I knew nothing of any public efforts for my relief. I was held fast on the wheels of a slow-moving machine, hypnotized by the striking hours and the flight of my numbered minutes, with the gallows staring me in the face. The date of my execution was not told me at Walton Jail, but I heard afterward that it was to have taken place on the 26th of August. On the 22d, while I was taking my daily exercise in the yard attached to the condemned cell, the governor, Captain Anderson, accompanied by the chief matron, entered. He called me to him, and, with a voice which--all honor to him--trembled with emotion, said: “Maybrick, no commutation of sentence has come down to-day, and I consider it my duty to tell you to prepare for death.” “Thank you, governor,” I replied; “my conscience is clear. God’s will be done.” COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE He then walked away and I returned to my cell. The female warder was weeping silently, but I was calm and spent the early part of the night in my usual prayers. About midnight exhausted nature could bear no more, and I fainted. I had barely regained consciousness when I heard the shuffle of feet outside, the click of the key in the lock--that warning catch in the slow machinery of my doom. I sprang up, and with one supreme effort of will braced myself for what I believed was the last act of my life. The governor and a chaplain entered, followed by a warder. They read my expectation in my face, and the governor, hastening forward, exclaimed in an agitated voice: “It is well; it is good news!” When I opened my eyes once more I was lying in bed in the hospital, and I remained there until I was taken to Woking Convict Prison. CHAPTER THREE In Solitary Confinement REMOVAL TO WOKING PRISON On the morning of the 29th of August I was hastily awakened by a female warder, who said that orders had come down from the Home Office for my removal that day to a convict prison. When I left, the governor was standing at the gate, and, with a kindliness of voice which I deeply appreciated, told me to be brave and good. A crowd was in waiting at the station. I was roughly hustled through it into a third-class carriage. The only ray of light that penetrated those dark hours of my journey came from an American woman. God bless her, whoever she is or wherever she is! At every station that the train stopped she got out and came to the carriage door and spoke words of sympathy and comfort. She was the first of my countrywomen to voice to me the protest that swelled into greater volume as the years rolled by. As the train drew up at Woking station a crowd assembled. Outside stood a cab, to which I was at once conducted, and we drove through lovely woods; the scent of flowers was wafted by the breeze into what seemed to be a hearse that was bearing me on toward my living tomb.