as he had length enough he threw himself up and caught the coping-stone of the roof above. All this took place on the top story, at a height of some thirty-five feet from the ground. He was now outside the wall, and standing on the outer end of the window bar. To draw out the whole lengths of blanket and sheeting rope, throw them on to the roof, and clamber after, were his next exploits. He thereupon descended into the garden below, which encircles all of the buildings, and is itself surrounded by a low boundary wall. This garden was patrolled by six sentries, who divided the whole distance between them. He could see them very plainly as he stood on the roof between Pentagons three and four. He took the descent by degrees, lowering himself from the roof to a third floor window, and from third floor to second, from second to first, and from first to the ground itself. The back of the nearest patrol just then was turned, and Howard’s descent to _terra firma_ was unobserved. Next moment he was seen standing in his white shirt, but otherwise naked, in among the tombstones of the Penitentiary graveyard, which is just at this point. Concluding he was a ghost, the sentry, as he afterwards admitted, turned tail and ran, leaving the coast quite clear. Howard was not slow to profit by the chance. Some planks lay close by, one of which he raised against the boundary wall, and walked up the incline thus formed. Next moment he dropped down on the far side and was free. His friends lived close by the prison in Pye Street, Westminster, and within a minute or two he was in his mother’s house, got food and clothing, and again made off for the country. Naturally the excitement in the prison on the following morning was intense. Howard was gone, and he could be tracked by his means of exit from his cell to the roof, down the outer wall, across the garden, and over the boundary wall. Here the trail stopped; and though his home in Pye Street was immediately searched, no one would confess to having seen him. It was felt that recapture was almost hopeless. It occurred, however, to Denis Power, the warder of Howard’s ward, that this man had come to prison with a “pal,” a certain Jerry Simcox, who had been convicted at the same time and for the same offence. Mr. Power thereupon visited Simcox in his cell. “So Punch has gone, sir?” “How did you know that?” “Why, sir, you couldn’t keep him. We was in Newgate together, him and me, and in Horsemonger too; but we got out of both. There ain’t no jail ’ll hold Punch Howard.” “Oh, you got out together, did you?” said the officer, growing interested. “Yes, and could again out of any ‘stir’ in the three kingdoms, and they could not take us either. We got to too safe a crib for that.” “Ah—?” Power spoke unconcernedly. If he had appeared too anxious Simcox would have remained silent.