Rumours of an attempted rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police, knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, had been placed outside the barriers amongst the crowd. At six o'clock the great gates leading to the yard of the Old Bailey courthouse were thrown open, and with a heavy, rumbling sound the grim old scaffold which had figured in so many scenes of horror was for the last time drawn forth from its resting-place and wheeled to its position in front of the small, iron-barred door, which, as late as 1900, was still seen in the middle of the blank wall of Newgate Prison. The noise of the workmen's hammers as they made the scaffold fast was almost drowned by the roar of the quickly gathering crowd. All the scoundreldom of London seemed to have assembled for the occasion. It was the last Old Bailey execution crowd. The windows of the public-house opposite the scaffold had been thrown open, and at every window men and women were crowded together, eagerly waiting for the grim approaching spectacle. It was not an edifying sight, this execution crowd. There was one strange incident connected with it that has never been put on record. Shortly after the scaffold had been placed in position I saw four men, whose faces were familiar to me, trying to force their way through the crowd, and I was greatly startled when I recognised them as the four men who had been tried at the same time as Barrett, but who had been acquitted by the jury. Not knowing what sinister purpose they might have in view, I felt it my duty at once to warn the chief inspector of police of their presence. He was greatly disturbed, and quickly pushed his way through the crowd towards the place I had indicated to him. I followed close at his heels until we reached the front of the scaffold. As we did so he quickly put his hand upon my shoulder to stop me, and at the same time uncovered his head. It was a strange sight that we saw in the middle of that obscene and blasphemous mob. The four men, who had so narrowly escaped the fate of Barrett, were kneeling, bare-headed, on the stones of the Old Bailey in front of the scaffold on which their friend was about to die, praying silently but earnestly. For several minutes they continued to kneel and pray, and then, suddenly rising, they hurriedly left the crowd and disappeared. "Did you ever see anything like that?" said the inspector to me; and I do not know which of us was the more moved by this strange incident.