demanded, it being an axiom that an uncompromised holder of a secret is never to be trusted. I certainly should not have rounded on my _confrère_, but was nevertheless very glad to be the recipient of a specimen of this “Marwood” brand. It was a sin to chew them, but there was no alternative, as smoking was out of the question. Half-an-hour later, as I bit off a piece, the thought forced itself upon me, “Three months ago, he at Bournemouth, and I at Brighton, had never heard of one another, and here I am chewing the condemned man’s tobacco.” Funny thing, destiny! CHAPTER XXIV. THE CHURCH MILITANT IN PRISON. RELIGIOUS ceremonial plays an important part at Coldbath Fields. The quantity, indeed, is lamentably in excess of the quality, and leavened with a degree of barbaric hypocrisy incapable of engendering any feeling but that of nausea. Language fails me in trying to describe it in its proper light; and though reluctant to appear as scoffing at religion—which I emphatically repudiate—what I saw and heard makes it a hopeless task to allude to the subject and yet divest it of its component parts. This cure of some 1400 (criminal) souls was vested in two chaplains, of whom one had the misfortune to be a gentleman. I say “misfortune” advisedly, for unless incapable of contamination the most charitably inclined and refined is bound to deteriorate. Their duties, in addition to those usually associated with clergymen, embraced a _soupçon_ of the schoolmaster with a dash of the district visitor, and if they were disposed (which all were not) to throw in a slice of detective work, it was not considered a disqualification for further preferment. The spiritual welfare of the Protestant portion of the prisoners was divided between them, all fresh arrivals during this month being specially assigned to the one, and all coming in the next devolving on the other. The etiquette and punctilio that regulated this division when once made, was as marked as that usually found amongst country medical practitioners. Thus, if Sykes the burglar, who happened to be one of the Rev. Smith’s lambs, unfortunately cracked his skull, and was in immediate want of spiritual consolation, he would in all probability be requested to defer his departure till the arrival of the Rev. Robinson. I mention this in regard to the system, and not as referring to anyone in particular, although the way I was ignored (very much to my delight) some weeks later, when my particular pastor was on leave, fortifies me in the conviction that my theory is correct.