"Well—well, Jacob, we will talk of that another time," said Tom. "Rest assured I will not desert you. Call at Tullock's on Monday evening, and you will either see me there or find a note from me." Jacob was overjoyed at the species of promise thus held out to him; and, as it was now midnight, Rainford intimated his intention of taking his departure from the public-house where he had passed the evening with the poor lad. When they had issued from the door, the highwayman bade Jacob "Good night;" and they separated—pursuing different roads. In fact, Jacob went towards Leather Lane, while Tom Rainford repaired in the direction of the lodgings which he at present occupied in Gray's Inn Lane—he having removed to that locality from his former abode in Lock's Fields. ----- Footnote 19: The discipline of criminal prisons was particularly lax at the time of which Jacob Smith is supposed to be speaking. Footnote 20: This dreadful state of things continued in the New Prison, Clerkenwell, up to the year 1838. Footnote 21: The Report of the Prison Inspectors of the Home District contains these observations upon the state of Newgate:—"The association of prisoners of all ages, and every shade of guilt, in one indiscriminate mass, is a frightful feature in the system which prevails here; the first in magnitude, and the most pernicious in effect. In this prison we find that the young and the old—the inexperienced and the practical offender—the criminal who is smitten with a conviction of his guilt, and the hardened villain whom scarcely any penal discipline can subdue, are congregated together, with an utter disregard to all moral distinctions, the interest of the prisoners, or the welfare of the community. In such a state of things, can it be a matter of wonder that the effects should be such as have been described? Every other evil is aggravated by this; and it would be worse than idle to attempt a remedy for the rest, while this demoralising intermixture of criminals of all ages and degrees of guilt is suffered to frustrate the very ends of Prison discipline, and to give tenfold violence to all their mischievous inclinations, and passions, upon which it is incessantly operating, and which is the design of justice to discourage and repress. Apart from higher considerations, sound policy demands that such a system should be instantly rectified, for so long as it continues, society is nursing a moral pestilence in its bosom, and maintaining an institution in which are forged those weapons that are destined to be wielded with fatal dexterity against the community itself. Every device by which the fences of property may be overcome is here framed, and divulged to ready agents. Every fraudulent artifice, every successful trick, every ingenious mode of over-reaching the cautious, or of plundering the unguarded, is perfected here, and communicated to those who had not hitherto been