We shall have to show by-and-by that elements of discord were accumulating under the surface; but at present we must leave Derbyshire, and deal very briefly with another tissue of events, beginning years ago, and running to a date three months, at least, ahead of Colonel Clifford'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.