when I came for my first trial, that I could not get away from the
warders, and I knew I could not jump from an express train without being
killed. I took a look at Darnall as I went down and as I went back, and
after I was put in my cell, I thought it all over. I felt that I could
not get away, and then I made up my mind to kill myself. I got two bits
of paper and pricked on them the words, 'Bury me at Darnall. God bless
you all!' With a bit of black dirt that I found on the floor of my cell
I wrote the same words on another piece of paper, and then I hid them in
my clothes. My hope was that, when I jumped from the train I should be
cut to pieces under the wheels. Then I should have been taken to the
Duke of York (a public-house at Darnall) and there would have been an
inquest over me. As soon as the inquest was over you would have claimed
my body, found the pieces of paper, and then you would have buried me at
Darnall."

This statement of Peace is no doubt in the main correct. But it is
difficult to believe that there was not present to his mind the sporting
chance that he might not be killed in leaping from the train, in which
event he would no doubt have done his best to get away, trusting to his
considerable powers of ingenious disguise to elude pursuit. But such a
chance was remote. Peace had faced boldly the possibility of a dreadful
death.

With that strain of domestic sentiment, which would appear to have been
a marked characteristic of his family, Peace was the more ready to
cheat the gallows in the hope of being by that means buried decently at
Darnall. It was at Darnall that he had spent some months of comparative
calm in his tempestuous career, and it was at Darnall that he had first
met Mrs. Dyson. Another and more practical motive that may have urged
Peace to attempt to injure seriously, if not kill himself, was the
hope of thereby delaying his trial. If the magisterial investigation
in Sheffield were completed before the end of January, Peace could be
committed for trial to the ensuing Leeds Assizes which commenced in the
first week in February. If he were injured too seriously, this would not
be possible. Here again he was doomed to disappointment.

Peace recovered so well from the results of his adventure on the railway
that the doctor pronounced him fit to appear for his second examination
before the magistrate on January 30. To avoid excitement, both on
the part of the prisoner and the public, the