and myself, whereby for a consideration of bread and butter, and my leavings generally, he was to clean out my cell daily and make himself useful to me, and on my behalf. This warder was a very good sort—indeed, about the only one that had not that offensive “bad drainage” expression I had noticed in the others. So he promised compliance, and one day after dinner I found myself in company with Mike, crossing the yard—I with a duster and he with a mop and pail _en route_ to the scaffold. There is something horrible in this idea, and many readers will probably consider my act and desire to participate in such a task as in the worst possible taste, but I felt I should _never_ have such a chance again, and being, moreover, a philosopher, and actuated, even at that early stage, with a determination of some day writing my experiences, I lost no opportunity from the first day of my incarceration to the last to see _everything_ by hook or by crook. I can fairly say I attained my object, and saw _more_ than any other man has ever done before, and that too under such favourable circumstances as something more than chance enabled me to. It may not here be out of place to say that I have read every book, sensational or realistic, that purports to describe prison life, and have invariably come to the conclusion that the writers never really wrote from personal observation, or, if they did, had failed signally in giving a correct description of what actually exists. Many were well-written books, but they were NOT prison life. This narrative (to use an advertising phrase) supplies a want long felt, and if it abounds with faults of composition—as I readily confess it does—it compensates in a measure for its shortcomings by the accuracy of its details. It is written in a vein, moreover, more likely—as I hope—to meet public approval than that snivelling, sanctimonious style adopted by its predecessors, and which, even if sincere, would nevertheless be palling, but where indulged in by some scheming, anonymous, rascally jail-bird, is as impertinent as it is nauseous. I have no faith in converted burglars. The entire scaffold is a most unpretending construction, and situated in any other yard but Old Bailey might pass observation as a highly-polished and tidy out-house. The floor is level with the outer yard, so that the chief actor is spared the painful necessity of trying to ascend a flight of steps with quaking knees and an air of assumed levity. A few steps, quite unobservable whilst standing on the “drop,” lead down from the back of the flooring into a bricked pit below, and a long bolt, worked by a wheel, enables this apparently solid flooring to split from the centre and to launch the victim in mid-air into the centre of this truly “bottomless pit.” I minutely examined all this, and (as its thorough dusting necessitated) rubbed and burnished every portion I could think of. My _confrère_, meanwhile, was on his hands and knees, scrubbing away