independent of his aid, it was all over Pricetown that Milward May, Esq., had fled; and round the absent head of Milward May, Esq., floated a cloud of doubts, suspicions of the very ugliest kind. It was money-embezzlement, at least-defaulting. Perhaps something of a redder complexion. But all such details became as pure smoke and air-unsubstantial vapour -when the GRAND FACT became known, of which it is only justice to Mrs. Bullionstone to say, that she, by superior diligence, was the first to become possessed that Lady May, so long interred alive-so long hidden away from human eye in her dwellinghouse vault-had been seen by faithworthy witnesses flitting by in a cab, a ghostly, statue-like figure. Other faithworthy witnesses had been fortunate enough to be present when this cab drew up at the door of Mr. Bulgings, the well-known Magistrate of Pricetown, with whom she was closeted more than two hours, and who saw her out to the door with prodigious and almost superhuman respect. She was traced next to the police office, where she was waited on by the officer in command. Putting these facts together, there could be no reasonable doubt but that the man had fled, and there could be no hindrance to the general jubilee and congratulation.

But when it is told that next morning all the boardings and blank, whose traditional office it is to exhibit posters, were decorated with large placards, bearing unmistakable reference to the person of Milward May, Esq., the general felicity mounted to an indescribable pitch. This placard, as read by every person of note in Pricetown, was to this effect:

son to hunt down the fugitive. This "missing, a gentleman" came within the knowledge of every person who took a daily paper. The detective had money, and did not allow the grass to grow under his feet. He actually seemed to burrow in the earth; and it was confidently expected that very shortly "missing, a gentleman" would turn out a mendacious description.

Mr. Bulgings, the "indefatigable" magistrate, affected no mystery about the business. That very night of the Lady May's visit the news was all over the place. The population was indeed thankful to Providence for such a windfall. It was almost too good to be true. What!--the wife, Lady May, the dead alive so long, to burst forward this way into the world, and accuse her own husband! This, however, was a popular misapprehension, and was set right in the morning papers of next day. No; it was the deposition of one Jacques Roquet, keeper of the new Cafe Roquet, in the city London, which the "indefatigable" magistrate took that evening. Lady May did not move in the business. And that deposition it was known went to this effect, that he had been told by the dying imp, in a confidential moment, to lay his ear close to his (the imp's) mouth, and had learnt from him that it was that stepfather who pushed him into the canal! Miserable, devilish child! Was there ever such malice, even at that moment when he was gliding down slowly over the edge of his grave.

The men and women of Pricetown should be eternally grateful to this unhappy concatenation. Their plaster city rose with a flash into stupendous importance. The eyes of the empire were for the moment languidly that way. A swarm of insects, paid at one penny per line, came humming and buzzing from all quarters of the heavens, and settling down at the plaster city, began to move their antennæ to the measure of short-hand. "Our own Reporters" crowded in thickly. It was headed in the metropolitan prints-THE CHARLESTONE-ROAD MYSTERY! and was devoured racily every morning at breakfast, with the muffins. "Further Particulars" were somehow contrived to be purveyed every dayperhaps each day further and further

CHARLESTONE-ROAD, THE SCENE OF THE MYSTERY," and of "THE CANAL LOCK," which we all saw in the weekly illustrated journals. But public interest may be said to have indeed culminated, when it became known that there was a telegram "in," with wondrous news, and the Pricetown Chronicle issued a hurried evening impression, headed "STOP PRESS," with news that that active officer, Inspector Whippleton, had succeeded in arresting the criminal at Ostend. Romance in high life indeed! Startling revelations in the upper circles truly.

VI.

CONCLUSION.

THE criminal was being brought home in charge of that active officer, Inspector Whippleton, "owing to whose untiring zeal and lynx-eyed sagacity," said the Pricetown Chronicle, "this clever capture has been effected." The efficient officer was furnished with a warrant signed by Mr. Bulgings, the "worthy" Magistrate of Pricetown, and was expected with his prisoner, on say to-morrow evening. He would be "brought up" early the day after, when indeed would be the day of apotheosis for Pricetown, at the police-office; a true gala and festival day. And when evening is drawing on, and the metropolitan express is about due, shall we not all go up and cluster about the terminus, looking out anxiously for this illustrious criminal, who has shed such glory upon our city!

It is well known that the Lady May was gone-gone for ever. For that son, which she so worshipped, she became exhumed, and played the part of avenging Nemesis, and denounced the guilty husband, and wrought this sweet satisfaction for the manes of her boy. Her work was done, and she passed no one knew whither. Foreign lands, secluded convent, first-floor

lodgings in a desert, stale wateringplace-all these legitimate retreats were open to her. No man knew of her resting place; more remarkable still, no woman.

But here now at last was the evening for our local criminal to make his triumphal entry. It is drawing on to seven o'clock, and we are crowding inconveniently upon the platform and approaches, craning our necks over the edge to get a good sweep down the line. By-and-by the whistle is heard, and a thrill of excitement "pervades the vast assemblage" (see in local paper). The lights, red and green, high in the air, work and flash convulsively. Here is the express rolling in, and here are the doors opening, and travellers rushing forth; and here are we peering into every first-class compartment, seeking our splendid criminal, who properly at this moment should be sitting wrapped in a large cloak, under which are the hand-cuffs, between two officers.

The last act has come-1 -the grand denouement to the piece. Let us hold our breaths, and look, and listen. Criminal not come? Impossible. Quite sure? No, nor likely to come. Well then, all we can say is, it is very irregular. It is, in fact, a shame; monstrous, on the whole. The evening edition, with its STOP PRESS-third and fourth edition, and other claptrap-will tell us the whole story. It is a great disappointment, on the whole; but the additional prestige from the catastrophe reflects in some degree upon the whole town, and will in part make up for it. Milward May, Esquire, would find it, indeed, a hard business to come. Could all of Pricetown flit away to Dover strong room, where he had been put on landing, and peep into a particular dark cell, we should see wretched Milward May writhing and working in ghastly spasms upon a truckle-bed; but the bolts have been drawn and the key turned for the night, and it is not possible for gaoler or warden to divine what is going on within. The miserable settle may creak and groan under that unhappy gentleman. His groans do not reach through the stout door. Men will come in the morning, and sniff a curious savour, and see a discoloured body stretched out. A coroner's inquest will sit upon it in due course, and return felo de se.

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which unworthy device shall the denizens of Pricetown be disappointed, and the memory of Milward May, Esquire, held in deserved opprobrium. He deceived the senate"-not merely the senate, but the lieges-and he never shall be forgiven. We of Pricetown speculated in our sympathies, and after all our expenditure got not a sou's worth return.

Years after, the memory of this Milward May, who had so disreputably made away with himself, was cleared. Curious to say, no one was particularly in fault. Roquet, the

Cafè Keeper, had indeed heard the tale from that devilish boy; and the Lady May, misled, too, had much justification on her side. But the wrong was at last made right, through the discovery of a stray passer-by on that fatal day, and who now came forward through a pure accident. The wrong was at last made right—a little late, it is true-and a handsome mortuary commemoration, in Carrara marble, set up to the memory of poor Milward May, Esquire.

This is the history of that corner house,Twenty-three, Charlestone road.

THE twenty-eighth of November, 1862, will, perhaps, be remembered as rather a black day in the annals of modern scoundreldom. On that day, at least, it fell that Baron Bramwell passed sentence on a batch of ruffians, who had been convicted of street robbery in some of its worst forms. For some weeks past the good people of London had been startled, frightened, or provoked, by daily recurring accounts of outrages dealt on quiet passengers in different parts of the town, at any hour of the evening after sunset, by fellows, who having half-choked their victims in order to rifle their pockets, sometimes ended by pounding their faces or cracking their skulls, out of sheer wantonness, with knuckle-dusters, and such like masterpieces of ruffianly invention. In thoroughfares the most public, at hours the least favourable to deeds of darkness, these "garotters" would start forth as if by magic, sometimes even under the policeman's nose; and before help could come to their prey from any quarter, their work was skilfully and surely done. One gentleman was assailed as he stepped out of a cab at his own door. A young lady in Tyburnia was roughly handled by a pair of ruffians hanging about the entrance of a mews. A married lady in Sloane-street, waiting for the omnibus, was not saved from open robbery by the presence of her husband and another gentleman at her side. An unwonted dearth of policemen emboldened the garotters to deeds of violence at once easy to attempt, and too often hard to lay at the right door. Happily, we trust,

for London's peace of mind, some of these ruffians were taken in the act, and brought up for trial before a judge, whose sterner tendencies were not likely, on this occasion, to end in arousing the resentment of any one but the wrongdoers themselves.

Baron Bramwell is no mealymouthed utterer of philanthropic counterfeits. His bowels yearned not towards the reckless miscreants in the dock, but rather towards the sufferers whose bandaged faces and unsteady gait bore telling witness against the accused. The protection of society, not the well-doing of a few criminals forming its vilest dregs, inspired the sentence he proceeded to pass on those whom the jury's verdict had made over to his sheltering care. His speech to the men thus waiting to hear their just reward, however painful it might have sounded in the ears of Sir Joshua Jebb, must have brought no small rejoicing to the hearts of all who believe that mercy to the criminal should not virtually mean injustice to the world at large. Imprisonment for life, for twenty years, for ten, was the doom pronounced on each offender, according to the measure of his outward guilt. Only one or two, for whom youth or newness to such deeds pleaded somewhat in excuse, were allowed to escape with imprisonment for four years. The rest were handled with an unflinching sternness fully warranted by the facts before him. To those who had been repeatedly convicted of like brutalities before, or who had crowned years of lawlessness with some act of surpassing cruelty,

he dealt out the utmost rigours of the law, namely-penal servitude for life. These men were plainly told that society could no longer bear the presence of ruffians whose deeds had fairly proved them irreclaimable. It might be, he said, that crime would always show a certain amount of special followers among men, but these wretches, at least, should be shut out from all further chance of preying upon their neighbours. As for their less guilty comrades, they too should be kept for many years to come from all temptation to renew the crimes for which they were now to suffer. And if these lighter punishments still failed to deter others from like misdeeds, he gave those others timely warning of the heavier doom awaiting them at the public hands.

That words so meaning, clenched by sentences so severe, may for a time have power to stay the full tide of that garotting fashion, which has this winter swept anew over London streets, we are sanguine enough to hope. Public feeling is for the moment fairly aroused, and no sentence that a judge might pass would just now be deemed too cruel for offences which no jury would have the slightest wish to defraud of their full deserts. The sure prospect of heavy punishment will frighten many a brute into exchanging one form of robbery for another of a less inhuman, or, at any rate, of a less obtrusive stamp; while beginners in the same line of business will, perhaps, be tempted to turn back betimes from a path which may presently lead them into forced labour for, at least, ten years. Even the two dozen or so of whose company the people of London have already been deprived by Baron Bramwell, must make a sensible difference in the safe passage of London streets. But what if the good work thus promisingly begun by a bold English judge were to be hindered, if not all undone, by the crotchets of a prison director, or the indifference of a secretary of state? How if the convicts yearly released from prison should still be left free to follow their old devices, to wallow once again their fill in the mire of lawless deeds, unchecked by the least shadow of police control, undaunted by other fear than that of one day earning for themselves a fresh lease of their old comfortable quarters in Milbank or

Portland Prison? What warranty have we that the very criminals whom Baron Bramwell has justly doomed to penal servitude for twenty years and for life, may not, a few years hence, be enabled by the kindness of Sir Joshua Jebb to prey once more at their pleasure on the public, which had fondly hoped never to see their ill-looking faces again? And how, too, could any efficient watch be kept on released convicts by a body of policemen notoriously unequal in numbers, and seemingly unequal in some other respects, to the work demanded of them in ordinary needs?

In truth the prevalence of these offences against the person may be chiefly traced to these two sourcesan inefficient police, and a mistaken method of dealing with our criminal classes. If the guardians of the public safety are few in number, and poorly paid withal, the work they are expected to do is pretty sure to be scantly done. In a city like London, wherever the constable is absent, thieves and robbers are likely enough to abound.

That constables are seldom found when they are most wanted, is a natural result of the difference between the growth of London and that of the force established by Sir Robert Peel. A body of policemen large enough for a city of less than two millions will hardly be deemed sufficient for one of nearly three. And every year makes the difference more glaring, until the dearth of policemen has become the standing cry of persons writing to the newspapers from all parts of the great city. In the pages of Punch, indeed, the difficulty of finding a policeman had grown into a standing joke, long before journals of a graver character took up the cry. For this fault Parliament and the Londoners can apply between them the fitting remedy; nor do the latter seem at all unwilling to enlarge their rates, if only garottings and burglaries may thereby be put down. But, in adding to the numbers of their police, they will do well to bestow a thought on the smallness of the policeman's pay. A guinea a-week, to reckon in the value of coals and uniform, can hardly, in these days of high wages for almost any kind of work, hold out a very handsome lure for services which demand the admixture of great

bodily, with no small mental, power. Hence it comes that of late years the ranks of our police force have too often been recruited by men of a lower stamp than those who first filled them, and that the average constable of to-day recalls to many minds too strong an image of the "Charlie" whom he has superseded. Here, as elsewhere, ill-paid work is almost sure to be work ill-done. A police at once weak in numbers, and below the mark in personal efficiency, offers a two-fold bribe to the evildoer, of which he is not slow to avail himself when other circumstances seem to beckon him on. The road before him never lay so tempting as it has done this year. With the streets of London overcrowded, and the staff of policemen overworked, what wonder that he grew bold and indulged his taste for swift and violent outrages, rather than reap a harvest by slower and more elaborate

means?

If the London police force cannot be duly enlarged and improved without further aid from Government, let such aid be given in fair proportion to the amount levied by city rating. At present the rate-payers furnish six-pence in the pound towards the eight-pence needed for the protection of their streets and persons. Of course the Londoners themselves must always pay the lion's share for a purpose in which they are chiefly interested; but it may still be matter for inquiry whether the share contributed by the nation fairly represents the amount of national gain. Far be it from us to hint that any other interests should ever be sacrificed for those of London alone, that the glory of the British capital should be enhanced at the cost of the British taxpayers in the country. A Parisian government, even if it suited the tastes of thoughtful Frenchmen, has no claim whatever to the kindly regards of any free-born nation. All we ask for is fair play on either side; each bearing the burden to which alone it may be justly liable.

But this question, as we said before, it remains for Parliament and the Londoners to settle between them. Of wider importance to the public at large, is that other question which the late robberies have once more brought so prominently before the public eye. Do not these outrages seem to

show that our present way of dealing with convicted criminals needs an early and a large reform? Is there nothing rotten in our penal usages, when old offenders, fresh from their last bout of prison life, stand forth again in the prisoner's dock to answer for crimes yet worse than any for which they may have suffered before? With regard to this part of our inquiry, it matters little whether few or many of these ruffians belong to the class of convicts let out on tickets of leave. If all those whom Baron Bramwell has lately sentenced, had been men of this class, it would still prove nothing necessarily against the principle on which they had been let out of prison before their time. It is not by any such test that such a principle can be arraigned as practically false. Whether the right means are used in applying the principle itself to special cases, is quite another question, which we may presently discuss. But what we have just now to mark is the fact, that so many of these garotters are jailbirds of the darkest feather, who have been punished again and again to no better purpose than the returning, as soon as they are free, to the commission of new crimes; their past experience of prison life serving only to whet their appetite for those very pursuits which had so often led them to the same untoward issue. Of the twenty prisoners whom Baron Bramwell sentenced in one day, there was hardly one who had not been imprisoned, at least, once before; while the greater number, and some of them young indeed in years, had passed through several stages of that promising career, which begins with summary convictions before a magistrate, and ends in penal servitude for any number of years which Sir J. Jebb and the Home Secretary may choose to allow. Three, at least, of the twenty had been sentenced to four, six, and seven years, respectively, of penal servitude, but had no sooner regained their freedom on tickets of leave, than they began to abuse it by acts which once more brought them within reach of the law as expounded by a judge of the most unyielding fibre, and the coolest head. Another scoundrel, but thirty-three years old, had been formally punished fifteen times before; his latest crime following close on the heels of his release from