The prisoners sat down, and in a few seconds after this the carriage began to move, and they were on their journey.
Peace, during his incarceration in Preston Gaol, had made the acquaintance of a professional “cracksman,” or burglar, who hailed from London.
He had, however, been “landed” at Manchester, where he had committed a number of daring robberies. He was a man of fair education, good appearance, and considerable natural ability, much above the average of his professional brethren.
He had been living luxuriously in London on the fruits of his professional skill. Till now he had escaped all punishment, with the exception of a few months’ imprisonment for a “mistake” committed at the outset of his career.
Seeing in Peace a kindred spirit he fraternised with him, and they sat next to each other in the train.
They carried on a conversation in whispers, the words of which were inaudible to the warder who sat at the farther end of the carriage.
“Oh, yes,” observed the cracksman. “I have no reason to complain—I’ve had a pretty goodish run of it, all things considered, but they nabbed me in Manchester. Did I tell you how it happened?”
“No,” whispered Peace. “How was it?”
“Well, you see, one of my pals showed me an advertisement of a Manchester jeweller, wherein he boasted of his safe having successfully resisted the recent efforts of a gang of burglars. I said to my pal, ‘Get Jim, and let us go down to-morrow by the mail train to Manchester, and we will see what this man’s safe is like.’ We all three went down, inspected the jeweller’s premises, and decided upon doing the job through an ironmonger’s shop at the back.
“We had got the contents of the ironmonger’s till, and were just through the intervening back wall when the ‘copper’ (policeman) heard us, and signalled to another ‘bobby’ (policeman) to come and help him.”