d with my pocket-book full of valuable orders I
found myself in London in less than four weeks from the time I left
home. I arrived in London on a Wednesday, and telegraphed to the firm
to which I have referred that I would call on them personally on the
following Friday morning, to settle their claim and receive the bills
they ought to have returned before. * * * On the Thursday evening, as I
was preparing to leave the hotel for the railway station, I was
suddenly and most unexpectedly arrested, and have not yet reached the
spot I once loved to call my Home.

CHAPTER II.

MY FEELINGS ON FIRST ENTERING PRISON--TREATMENT AND EMPLOYMENT
BEFORE TRIAL--MY TRIAL AND SENTENCE.

It is impossible to give the faintest idea of my state of mind on
finding myself a prisoner. The circumstances of my arrest, while in the
midst of my arrangements for a long night journey to Scotland, flushed
with success beyond my most sanguine anticipations, and impatient to
accomplish my freedom from a burden which had long oppressed me, and
which had latterly threatened to utterly bear me down, gave an
overwhelming force and severity to the shock. Indeed, the sudden and
undreamt of change in my destination, the sharp and complete extinction
of all my hopes and plans, stunned me for the time, and I felt it must
be a hideous dream. I refused to credit the evidence of my senses: the
detective's touch, which still burnt upon my arm; the words of arrest,
which still rang in my ears; his actual presence by my side--were but
"false creations of the mind." I continued to think, as I walked along
in that strange company, that I must still be on my way to the railway
station; that I saw the glare of the lights, and mingled in the bustle
of the platform, when the dark outline of a London lock-up met my
bewildered eyes. We entered its grim and silent gates, the cell door
was closed behind me, the lock was turned, and I and the reality were
left alone. About that dark cheerless cell, its cold bare walls, its
grated windows, its massive door, there was to me an awful certainty.

In an access of astonishment and grief I threw myself on the solitary
bench, for they had not sought to mock my misery with the presence of a
bed, and as thoughts of my wife and friends came upon me, I covered my
face with my hands and wept. How long that flood of hot and bitter
tears continued I know not, but they partially relieved my almost
bursting head. I arose, and in t