e newspapers that two men had been
arrested for the crime. "This greatly interested me," said Peace. "I
always had a liking to be present at trials, as the public no doubt know
by this time." So he went to Manchester Assizes and saw William Habron
sentenced to death. "People will say," he said, "that I was a hardened
wretch for allowing an innocent man to suffer for the crime of which
I was guilty but what man would have given himself up under such
circumstances, knowing as I did that I should certainly be hanged?"
Peace's view of the question was a purely practical one: "Now that I
am going to forfeit my own life and feel that I have nothing to gain
by further secrecy, I think it is right in the sight of God and man to
clear this innocent young man." It would have been more right in the
sight of God and man to have done it before, but then Peace admitted
that during all his career he had allowed neither God nor man to
influence his actions.

How many men in the situation of Peace at the time, with the certainty
of death before him if he confessed, would have sacrificed themselves to
save an innocent man? Cold-blooded heroism of this kind is rare in the
annals of crime. Nor did Peace claim to have anything of the hero about
him.

"Lion-hearted I've lived,
And when my time comes
Lion-hearted I'll die."

Though fond of repeating this piece of doggerel, Peace would have
been the last man to have attributed to himself all those qualities
associated symbolically with the lion.

A few days before his execution Peace was visited in his prison by Mr.
Littlewood, the Vicar of Darnall. Mr. Littlewood had known Peace a few
years before, when he had been chaplain at Wakefield Prison. "Well, my
old friend Peace," he said as he entered the cell, "how are you to-day?"
"'I am very poorly, sir," replied the convict, "but I am exceedingly
pleased to see you." Mr. Littlewood assured Peace that there was at any
rate one person in the world who had deep sympathy with him, and that
was himself. Peace burst into tears. He expressed a wish to unburden
himself to the vicar, but before doing so, asked for his assurance that
he believed in the truth and sincerity of what he was about to say to
him. He said that he preferred to be hanged to lingering out his life
in penal servitude, that he was grieved and repentant for his past
life. "If I could undo, or make amends for anything I have done, I would
suffer my body as I now st