"The guilty man has turned up, now that they cannot punish him, and confessed." Shortly after this conversation took place, I had an opportunity of learning, from the lips of one of the principal offenders in the case for which this young man was unjustly punished, the following particulars in reference to it, which I give in my informant's own words:--"I and other two miners like myself went to a horse-race a few weeks ago. Towards evening we got a little on the spree, and I asked my two chums to come along and see a woman of my acquaintance. This woman was kept by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, but this was only known to a few. She was about forty years of age, and although she was supposed by some to be 'fast,' I knew long before that she was 'loose.' Well; as we were all enjoying ourselves in this woman's house, who should come in but her brother! and so, to clear her character with him, she swore a rape against us. But the worst of it was, that that poor married man there got convicted instead of one of us. When we ran from the house, the other fellow split out from us, and after we got away a bit, we met the married man. As we were chatting together we were all three arrested. The woman, it seems, had an ill-will either to that man or his wife, and she swore against him on that account. And we have all three got twenty-one years a-piece." I was glad to hear afterwards that this man got his liberty after suffering six months' imprisonment. But had it not been for great exertions on the part of his friends, he would have had to pay the full penalty. I have known, in the course of my prison experience, about a dozen well authenticated cases of innocent convictions, but only two of them succeeded in getting a pardon. The one after enduring about eighteen months' imprisonment, the other a shorter period, but strange to say his pardon arrived on the very day of his death in prison. I have generally observed in cases of rape, and crimes of that kind, when the female was advanced in life, that the crimes were not so black in reality as they were represented in the newspapers, and that the offenders, if not made actually worse in prison, would be much more easily cured than the thief genus, who require special, and as I think, very different treatment to that which they now receive. In this prison I also made the acquaintance of a professional "cracksman," or burglar. He was a man of fair education, good appearance, and considerable natural ability; much above the average of his professional brethren. He had been living luxuriously in London, on the fruits of his professional industry and skill. Till now he had escaped all punishment, with the exception of a few months' imprisonment, for a "mistake" committed at the outset of his professional career. In answer to my enquiries as to his case, he volunteered the following information:--