The charges of “receivers” in every branch of the profession are of an unusual character, but it has been asserted upon reliable authority that he was a burglar years before the events which have made him so notorious. It is quite twenty years since he worked at a rolling mill at Millsands, and it was while following this employment that he broke his leg. This accident appears to have thoroughly disgusted him with hard work, and as soon as the injuries were cured he went to Manchester. Here he appears to have fallen into bad company, and to have been the leading spirit of a gang of burglars. In the small hours of the morning Peace and his confederates were tracked to a lonely house at Rusholme, and the police succeeded in obtaining an entrance. After a desperate struggle Peace was secured, and a great quantity of the stolen property was recovered, but not before the officers had been severely handled. At Old Trafford he was sent to penal servitude, but he played the “good boy” and was let out on a ticket-of-leave. After his Old Trafford sentence he returned to Sheffield and took a small shop in Kenyon-alley. Here he used to amuse his acquaintances by showing them the dexterity with which he could pick the most stubborn lock. He soon resumed his old courses, and made the acquaintance of Millbank. The career of the notorious culprit whose doings are chronicled in this work furnishes the novelist with a moral. It will be clearly demonstrated to those who peruse these pages that, sooner or later, justice overtakes the guilty, and that it is impossible for the most astute and cunning scoundrel――such as Peace has proved himself to be――to escape punishment. A life of crime is always a life of care, for the hearts of the guilty tremble for the past, for the present, and for the future. The author of the “Life of Peace” reprobates in the strongest degree that species of literature whose graduates do their best to cast a dignity upon the gallows, and strive to shed the splendour of fascinating romance upon the paths of crime that lead to it――to make genius tributary to murder, and literature to theft, to dignify not the mean but the guilty. Let crime and its perpetrators be depicted as conscience sees them, as morality brands them; let them stand out in prominent but repulsive relief. There is yet wanted a picture of crime and its consequences true to nature and conscience, and it is hoped that the present serial will, in some measure, supply that want. The author proposes to present to his readers the felon as he really is――to describe facts as they were found――to present pure pictures of guilt and its accompaniments.