The turnkey, at the time only suspected of complicity in the matter, was carefully watched. When he left of an evening his every footstep was dogged, and a nightly report of his rambles duly made. A letter, too, that he foolishly posted in a neighbouring pillar-box pointed indirectly to his connivance, and subsequent inquiries at the district receiving office made matters possibly clearer. A close relationship exists between such Government institutions as post-offices, prisons, and police-stations, which affords greater facilities to constituted authorities for unearthing mysteries than to ordinary mortals. I was ignorant in those days of this affinity, and an easy prey to such trumpery contingencies; but I eventually reduced the trafficking to a science impossible of detection, and unfailing in its results. Can it be wondered at—surrounded as one is by underpaid officials, who begin at twenty-one shillings and twenty-three shillings a week, with a gradual increase, after years of toil, to a possible twenty-eight shillings, and with a prospect, after twenty years’ service, of receiving a pension of ten shillings a week—can it be wondered at, I ask, that these worthy men are unable to resist a bribe? I should regret to have to prove my words, but if I was in the position again, I think I could undertake to be in daily communication with the outer world, despite bolts and bars and the “special” observation I was always subject to. This is no idle boast, as subsequent events will prove; and the authorities have only themselves to thank for exercising no discretionary power in their treatment of prisoners, when the facts I mention prove conclusively that a great difference does exist and always will between the vagrant and the gentleman, even in prison, in more ways than one. The underpaid turnkey is still more unfairly handicapped, and it resolves itself into his choosing between my £5 and the Government £1. What more natural than that he should elect the former, when the most ordinary precaution will guard against detection. I don’t think the authorities ought to begrudge the so-called gentleman this solitary advantage. No one can deny that six months to a man of education is an infinitely severer trial than eighteen to a costermonger. The one has to battle with the mind, conscience, remorse, shattered prospects, loss of caste, a blighted future, food, clothing, surroundings, all inferior to what he has been accustomed to; to submit, moreover, to be addressed by inferiors in a tone of authority, besides a hundred-and-one other humiliations impossible to remember: the other finds himself amongst friends, loses nothing by his incarceration, is better clothed, fed, and housed than if he were at home, and, in the case of an artizan, reverts to his every-day employment; and yet this is seldom taken into consideration, and justice is ladled out to gentleman and vagrant alike. I cannot assert this as my