The Dysons tried to shake off the unwelcome acquaintance, but that was easier said than done. By this time Peace had set his heart on making Mrs. Dyson leave her husband. He kept trying to persuade her to go to Manchester with him, where he would take a cigar or picture shop, to which Mrs. Dyson, in fine clothes and jewelry, should lend the charm of her comely presence. He offered her a sealskin jacket, yards of silk, a gold watch. She should, he said, live in Manchester like a lady, to which Mrs. Dyson replied coldly that she had always lived like one and should continue to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion when he was more insulting than usual, Mrs. Dyson forgot her fear of him and gave him a thrashing. Peace threatened "to make her so that neither man nor woman should look at her, and then he would have her all to himself." It was with some purpose of this kind, Mrs. Dyson suggested, that Peace stole a photograph of herself out of a locket, intending to make some improper use of it. At last, in desperation, the Dysons moved to Banner Cross. From the day of their arrival there until the murder, Mrs. Dyson never saw Peace. She denied altogether having been in his company the night before the murder. The letters were "bare forgeries," written by Peace or members of his family to get her into their power.

Against the advice of all her friends Mrs. Dyson had come back from America to give evidence against Peace. To the detective who saw her at Cleveland she said, "I will go back if I have to walk on my head all the way"; and though she little knew what she would have to go through in giving her evidence, she would do it again under the circumstances. "My opinion is," she said, "that Peace is a perfect demon--not a man. I am told that since he has been sentenced to death he has become a changed character. That I don't believe. The place to which the wicked go is not bad enough for him. I think its occupants, bad as they might be, are too good to be where he is. No matter where he goes, I am satisfied that there will be hell. Not even a Shakespeare could adequately paint such a man as he has been. My lifelong regret will be that I ever knew him."

With these few earnest words Mrs. Dyson quitted the shores of England, hardly clearing up the mystery of her actual relations with Peace.

A woman with whom Mrs. Dyson very much resented finding herself classed--inebriety would appear to have been their only common weakness--was Mrs. Thompson, the "traitress Sue." In spite of the fact that on February 5 Mrs. Thompson had applied to the Treasury for L100, blood money due her for assisting the police in the identification of Peace, she was at the same time carrying on a friendly correspondence with her lover and making attempts to see him. Peace had written to her before his trial hoping she would not forsake him; "you have been my bosom friend, and you have ofttimes said you loved me, that you would die for me." He asked her to sell some goods which he had left with her in order to raise money for his defence. The traitress replied on January 27 that she had already sold everything and shared the proceeds with Mrs. Peace. "You are doing me great injustice," she wrote, "by saying that I have been out to `work' with you. Do not die with such a base falsehood on your conscience, for you know I am young and have my living and character to redeem. I pity you and myself to think we should have met." After his condemnation Mrs. Thompson made repeated efforts to see Peace, coming to Leeds for the purpose. Peace wrote a letter on February 9 to his "poor Sue," asking her to come to the prison. But, partly at the wish of Peace's relatives and for reasons of their own, a permission given Mrs. Thompson by the authorities to visit the convict was suddenly withdrawn, and she never saw him again.

III. HIS TRIAL AND EXECUTION

In the lives of those famous men who have perished on the scaffold their behaviour during the interval between their condemnation and their execution has always been the subject of curiosity and interest.

It may be said at once that nothing could have been more deeply religious, more sincerely repentant, more Christian to all appearances than Peace's conduct and demeanour in the last weeks of his life. He threw himself into the work of atonement with the same uncompromising zeal and energy that he had displayed as a burglar. By his death a truly welcome and effective recruit was lost to the ranks of the contrite and converted sinners. However powerless as a controlling force--and he admitted it--his belief in God and the devil may have been in the past, that belief was assured and confident, and in the presence of death proclaimed itself with vigour, not in words merely, but in deeds.

In obedience to the wishes of his family, Peace had refrained from seeing Sue Thompson. This was at some sacrifice, for he wished very much to see her and to the last, though he knew that she had betrayed him, sent her affectionate and forgiving messages. These were transmitted to Sue by Mr. Brion. This disingenuous gentleman was a fellow-applicant with Sue to the Treasury for pecuinary recognition of his efforts in bringing about the identification of Peace, and furnishing the police with information as to the convict's disposal of his stolen property. In his zeal he had even gone so far as to play the role of an accomplice of Peace, and by this means discovered a place in Petticoat Lane where the burglar got rid of some of his booty.

After Peace's condemnation Mr. Brion visited him in Armley Jail. His purpose in doing so was to wring from his co-inventor an admission that the inventions which they had patented together were his work alone. Peace denied this, but offered to sell his share for L50. Brion refused the offer, and persisted in his assertion that Peace had got his name attached to the patents by undue influence, whatever that might mean. Peace, after wrestling with the spirit, gave way. "Very well, my friend," he said, "let it be as you say. I have not cheated you, Heaven knows. But I also know that this infamy of mine has been the cause of bringing harm to you, which is the last thing I should have wished to have caused to my friend." A deed of gift was drawn up, making over to Brion Peace's share in their inventions; this Peace handed to Brion as the price of the latter's precious forgiveness and a token of the sincerity of his colleague's repentance. Thus, as has often happened in this sad world, was disreputable genius exploited once again by smug mediocrity. Mr. Brion, having got all he wanted, left the prison, assuring the Governor that Peace's repentance was "all bunkum," and advising, with commendable anxiety for the public good, that the warders in the condemned cell should be doubled.

Peace had one act of atonement to discharge more urgent than displaying Christian forbearance towards ignoble associates. That was the righting of William Habron, who was now serving the third year of his life sentence for the murder of Constable Cock at Whalley Range. Peace sent for the Governor of the jail a few days before his execution and obtained from him the materials necessary for drawing up a plan. Peace was quite an adept at making plans; he had already made an excellent one of the scene of Dyson's murder. He now drew a plan of the place where Cock had been shot, gave a detailed account of how he came by his death, and made a full confession of his own guilt.

In the confession he described how, some days before the burglary, he had, according to his custom, "spotted" the house at Whalley Range. In order to do this he always dressed himself respectably, because he had found that the police never suspected anyone who wore good clothes. On the night of the crime he passed two policemen on the road to the house. He had gone into the grounds and was about to begin operations when he heard a rustle behind him and saw a policeman, whom he recognised as one of those he had met in the road, enter the garden. With his well-known agility Peace climbed on to the wall, and dropped on to the other side, only to find himself almost in the arms of the second policeman. Peace warned the officer to stand back and fired his revolver wide of him. But, as Peace said, "these Manchester policemen are a very obstinate lot." The constable took out his truncheon. Peace fired again and killed him.