d lived to be liberated, and determined appeared
the Bank of England directors that I should not form an exception; but
that if ever the prison doors were opened to me it should be only when
so near death that I might join the many who had gone before.

My fate seemed inevitable, but never for a moment did I cease to believe
that Fortune's frowns would one day disappear and that I should yet
again feel the warmth and sunshine of her smile. From his sick bed, and
in his health, our comrade never ceased his efforts. He succeeded in
interesting James Russell Lowell and many others in my behalf. The
President asked the English Government officially to grant my release.
Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State, sent a very strong letter through
Minister Lincoln in London, and I thought when told of it that my day to
go was not far away.

It will interest Americans, perhaps, to hear that the representations of
the President and of the Secretary of State of the United States met the
same courtesy as was shown to all the previous ones. Still, George was
not discouraged. He sent agents to England, who managed to interest the
newspapers in the matter, and never did he cease, until by the
statements of the press upon the ferocity of my treatment, the
reproaches of my friends and the representations of many I had never
seen, including Lady Henry Somerset, Mrs. Helen Densmore (then residing
in London) and the Duke of Norfolk, at last the Home Secretary felt the
pressure, and all unwillingly--"much against his will," as he termed
it--was forced to order my release.

* * * * *

"Thou shalt forget thy misery and remember it as waters that pass
away."

Twenty years had passed away since I had bade my friends good-bye under
the Old Bailey, and now 1893 had come. It was a frosty February night,
and I was alone in that little room with its arched roof and stone
floor. It was past 7 o'clock, and the prison gloom and stillness had
settled down on all the inmates, when suddenly there came the noise of
hurrying feet that echoed strangely from the arched roof as the warders
tramped loudly on the stone floor of the long hall. A rush of feet, or,
indeed, anything that broke the horrible stillness at that hour, was
startling. They were the feet of the reserve guard, which was never
called in save when the patrol who glided around the corridors in
slippered feet discovered some suicide. Many a heartbroken man had I
kn