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Many persons experienced a sense almost of outrage. when they heard of violent efforts being made to save the life of Furnace for no other purpose, as they supposed; but that he should be hanged. But it should be remem- bered it was not certain either that, if tried, he would have been convicted of murder, or that, if convicted, he would have been hanged. In any case it would be an extremely dangerous thing to sanction the principle that a man who " has taken poison should—whatever the circumstances—be allowed to die if his life can be saved. Yet few of us perhaps will regret that justice has thus been deprived of the unsightly last stages of trial and possible execution. The whole case has caused excitement enough, from the first day when the then unidentified body recalled the sensation of the Rouse case, and all through the long period of the chase in which so many members of the public became amateur detectives, down to the end, when the police justified their existence by catching their man. In this connexion it is worth noting that if the police have again and again-been unsuccessful in tracking down motor bandits and other violent criminals, it is seldom that a suspected person whose identity is known evades the long arm of the law. It is virtually impossible to " disappear."
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