One naturally expects a hard indifference from an old criminal, but it saddens me to see it in the young, and yet two of the youngest men--or rather, boys--that I have executed were callous to the last degree. They were Charles Joseph Dobell (aged 17) and William Gower (18), executed in Maidstone Gaol for the murder of a time-keeper at a saw-mill in Tunbridge Wells some six months before. So carefully was the crime committed that the police could obtain no clue, and it was only found out by the confession of the lads to a Salvation Army officer. There is reason to believe that the lads' natural taste for adventure had been morbidly stimulated by the reading of highly sensational literature--"penny dreadfuls" and the like. They seem to have conducted themselves with a sort of bravado or courage which, if genuine, would have done credit to a patriot or martyr sacrificing himself for country or for faith, or to one of their backwoods heroes fighting against "a horde of painted savages," but which was distressing in two lads, almost children, sentenced to death for their crime. After they were sentenced they paid careful attention to the chaplain's words, but they showed no sign of emotion, and it was said that "it is doubtful whether at any time they fully realised the serious nature of their position." They walked to the scaffold in defiant manner, more upright than was their wont, and neither of them looked at or spoke to the other. There was no farewell, no word of repentance or regret, merely a brief supplication to God to receive them. _Samuel and Joseph Boswell._