have merely succeeded in proving them. All criminals make mistakes.
Apart from the murder of my warder, for which you will hang, you made
two bad mistakes within five minutes."
He rose to his feet and assumed his official manner.
"To be a professional criminal and expect to get away with it every
time," he continued gravely, "is really to presume too much. It
involves the possession of knowledge that must never be at fault. Why,
you fell for the old trick of false alarm! I staked--correctly, it
seems--on your ignorance of the historic precedent of Lord Berkeley
who, one night on Hounslow Heath, shot dead, by the same ruse, a
highwayman who held up his carriage at pistol point."
The prisoner eyed him balefully.
"Your next mistake was more gross. It is true I did not possess a
pistol like my Lord Berkeley; but was it carelessness that made you
overlook what a reference book might have told you about my few
accomplishments? If so, the oversight led you into the error of leaving
open a mark for an ex-champion heavy-weight of the Army who had watched
all night for it."
The Governor sat down.
One of the warders who held the prisoner saluted.
"Where shall we take him, sir?"
The Governor replied grimly.
"To the fifteenth cell."
The wheels of routine began to grind once more.
THE END.
THE HOUSE OF HARPER
NEW YORK
Publishers of BOOKS and of
HARPER'S MAGAZINE
_Established 1817_
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]