fford's recovery. The reader will have no reason to regret
this apparent interruption. Our tale hitherto has been rather sluggish;
but it is in narrative as it is in nature, when two streams unite their
forces the current becomes broader and stronger.

Leonard Monckton was sent to Pentonville, and after some years
transferred to Portland. In both places he played the game of an old
hand; always kept his temper and carnied everybody, especially the
chaplain and the turnkeys. These last he treated as his only masters; and
if they gave him short weight in bread or meat, catch him making matters
worse by appealing to the governor! Toward the end of his time at
Pentonville he had some thought of suicide, but his spirits revived at
Portland, where he was cheered by the conversation of other villains.
Their name was legion; but as he never met one of them again, except Ben
Burnley, all those miscreants are happily irrelevant. And the reader need
not fear an introduction to them, unless he should find himself garroted
in some dark street or suburb, or his home rifled some dark and windy
night. As for Ben Burnley, he was from the North country, imprisoned for
conspiracy and manslaughter in an attack upon non-union miners. Toward
the end of his time he made an attack upon a warder, and got five years
more. Then Monckton showed him he was a fool, and explained to him his
own plan of conduct, and bade him observe how popular he was with the
warders, and reaped all the favor they dared to show him.

"He treated me like a dog," said the man, sullenly.

"I saw it," said Leonard. "And if I had been you I would have said
nothing, but waited till my time was out, and then watched for him till
he got his day out, and settled his hash. That is the way for your sort.
As for me, killing is a poor revenge; it is too soon over. Do you think I
don't mean to be revenged on that skunk Bartley, and, above all, on that
scoundrel Hope, who planted the swag in my pockets, and let me into this
hole for fourteen years?" Then, with all his self-command, he burst into
a torrent of curses, and his pale face was ghastly with hate, and his
eyes glared with demoniac fire, for hell raged in his heart.

Just then a warder approached, and to Burnley's surprise, who did not see
him coming, Monckton said, gently, "And therefore, my poor fellow, do
just consider that you have broken the law, and the warders are only
doing their duty and earning their bread, and