Harding at this time was awaiting trial on a charge of shopbreaking, together with another man named Joseph Dunstan. He had a list of convictions at the time so long that he could not remember them all. He was a wife deserter, and was living in adultery with the so-called Ruby Harding. A verdict of guilty against him might almost of a certainty have been expected to result in an indeterminate sentence for him. The “key,” as it is called, has a peculiar terror for criminals. As he lay in the Melbourne Gaol awaiting trial he had a tremendously strong inducement to try and render some service to the State. Harding arrived in Melbourne from Sydney on January 4, a fugitive from justice. He was on bail in that city, and he bolted. He was arrested on the 9th, and lodged in the Melbourne Gaol. He was in the remand yard with different persons, including Ross at different times, and on the 23rd of January was in the yard with four men, again including Ross. The conversation was general for a while, he said, and then reverted to Ross’s case. “I remarked to Ross,” he said, “that a girl named Ruby, whom we both knew, informed me that a woman was down in the female division of the prison in connection with his case. He said: ‘I wonder if it is Ivy Matthews?’ I said: ‘It could hardly have been her, for Ruby knows her, and would have told me so.’ He said: ‘I wonder what she says?’ I said: ‘Can she say anything?’ and he said: ‘No.’ I said: ‘Why worry?’” Ross and he meantime were walking up and down the yard, which is triangular in shape, while Dunstan, because he had rheumatism, was sitting under the shed on a form, “idly turning over the pages of a magazine.”