I peeled his clothes off in a cell —the poor wretch was shaking with ague—and I rolled him in blankets, and laid him in front of a fire. ’

Country house burglaries furnish, as will be expected, a considerable number of stories. Commenting generally on these cases Chief Inspector Littlechild says : “ Now, I know whenever a jewel robbery occurs at a country house there is a common notion that the thieves must have been assisted by one or more of the servants. But I desire to place on record my belief that this is entirely erroneous. A thief is not likely to lay himself open to betrayal at the hands of a domestic when it is possible to obtain all the information he requires much more readily. He has, in most cases, merely to act upon his comtnonsonse in selecting a time when the family is at dinner—a quiet meal, not a dress one, for the more homely the occasion the less probable is it that the upstairs rooms will be tenanted or that the jewels will le in use. The thief knows, too, that valuables arc not kept as a rule down stairs. In my experience I have found that in high-class houses the men-servants are a very respectable body. It is true-a butler or footman may be gnilly sometimes of larceny, but he rarely associates himself with the professional thief or burglar. Women ser vants, too, have little chance of making the acquaintance of such a man, with a view of introducing him into the houses of their masters.”

The progress of science and, above all, the advent of the telegraph and the telephone, have in modern times materially changed the conditions of the never-ceasing contest be tween malefactors and those whose business it is to bring them to justice. Many of the tricks and devices of roguery here recorded, however, are such as the old Bow street runners were not unfamiliar with, and due note of them will be found in old books of the class of Mr Colquhon’s curious work about metropolitan roguery. Here as else where few probably entirely new. 