried the Cracksman. “Let’s have a country tour for the benefit of our health. I don’t feel up to the knocker myself, and fresh air is needful. Besides, we aint wanted in London――leastways, if we are “wanted,” which, in course, is likely enough, why it’s as well to give the ‘crushers’ the trouble to run down to our country seat. Ah, ah! If there be kens to crack and heads to break on the main toby we’re all there. What if we do get done for a cramp, and end our days at Tuck-up Fair? There’s no need to say die on a dunghill, or talk without meat or drink. So, Lorry, let’s have somethink that way, if you please.”

“You are a good one for prog and lush,” said the Smoucher. “If you were going to be ‘topped’ to-morrer, you’d ask to die with your mouth full. But take care, old sinner, he who cuts much beef has more belly than brains, and that won’t fit in our trade, you know.”

“Let him have his way,” observed Laura Stanbridge. “He takes pretty good care of himself, and is not likely to starve when food is to be got; but blue ruin’s ruination, and a flash of lightning (a glass of gin) has been fatal to many a man before now.”

“You must go separate at first, my lads,” said the young pickpocket, “and disguise yourselves. This is easy enough; we have plenty of togs here for that purpose. We can find whatever you want in that way.”

“You’re as good as father, brother, and son to us, that’s what you are,” said the cracksman.

“If either of you should get boxed into the jug, one of us must help the canary bird out of his cage, and cheat the beaks again. I will write down some notions I have on the point, and you shall decide upon them afterwards. Bring me some pens and ink.”

Laura Stanbridge rose from her seat, and took from a side table a handsome bronze inkstand, some writing paper, and pens; these she placed before the young man.

“All right, that will do,” said the latter, who proceeded to write down instructions for his two associates in crime.

While the Cracksman was eating and the pickpocket was writing, the Smoucher whistled a popular thieves’ air in an undertone, and Laura Stanbridge remained apparently in deep thought, glancing furtively at her vis-à-vis.

The four personages formed a strange contrast; the woman presented the appearance of a handsome patrician lady, the young man to all appearance belonged to the “upper ten,” and the Smoucher and the cracksman were unmistakeable ruffians of the most pronounced order.

The young man presently handed the paper to his two confederates.

The Cracksman frowned over it, not because he disapproved of the ideas, but because he found it difficult to decipher the words in which they were conveyed.

Honest English was as unintelligible to him as the hieroglyphics of thieves would be to us.

Having mastered the preliminary obstacles, however, he testified his delight by knocking down a chair on each side of him with his fist, and handed it to the Smoucher, who, on reading it, appeared no less charmed with its contents.

Laura Stanbridge rose from her seat, and crept out of the room.

Then they drew close together, and conversed for some time in a low and earnest tone.

An hour afterwards the two men passed out. This time each carried a large parcel under his arm, and each with a satisfactory nod went his way.

Algernon Sutherland, alias Alf Purvis, was left alone in the little parlour.

He appeared to be perfectly at his ease and utterly ndifferent to the position of his companions in crime or the dangers which beset them both.

“Bah!” he ejaculated, taking a choice Havana from his cigar case. “They are a pair of ruffians without doubt, and must take their chance. I have given them the best advice, which, if they have sufficient prudence to follow, may help them out of their present scrape.”

He lighted his cigar, and puffed therefrom thin wreaths of vapoury smoke.

Laura Stanbridge now returned, and entered the room.

She now wore a moire-antique dress, which displayed to advantage her bust, and hands white as Parian marble.

It was evident that she had made a careful toilette, for her attire was of the best and in excellent taste.

The grey-eyed young man was not accustomed to be taken by surprise, or give expression to his emotions, if he had any, in a demonstrative manner; still he did just raise his eyebrows and honour his female companion with an inquiring glance as she re-entered the room.

He acknowledged to himself that she was very beautiful, but round her eyes and mouth there were lines and wrinkles unnaturally deepened by the life of anxiety which she had led.

Nevertheless, all things considered, she looked well, and was by no means a faded beauty, albeit the bloom had in a measure left the peach.

“Alf, dear,” she said, walking towards him, “I have something to say to you――a few words concerning my own happiness.”

“Indeed! Well, to begin with, I must inform you that I am no longer Alf Purvis, the farmer’s boy, from Stoke Perry farmhouse――nothing of the sort, my dear. I am Algernon Sutherland.”

“Of course, I know that. But in speaking to one who has been so long my pet, I addressed him by his real name――dont’t you see?”

“Oh, I see,” returned the young gentleman, puffing carelessly at his cigar. “But, my dear girl, you ought to know――but, of course, you do――that there is nothing real in the existence of a thief; it is as ephemeral as that of butterflies, ladybirds, and other poetical insects. I have changed my name as I have changed my habits, my language, my associations, and my honesty.”

Mr. Algernon Sutherland took two or three more long and vigorous puffs at his cigar, which had been trying to go out under cover of his eloquence.

“I will call you what you wish,” she answered in a gentle manner and tone of voice, “if you will only listen to what I am going to say.”

“All right, Lorry. Say what you like. I will listen complacently enough, and of course if it concerns yourself, I will promise to be deeply interested. Can I say fairer than that?” he added, with a chuckle.

“Get away, do, with your nonsense. You do love to be satirical, but that is little to the purpose. You spoke of changing, Alf――for I still cling to the name by which I have known you so long――and that very word has strengthened me in my determination.”

“Your determination――eh?”

“Yes.”

“And what might that be――to reform? I hope you are not about to meet me with a long moral dissertation upon the past, the present, and the future?”

“And if I did, there would not be much harm in such a discourse. If I did wish to make reparation for the past by a brighter and less guilty future, there would be nothing to be astonished at.”

“Oh, wouldn’t there?” he remarked, carelessly.

“No, of course not.”

“Well, go on. Fire away.”

“Alf, I have been a thief ever since I can remember,” said his companion, “and, oh, how I bitterly repent the crimes which others taught me! How sincerely I desire to atone for them by a life of virtue and repentance!”

She buried her face in her hands. Sutherland, as he now termed himself, withdrew the cigar from his mouth, and indulged in a sarcastic smile. To say he was astonished would perhaps be making use of too strong a term. He was a young man who was not easily astonished――but he was amused.

“Would you hear my history, Alf?” she said, as she raised her voluptuous eyes, which were now moistened with tears.

“Your history?” he repeated. “Yes, I should like to hear it. Proceed.”

“It will, perhaps, make you take compassion on me. It was my own mother who first taught me to steal, who beat me when I returned without money, who trained me to look upon the gallows without fear or horror, as other children are taught to look upon a happy death-bed and a peaceful grave. I was very quick and nimble, and soon made myself proficient in picking pockets and counter snatching.”

“So I should suppose,” remarked her companion.

“As soon as I could find I could steal for a living I worked on my own account, but let my mother have enough to keep her comfortably.

“I was engaged with others in a robbery at my native town, Sheffield; my companions were arrested, but I contrived to give the police the slip, and hastened up to London; my companions were convicted, but I escaped.

“In London I went into the service of an old woman, who dressed me in fine clothes and sent me to churches and theatres, where my lady-like looks enabled me to mingle with rich people without their suspecting that I was a thief, and to steal such numbers of watches, bracelets, and other articles of jewellery, that before I was seventeen I was as celebrated as Moll Cutpurse of old.

[Sidenote: NO. 38.]

“By escaping from the clutches of the old Jewess, who thought she had me as her slave for life, and by diligently saving my money, I was enabled after some time to purchase the lease of this house, and enter upon a new and safer line of business――I became a receiver of stolen goods.”

“And your friend?” said Algernon, carelessly.

“Oh, the lady you saw here when we first became acquainted.”

“Precisely――the old lady.”

“She was of service to me.”

“So I should imagine, else you wouldn’t have had her here.”

“No, I met her at a rural lodging-house, playing at hide and seek with the police about attempting infanticide or something of that sort. I do not know where she is now. We had some words, and she took herself off. After I met with her I used to ply my trade of shoplifting in fashionable quarters, parading her as my duenna.”

“Oh, she could ply that part well enough, I dare say,” observed the young man, dryly.

His companion proceeded――

“Thus you see, Alf,” said she, “that few have had more experience in theft than myself, and few have had such success.”

“I should say very few.”

“Very few, indeed. I have never been in prison――I am rich, I have had nothing to discourage me, and if it were possible for a thief to be happy I ought to be so. But I am not――I am supremely miserable.”

“You surprise me. Not happy?”

“No, far from it.”

“I, on the other hand, am a thief pursued by justice, who, fortunately for me, is blind to fact as well as fiction, and yet you see I am perfectly happy and contented with my lot.”

“You are happy now because you are tasting triumph for the first time, but be assured it will soon turn bitter in your mouth. You are happy now because you have earned the respect of villains, but the time will come when you will sigh for the goodwill of honest men.”

“Umph!” muttered Algernon, “this is an entirely new line of business――preaching morality. Well, I am prepared to entertain the question. What do you propose?”

She placed her white hands upon his shoulders, and her lips upon his cheek.

“Might we not marry, dear Algernon?” she said, in soft beseeching tone. “How happy I should then be! We would travel on the Continent, give up all our old associates, and lead a new life. We would see all the grand sights in the world, and after that,” she added, in a voice hushed as a sigh, as melodious as a song, “we would retire to some quiet nook in the country, and there dwell in delicious solitude. Say, dearest, if I may hope for this happiness?”

Her gliding step, her glittering eyes, her fragrant but fiery breath as she approached made her resemble a serpent which uncoils itself to spring.

He shuddered in spite of himself.

Then he rose, and exclaimed, in a voice of thunder――“Marriage! And you can give utterance to that word as applied to our two selves?”

“Ah!” she cried, as she clenched her hands, and recoiled a few steps, “What is the cause of this outburst?”

“You have told me your history,” returned he, recovering his sang froid, and lighting a fresh cigar at the dying ashes of his first. “Permit me to relate to you the history of another young lady, for I feel assured that you will find it wondrously interesting. Indeed, it is altogether so romantic that it would appear to many persons quite incredible, but it is correct in every particular――so I have been given to understand. The tale is so instructive that it becomes an actual warning to all who might by chance be acquainted with its heroine. Her name was Margaret Oughton.”

The woman uttered a horrible cry. Algernon Sutherland closed his eyes and allowed the smoke to curl voluptuously from between his lips.

“Her name was Margaret Oughton. She was the daughter of a cotton operative. When she left her native town she met with a gentleman in London who was struck with her beauty. He feared to marry her; the reason for this――or rather one of the reasons――was that he was old, and she was very young. Poor man, he was wondrously smitten with the fair young creature, who told him, with embraces, that she loved him. He was vain, and therefore believed her. He believed those embraces to be pure, which were as meretricious as those of a fille-de-joie.

“He married her, and before a month had passed away he found that she had a lover. He ought not to have been astonished at this, and the probability is that he was brought to look upon it as a very natural sequence; anyway he forgave her. In return this angelic young wife robbed him of every farthing she could lay her hands on and eloped with her lover.”

“I was his tool――a mere puppet in his hands. I was at his mercy; he made me do it. I had no power to refuse,” cried Laura Stanbridge.

“Liar and murderess! That man, your partner in vice, your accomplice in crime, was discovered lying in the high road, his face covered with frightful spots, and all the signs of death by poisoning within his frame. Therefore, my dear Lorry, since I have no ambition to play Duncan to your Lady Macbeth, or to have my tea sugared with arsenic any morning that you happened to sit down to breakfast in a bad temper, I politely decline your kind offer.”

She looked at him calmly for a moment, gave a low moan, and fell like a corpse upon the floor.

He surveyed her with the inquisitive look of a prizefighter, who wishes to see what effect his “punishment” has had upon his adversary――a look in which sympathy is the least ingredient.

“Ah,” he murmured, thoughtfully, “a knock-down blow――not with the fist, but with hard words. Well, this appears to be genuine, and, I suppose, must be attended to.”

He poured out some brandy in a wine-glass, and knelt down by the side of the prostrate woman. He forced some brandy into her mouth, which he made her swallow. It seemed to revive her, for she opened her eyes and sighed.

I write “seemed,” for Laura Stanbridge had only pretended to faint, in order that she might gain time to think.

She had been studying a part while she had been lying prostrate on the ground.

She made an effort to rise, and then groaned. Her companion placed his arms round her waist, and raised her to her feet. Then, with one arm round her, he held her in a half-fainting condition.

It so chanced that at this particular crisis Peace, who had been let in by the servant girl, gave a rap at the half-open door of the little parlour, and not receiving any answer thereto, he entered without further ceremony.

He beheld Laura Stanbridge in the arms of a fashionably-dressed genteel-looking young man, and felt that he had intruded at a mal-apropos time.

“Beg pardon,” cried Peace. “Didn’t know you were engaged.”

“Oh, come in,” said Algernon. “The lady’s better now.”

“Bless me, fainting fit, I suppose. How very sad!”

He took a tumbler off the sideboard, half filled with water, with which he moistened the forehead and temples of his old playmate.

“That will do――I am all right. Why it’s dear old Charlie!” she ejaculated, catching sight of the well-known features of our hero. “Well, I am glad to see you――oh, so very glad! The sight of you has quite restored me. Sit down, Charlie.”

“But you,” inquired our hero――“how do you find yourself now?”

“Oh, better. I’m all right. Don’t concern yourself about me,” said Laura Stanbridge, throwing herself into an armchair, and smoothing her brown hair across her brows.

“I will see you later on,” remarked Mr. Algernon Sutherland, as he glided out of the apartment. “Farewell for the present.”

He gave a graceful waive of his hand, and passed on into the passage.

In another moment the front door of the habitation was gently closed, and Peace was left alone with his lady companion.

“Who is that gentleman?” he inquired, after Sutherland had taken his departure.

“Who? Why, don’t you know?”

“How should I? Don’t remember to have seen him before.”

“Why, you old mufti, it’s the boy, Alf Purvis――now a boy no longer, but a heartless young scapegrace, an ungrateful hound!”

“Ungrateful, eh?”

“Ah, that’s it. As base as he is ungrateful.”

“The boy who used to be with farmer Jamblin?”

“Certainly――didn’t you know him again?”

“Dear me, no. Why he’s quite a swell, gives himself all the airs and graces of the nobility. My word, but he’s strangely altered.”

“Ah, Charlie, you may well say that. He is altered. He owes everything to me, and a pretty return he makes for it.”

“Would round upon you when he has the opportunity I suppose――eh?”

“It doesn’t answer his purpose to do so at present, but he has shown his teeth and, doubtless, will bite in good time.”

“Ah, Lorry,” cried Peace; “what falsehood and dissimulation there is in this world! One does not know whom to trust. The longer a man lives the more forcibly he becomes impressed with this melancholy fact. I never thought very much of that lad. There’s nothing open or candid about him, and he has a cruel, treacherous pair of eyes, but make your mind easy and get rid of the fellow.”

“I shall have to do so, I expect, but it cannot be done at present. But I say, old man, how is it I’ve not seen anything of you for so long a time?”

“For a very excellent reason,” returned Peace, with a smile. “Her Majesty required my services.”

“Ah, I forgot you were landed at Sheffield for a little affair at Crooksemoor House. That was an unfortunate piece of business――but these things can’t be helped.”

“I left Dartmoor but a day or two since, and came up to London just for a day or two. A kind friend sent me a letter, in which was enclosed a twenty-pound note. I guessed where it came from, and so have called to thank you.”

“I did not send it,” exclaimed Laura Stanbridge, suddenly. “If I had thought of it I certainly should have forwarded you something――but, to speak frankly, the idea never occurred to me.”

“You did not send it? The handwriting looked like yours, and I made certain――――”

“You are mistaken. I have not sent any letter to Dartmoor――indeed, I did not know you were there. I should have thought they would have sent you to Parkhurst.”

“Not sent it?” muttered Peace, scratching his head in a puzzled and perplexed manner. “Who the devil did send it, then?”

“That’s more than I can tell you. Still, if you are hard-up, and want a little coin, you can have something to be going on with. The least we ought to do is to help each other in a case like this.”

“I don’t want any money at present. Haven’t I already told you that I had twenty quid when I left that cursed place? Well, it’s consoling to find that one has a friend, although it is an unknown one. But about this young fellow,” cried Peace, suddenly changing the subject. “You’ve been having a row with him, I suppose.”

The woman nodded.

“Is he a ruffian?”

“He’s destitute of feeling and of gratitude.”

“But Lorry, my girl, I hope he hasn’t been base enough or brute enough to raise his hand against you.”

“Oh, lor, no, it hasn’t come to that. Oh dear no. We had a little bit of a dispute, that’s all.”

“Ah, and he was insolent, and, ahem, abusive, I suppose?”

“No, not that.”

“What then?”

“He was jeering, taunting, and aggravating, and I lost my temper.”

“And fainted.”

“Something very much like it, but enough upon this head; come, let me help you to a glass of wine, or perhaps you would prefer a little brandy?”

“That would be better, certainly.”

“Well help yourself, old man, and make yourself at home.”

Peace mixed himself some brandy and water, and also a glass of the same for his companion, who had by this time in a measure recovered from the effects of the scene which had taken place between herself and Mr. Algernon Sutherland.

“I suppose you have had a nice time of it since I saw you last?” observed Miss Stanbridge. “Dartmoor is not an inviting or cheerful place, they tell me.”

“I should think not, but I got on and made a good many friends. A great deal depends upon how a chap conducts himself, and I took pretty good care to be on the safe side. I gave them as little trouble as possible, and won the good opinion of the prison authorities; but, lor’ bless you, Lorry, you’ve no idea of the wretches to be found in that heart-breaking place――fellows without fear or shame――monsters, in fact, who are worse than wild beasts.”

“Oh, I dare say some of the very worst people it is possible to conceive find their way into prisons of that sort. Well, here’s better luck in the future, and, as that gentleman with the gingham umbrella said, ‘Always keep your weather eye open, my boy.’ But you have not told me how the old lady is?”

“I haven’t seen mother, or any of them as yet. Came straight to London, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot――so you told me. Well, give my love to all our friends at Sheffield when you do return. By the way, Emma was in the last swim――wasn’t she?”

“Yes, she and my sister got six months’ each.”

“Ah, Master Charlie, you were always sweet on that girl.”

“Nonsense――no such thing,” returned Peace, indignantly.

“Ah! yes you were; you can’t deceive me. I tell you you were sweet on her, and may be now for aught I know. Well, there’s many a worse sort than Emma.”

“A jolly sight worse,” said Peace.

His companion laughed.

“There, didn’t I tell you so? Ah! Charlie, you can’t deceive me. Well, I should like to see Emma. Tell her to give me a call if she should come to London, which it’s likely enough she may do.”

“All right, I’ll tell her――that is, if we meet again.”

The two quondam companions continued their conversation about matters past and present for upwards of an hour, after which he bade Laura Stanbridge farewell and “took his hook,” as he termed it.

The grey mists of evening were descending over the mighty city as Charles Peace threaded his way through the streets in the direction of High Holborn. As he approached Middle-row he saw at a few yards’ distance a face which had been familiar enough to him in his earlier days.

He started involuntarily, for the face that attracted his attention was so strangely altered that at first he was in doubt as to its being the one which had been so familiar to him.

He came to a sudden halt, being in doubt as to his course of action.

“Charles Peace!” exclaimed a man, coming forward and offering his hand. “Speak, man. You do not fear or mistrust me――me, your old chum, Tom Gatliffe.”

“So it is you, then?” ejaculated Peace.

“Why of course it is――didn’t you know me?”

“Yes, oh dear yes, of course I did, but we have not met for so long a time and――well, to say the truth, you are greatly altered. You’ve grown a beard or something, which has quite changed your appearance, but――but――Tom I’m jolly glad to meet you.”

“Ah!” murmured the young engineer, “I am indeed altered――not the same Tom Gatliffe you knew years ago; but I have been wanting to see you for a long time, and this meeting is very opportune. Still following your old business?”

“Yes! I am not doing much just now――so thought I would run up to London for a day or two.”

“Ah, I have got a lot to tell you, but we can’t talk in the street upon private matters. Where can we have a glass together?”

“Here’s a quiet little crib just hard by――my time’s my own, and I am quite at your service. Come this way, and I’ll show you where it is.”

“The ‘Blue Posts’ will do well enough,” returned Gatliffe.

“Too noisy and crowded. I’ll show you a better place. Come along.”

The two companions walked on until they came to a quiet, unostentatious-looking public-house.

They entered and Peace led the way to a small dingy parlour, which was tenantless. Gatliffe rang the bell and ordered some wine.

Glasses were filled, and they drank each other’s health.

By the flare of the gas-lights Peace had an opportunity offered him of taking a more steadfast and searching glance at his companion. He noted the alteration which time or sorrow had made in his appearance.

Tom Gatliffe was still handsome, but lines of care were distinctly visible on his well-formed features. The eyes had sunk deeper in their sockets, and there was a dark hue around them which Peace had never observed before.

He was not a very impressionable man, but he was much concerned at the evident change for the worse in the manner and appearance of the young engineer.

“You seem to be taken aback,” cried the latter. “You didn’t expect to meet me, and are surprised, I suppose.”

“I didn’t expect to meet you, I admit, but for all that I’m jolly glad to see you, for barring one thing we have been the best of friends, and I owe you much.”

“Ah, the one thing you refer to,” remarked his companion, in a slow and melancholy tone, “is what I more than anything else have been wishing to see you about. You know, I suppose, that Aveline and myself are separate and apart. We are strangers. It is no fault of mine that we are so――it is her wish that we should be so. She has left me, Charlie, left me for wealth, position, and rank. I am not good enough for her now――now that she is a lineal descendant of an earl.”

“Are you separated, then? Are you divorced?” cried Peace.

“We are separated, but not actually divorced; but I offer no obstacle, and I believe that the earl, her grandfather, is about to obtain a divorce. Well, after all, it is perhaps but a natural consequence. I am not fit to mix in the society in which they move.”

“My word, but you take the matter in a most self-sacrificing way. She’s your lawful wife. Why don’t you exercise a husband’s authority, and insist upon her returning to her home?”

“I don’t care to do that. If she won’t come of her own free will, let her go her ways. I have done with her for good and for all. She was always vain, Charlie――always yearned for wealth and grandeur. Now she has both, and I hope she’s satisfied. That question has been settled long ago. What I have been anxious to see you for is to learn from your own lips how it first came about that she was traced and proved to be what she most unquestionably is, the grand-daughter of that high and mighty nobleman. You brought it about, or were the main instrument in doing so. Don’t imagine for a moment that I am about to upbraid you.”

“Well, you see, it was just this. When I was staying at Broxbridge, a detective――a Mr. Wrench――came and made some inquiries about some blooming Italian professor and his wife. I told him all I knew, never thinking for a moment that they had anything to do with your wife. I told him all I knew, and he was a ’cute chap, and a decent sort of fellow enough for a detective――mind I put that in――for a detective――and the earl, too, was a good sort in his way.”

“Ah, you know him, do you?”

“Certainly. I did some work for him――restored a picture, and made him some frames. He behaved in a very handsome manner to me, and I have every reason to speak in the highest terms of him. Well, as I was saying, I gave Wrench all the information I could; he followed up the clue, and you know the rest. But lord bless me, Tom, I don’t know as you’ve lost much. As you were saying, she was always vain, and when I saw her in the carriage, being driven to the front entrance of Broxbridge Hall, she never so much as condescended to give me a passing nod――there’s for you! And she knew at the time that I had been the chief means of proving her identity, and bringing her to all this grandeur, which she loves better than anything else, it would appear――better than her husband, better than her duty.”

“Yes, yes, that is right enough,” cried Gatliffe, testily; “but she’s not so very much to blame――she has been wrought upon and over-persuaded by those about her.”

“Rubbish, gammon!” cried Peace. “It’s not much persuading she wanted――not a bit of it; it’s her own free will. But, there, I don’t want to pain you by these remarks; but it’s what everybody says――everybody but you.”

“I am satisfied, and am exceedingly glad I’ve seen you.”

“I tell you what I’d do; but, of course, you have done so.”

“Done what?”

“Insisted upon the earl allowing you a handsome income for the remainder of your life.”

“I will not touch a penny of his money. Would starve first. Do you think I would consent to sell my wife?”

“Ah, well, that’s a matter of taste,” returned Peace. “I know which way the cat would jump if I were in your place; but, of course, all that is, as I before observed, a matter of taste.”

“Ah,” murmured the young engineer, with a deep-draw nigh, “it is astonishing what different views men take in matters of this sort.”

“You take it too much to heart, I’m thinking,” cried Peace.

“What makes you think so?”

“From your appearance, as well as from your manner.”

“I am not like the same man, I admit, and yet I have no reason to complain. When Aveline was with me I had a struggle to get on to support her in a manner that she had a right to expect and desired. Since she has left me I have prospered beyond my most sanguine expectations. Two of my inventions have turned out much more perfect appliances than any one ever supposed, and they bring me in a handsome yearly income, in addition to the one I receive at the works; so that I am, as you may imagine, a prosperous man.”

“But still you are not happy,” suggested Peace.

“Not altogether, I admit.”

“Hark ye, Tom. Don’t let your happiness be disturbed by a woman. A man’s a fool to do that.”

“There’s a good many fools in the world then,” returned Gatliffe.

“Admitted, but that’s no reason that you or I should add to their number.”

Gatliffe made no reply. He was silent and thoughtful for some little time, after which he said, in an altered tone――

“And now with regard to yourself. You have not told me how you are getting on. Don’t be offended, but if you are in need of cash――ready money, you know.”

“I am not in need of any,” cried Peace. “Not at present at any rate.”

“Should you be.”

“Well, what then?”

“You know where to apply――to me.”

“A letter addressed to Mr. Gatliffe, London, will reach you I suppose?” returned our hero with a laugh.

“I will give you my address. I am still at the same place――Wood Green. Come and dine with me some Sunday.”

“I can’t. I return to Sheffield to-morrow, but when next in London will do so. Rest assured I shall keep the address.”

And with this promise the two friends parted.

“Ah!” mused Peace, as he took his way to the coffee shop where he had taken up his quarters for a night or two, “he hasn’t heard of the Crookhsemoor House business, and doesn’t know that he has been hobnobbing with a convict just discharged from Dartmoor. So much the better. After all, Tom’s a good fellow, and to say the truth he appears to have lost a good deal of his upstart ways. I s’pose it’s trouble as has done that for him.”

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