This bag was akin somewhat to the mysterious _chuppaties_, which were the forerunner of the Indian Mutiny. It was passed from hand to hand, each prisoner opening, reading, and then sending it on. Jones, on whom it was found, declared she had picked it up in the passage. She was lame, and returning from exercise had put her crutch on something soft. “Why, here is some one’s swag,” she cried, and thereupon became possessed of it. But she had intended to give it up to the matron; “Oh yes, directly she had read it.” However, another prisoner forestalled her, and Jones got into trouble. Then, with the instinct of self-preservation, which is stronger, perhaps, among prisoners than in other human beings, Jones “rounded” at once, in other words, gave full information of the plot. Hatred of the matron was at the bottom of it. This great conspiracy was of a piece with many such plots in modern experience—mere empty threats and rank bombastic talk. Prisoners are very fond of bragging what they mean to do, both inside and outside when again free. In the present case there was supposed to be much more in store for the matron than the actual assault with which they threatened her. One of the conspirators swore that if she (the matron) escaped now, later on vengeance should overtake her. “As soon as I’m free I’ll do for that cat of destruction. I’ll send her first a dead dog with a rope round its neck, made up into a parcel. That’ll frighten her. Curse her, I’ll give her a bitter pill yet. If it’s ten years hence, I’ll never forget her. I’ll watch her, and track her outside; and I have friends of the right sort that’ll help me.” But threatened men and women live long, and nothing much happened to the matron then or afterwards. Let us now return to the male side. Here the worries and annoyances of the governor were still varied and continuous. Hardly had misconduct in one shape succumbed to treatment, than it broke out in another. Many attempts to escape—one of which, to be detailed hereafter, went very near complete success; a couple of very serious assaults, and a fresh suicidal epidemic, still kept his energies on the stretch. It was his practice, as we know, to give his immediate attention to anything and everything, as soon as it occurred; and although he must now have been alive to the preponderance of imposture in the attempts prisoners made upon their own lives, still so kindhearted a man could not but be greatly exercised in spirit, whenever the suicides seemed of a _bonâ fide_ nature.