ON the morning after my arrival at Newgate it was with considerable surprise that I saw a man in convict dress, who was apparently the object of special watch and guard. My curiosity was considerably increased from the circumstance of his being the only individual out of some two hundred in this conspicuous attire; he was moreover clearly not a novice, but wore the dreadful suit with the apparent ease of a man to whom it was by no means a novelty. He looked horribly ill, and a terrible eruption that showed itself on his neck, face, and hands gave unmistakable evidence that the unhappy wretch was literally rotten; added to this, however, there was a something about him, a “_je ne sais quoi_,” that marked the gentleman and asserted the blue blood, despite the convict dress, the loathsome disease, and the degrading surroundings. A fixed melancholy seemed never to desert him. When he moved, it was with eyes cast down, and nothing appeared to interest him; it was the motions of a human machine, bowed down with grief or shame, or meditating some awful vengeance. I was so struck with all this that I determined to lose no opportunity of scraping an acquaintance with the mysterious stranger. I enquired of a warder, but all he knew or pretended to know was that he was undergoing a sentence of 20 years’ penal servitude, and had lately been drafted there from a convict prison; that he had only been there a few days, and would in all probability be moved elsewhere very shortly. Chance favoured my desire to make his acquaintance. It was on a Saturday afternoon, a time devoted to a very general and extra clean up, and when almost everyone is put on a job. My warder—like a brick—had put me, at my urgent request, to “dusting” the rails, a duty, I had observed, at which the convict was frequently employed. I got as near as discretion would permit, and ventured to ask him who and what he was. He looked at me at first with a mingled expression of surprise and distrust, but being apparently reassured by either my manner or my dress, began in short, jerky sentences in something of the following style: “You ask me who I am. That’s a question I haven’t heard for six long years. Since that time I’ve been an unit, 4016 of Portland, and praying night and day that death would release me.” I was alarmed at his excited manner; his eyes flashed, he quivered like a maniac, and I begged him to be calm. This appeal seemed to touch some long dried-up spring; kind words evidently sounded strange to him, and a tear trickled down his seamed and hollow cheeks. The weakness, however, was but momentary, and wiping his eyes with his coarse blue handkerchief, he began in a melancholy voice the following sad story:—