management, for had the bank asked so common a thing as a
reference the fraud would have been made impossible.

Let my reader contrast this modern Jeffreys, his savage tirade, and, for
an offense against property, this most brutal sentence, with the
treatment of the Warwickshire bank wreckers. Greenaway, the manager of
this bank, and three of the directors by false balance sheets and
perjured reports for years had looted the bank, finally robbing the
depositors of L1,000,000, several of whom committed suicide and
thousands more of whom were ruined.

They were tried, convicted, and in being sentenced were told that, being
men of high social position, the disgrace in itself was a severe
punishment; therefore, he should take that fact into consideration, and
ended by sentencing two to eight months', one to twelve and one to
fourteen months' imprisonment.

We were sentenced late at night--nearly 10 o'clock--a smoky, foggy
London night. The court was packed, the corridors crowded, and when the
jury came in with their verdict the suppressed excitement found vent.
But when the vindictive and unheard-of sentence fell from the lips of
this villain Judge an exclamation of horror fell from that crowded
court.

We turned from the Judge and went down the stairs to the entrance to the
underground passage leading to Newgate. There we halted to say farewell.

[Illustration: BEFORE THE GOVERNOR--ASSISTANT WARDER REPORTING A
PRISONER FOR TALKING.]

To say farewell! Yes. The Primrose Way had come to an end, but we were
comrades and friends still, and in order that in the gloom of the
slow-moving days and the blackness and thick horror of the years to come
we might have some thought in common, we then and there promised--what
could we poor, broken bankrupts promise?

Where or to what in the thick horror enshrouding us could we turn? We
had

"Nothing left us to call our own save death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones;"

nothing but a grave, that

"Small model of the barren earth,"

with dishonor and degradation for our epitaph!

But there, in the very instant of our overwhelming defeat, standing in
the dark mouth of the stone conduit leading from the Old Bailey to the
dungeons of Newgate, by virtue of the high resolve we made, we conquered
Fate at her worst, and by our act in establishing a secret bond of
sympathy in our separation dropped the bad, disastrous past