And, after all, what aroused so greatly his indignation? It was simply this--because we were youngsters and Americans, and had successfully assaulted the fondly imagined impregnable Bank of England, and, worse still, had held up to the laughter of the whole world its red-tape idiotic management, for had the bank asked so common a thing as a reference the fraud would have been made impossible. Let my reader contrast this modern Jeffreys, his savage tirade, and, for an offense against property, this most brutal sentence, with the treatment of the Warwickshire bank wreckers. Greenaway, the manager of this bank, and three of the directors by false balance sheets and perjured reports for years had looted the bank, finally robbing the depositors of L1,000,000, several of whom committed suicide and thousands more of whom were ruined. They were tried, convicted, and in being sentenced were told that, being men of high social position, the disgrace in itself was a severe punishment; therefore, he should take that fact into consideration, and ended by sentencing two to eight months', one to twelve and one to fourteen months' imprisonment. We were sentenced late at night--nearly 10 o'clock--a smoky, foggy London night. The court was packed, the corridors crowded, and when the jury came in with their verdict the suppressed excitement found vent. But when the vindictive and unheard-of sentence fell from the lips of this villain Judge an exclamation of horror fell from that crowded court. We turned from the Judge and went down the stairs to the entrance to the underground passage leading to Newgate. There we halted to say farewell. [Illustration: BEFORE THE GOVERNOR--ASSISTANT WARDER REPORTING A PRISONER FOR TALKING.] To say farewell! Yes. The Primrose Way had come to an end, but we were comrades and friends still, and in order that in the gloom of the slow-moving days and the blackness and thick horror of the years to come we might have some thought in common, we then and there promised--what could we poor, broken bankrupts promise? Where or to what in the thick horror enshrouding us could we turn? We had "Nothing left us to call our own save death, And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones;" nothing but a grave, that "Small model of the barren earth," with dishonor and degradation for our epitaph! But there, in the very instant of our overwhelming defeat, standing in the dark mouth of the stone conduit leading from the Old Bailey to the dungeons of Newgate, by virtue of the high resolve we made, we conquered Fate at her worst, and by our act in establishing a secret bond of sympathy in our separation dropped the bad, disastrous past, and starting on new things planted our feet on the bottom round of the ladder of success, feeling that, with plenty of faith and endurance, Fortune, frown as she might now, must in some distant day turn her wheel and smile again.