On Saturday night, June 8th, Cummings, while awaiting his trial for highway robbery, made an attempt to escape from the Bathurst Gaol. He filed a link of the chain of his leg-irons with a small pocket knife, which he had somehow procured, tore up two boards from the floor of his cell, crawled under the joists and scraped away the mortar so as to loosen several bricks in the gaol wall. The opening was only about ten inches square, but he contrived to squeeze through. Of course, when his cell was found empty on the Sunday morning, the excitement in the gaol was very great, but Mr. Forbes, the head gaoler, soon found the prisoner seated in the summer house in his private garden. "Here I am," cried the bushranger; "I did my best, but could not succeed." The prisoner had found some pieces of scantling in the outer yard, but they were not long enough to enable him to reach the top of the wall which encloses the gaol yard. An examination into the state of the gaol showed that the boards were quite rotten, and that the walls themselves were not very strong, the bricks being quite soft and rotten. Several bullock-drivers were stuck up by John Egan and Patrick Ryan on the Orange Road, in August, 1867. On the 16th Robert and John Tait, father and son, and Edward Barrell were camped together when the bushrangers rode up and ordered them to "fork out." The robbers took all their money and some articles from the drays. On the 19th they repeated the operation on some other bullock-drivers. They were followed by Sergeant Rush and Constable Lawrence and arrested about forty-five miles from where the robberies were committed. At the Bathurst Assizes the prisoners called seven witnesses to prove an alibi, but they contradicted each other under cross-examination, and on the prisoners being found guilty his Honour, Judge Hargrave, directed that they should be prosecuted for perjury. The prisoners were sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. Another bushranger, John Foran, who was convicted on three charges, was also sentenced to fifteen years.