on that smooth-painted wall, but the red-tape
official rogues--the stultified images sans reason, sans all
imagination--had, after the departure of each one, carefully painted
over all such legacies.

The hideous cruelty of it all! My blood, boils even now, when I think of
it. Even in the days of Elizabeth the keepers of the Tower of London had
enough human feeling to leave untouched the inscriptions made by Raleigh
and others, and there they are to-day, and to-day wake a response in the
heart of every visitor that looks on them.

[Illustration: A GANG IN BLOUSES MARCHING OUT.]

CHAPTER XXXV.

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.

My life at Newgate was an ordeal such as I hope no reader of this will
ever undergo. Day by day I saw the world slipping from under my feet,
and the net drawing its deadly folds closer around me. Soon we all were
forced to realize there was no escape for any of us.

Of course, we were all guilty and deserved punishment--I need not say we
did not think so then--but the evidence was most weak, and had our trial
taken place in America under the too liberal construction of our laws,
undoubtedly we all would have escaped. But in England there is no court
of criminal appeal, as with us, and when once the jury gives a verdict,
that ends the matter. The result is that if judges are prejudiced, or
want a man convicted, as in our case, he never escapes. The jury is
always selected from the shopkeeping class, and they are horribly
subservient to the aristocratic classes. They don't care for
evidence--they simply watch the judge. If he smiles, the prisoner is
innocent. If he frowns, then, of course, guilty.

With us when a man is charged with an offense against the laws he
engages a lawyer--one is sufficient and quite costly enough. In England
they are divided into three classes, viz.: solicitors, barristers and
Queen's Counsels.

The solicitor takes the case and transacts all the business connected
with it. A barrister is the lawyer who is employed by the solicitor to
conduct the case in court and make the pleadings. He never comes in
contact with the client, but takes the brief and all instructions from
the solicitor. The Queen's Counsel is a lawyer of a higher rank, and
whenever his serene lordship takes a brief he must, to keep up his
dignity, "be supported" by a barrister. So my reader will perhaps
understand the raison d'etre of the proverb, "The lawyers own England."
As no solicitor can plead i