The evidence told chiefly against William Habron, who was identified as the man who had bought some cartridges in a shop in Manchester. Both William and John brought witnesses to prove an _alibi_, but this failed under cross-examination. Again, they sought to prove that they had gone home to bed at nine o'clock on the night of the murder, while other witnesses swore to seeing them drinking at eleven p.m. in a public-house which Cock must have passed soon after that hour on his way to West Point, the spot where he was found murdered. The fact of William Habron's animus against the constable was elicited from several witnesses, but what told most against the prisoners was the contradictory character of the defence. William Habron alone was convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude. Years afterwards the notorious Charles Peace, when lying under sentence of death in Leeds prison, made full confession to the writer of these pages that it was he who had killed constable Cock on the night in question. The case was taken up at once, and after thorough investigation of the facts, as stated by Peace, Habron received a full pardon and an indemnity of £800. THE EDLINGHAM BURGLARY. Almost at the very time that William Habron was receiving tardy justice a new and still more grievous error was being perpetrated in the North of England. The Edlingham burglary case will always be remembered as a grave failure of justice, and not alone because the circumstantial evidence did not appear sufficient, but because the police, in their anxiety to secure conviction, went too far. As the survivors of the Northumberland police force concerned in this case were afterwards put upon their trial for conspiracy and acquitted, they cannot be actually charged with manufacturing false evidence, but it is pretty clear that facts were distorted, and even suppressed, to support the police view. The vicarage at Edlingham, a small village near Alnwick, was broken into on the 7th of February, 1879. The only occupants of the house were Mr. Buckle, the vicar, his wife, an invalid, his daughter and four female servants. The daughter gave the alarm about one a.m., and roused her father, a still sturdy old gentleman although seventy-seven years of age, who slipped on a dressing-gown, and seizing a sword he had by him, rushed downstairs, candle in hand, to do battle for his possessions. He found two men rifling the drawing-room, and thrust at them; one rushed past him and made his escape, the other fired at the vicar and wounded him. The same shot (it was a scatter gun) also wounded Miss Buckle. This second burglar then jumped out of the drawing-room window on to the soft mould of a garden bed.