were
by a magnet, to Buckingham Palace. Indeed, it possessed such attractions
for him, that, when required to pledge himself, before leaving prison,
not to visit the Palace again, he said he would not promise, as his
curiosity was so great.

On 15 March, shortly after 1 a.m., the sergeant of police on duty at the
Palace imagined, as he was going along the Grand Hall, that he saw
someone peeping through the glass door, and this turned out to be the
case; for, on his approach, Jones ran up against him, and was, of course,
immediately secured. In consequence of his previous visits, two extra
policemen had been appointed, whose duty it was, on alternate nights, to
watch all the staircases and interior of the building, and it was owing
to this arrangement that Master Jones was stopped early in his career, on
this last occasion.

Like most boys, Jones had a keen appreciation of a feast, all the more
enjoyable because irregularly come by; and, when he was arrested, he was
found to have been sitting at his ease in one of the royal apartments,
regaling himself with some cold meat and potatoes, which he had conveyed
upstairs in his handkerchief. On being questioned how he obtained an
entrance, his reply was, "the same way as before"; and he boasted,
moreover, that he could, at any time he pleased, get into the palace; but
he was extremely taciturn, and refused to satisfy curiosity, more
particularly on this point.

What he confessed at his examination by the Privy Council is not known,
as the proceedings were in private, reporters being excluded, and the
public were left in possession of only the above bare facts. He
persisted that the only motive for his intrusion was to hear the
conversation at Court, and to write an account of it; but this plea of
simplicity did not save him from a repetition of his old sentence of
three months imprisonment in the House of Correction, with the
uncomfortable addition, this time, of hard labour. Perhaps the best
punishment for this juvenile addition of Paul Pry would have been that
suggested by the _Satirist_, in the following paragraph: "As the urchin
Jones, in a letter to his father, stated that his reason for entering the
Queen's house was to 'seek for noose, in order to rite a book,' it is a
matter of general regret that, instead of magnifying the affair into Home
Office importance, the young rogue was not accommodated with a rope's
end." His visit, however, necessitated the appoint