"In the same yard with me worked the soldier who had betrayed us, and I could not but regard it as a special judgment of Heaven when he one day fell from a great height and was taken up for dead, dying in much torment in a few hours. The days thus passed on in comparative happiness until the 20th of May, 1836, when the old Governor took his departure, regretted by all the inhabitants of Valdivia, and the Achilles, a one-and-twenty-gun brig of war, arrived with the new Governor. One of the first acts of this gentleman was to sell our boat, which was moored at the back of Government-house. This proceeding looked to my mind indicative of ill-will; and, fearful lest the Governor should deliver us again into bondage, I resolved to make my escape from the place. Having communicated my plans to Barker, Lesly, Riley, Shiers, and Russen, I offered the Governor to get built for him a handsome whale-boat, making the iron work myself. The Governor consented, and in a little more than a fortnight we had completed a four-oared whale-boat, capable of weathering either sea or storm. We fitted her with sails and provisions in the Governor's name, and on the 4th of July, being a Saturday night, we took our departure from Valdivia, dropping down the river shortly after sunset. Whether the Governor, disgusted at the trick we had played him, decided not to pursue us, or whether—as I rather think—our absence was not discovered until the Monday morning, when we were beyond reach of capture, I know not, but we got out to sea without hazard, and, taking accurate bearings, ran for the Friendly Islands, as had been agreed upon amongst us.

"But it now seemed that the good fortune which had hitherto attended us had deserted us, for after crawling for four days in sultry weather, there fell a dead calm, and we lay like a log upon the sea for forty-eight hours. For three days we remained in the midst of the ocean, exposed to the burning rays of the sun, in a boat without water or provisions. On the fourth day, just as we had resolved to draw lots to determine who should die for the sustenance of the others, we were picked up by an opium clipper returning to Canton. The captain, an American, was most kind to us, and on our arrival at Canton, a subscription was got up for us by the British merchants of that city, and a free passage to England obtained for us. Russen, however, getting in drink, made statements which brought suspicion upon us. I had imposed upon the Consul with a fictitious story of a wreck, but had stated that my name was Wilson, forgetting that the sextant which had been preserved in the boat had Captain Bates's name engraved upon it. These circumstances together caused sufficient doubts in the Consul's mind to cause him to give directions that, on our arrival in London, we were to be brought before the Thames Police Court. There being no evidence against us, we should have escaped, had not a Dr. Pine, who had been surgeon on board the Malabar transport, being in the Court, recognized me and swore to my identity. We were remanded, and, to complete the chain of evidence, Mr. Capon, the Hobart Town gaoler, was, strangely enough, in London at the time, and identified us all. Our story was then made public, and Barker and Lesly, turning Queen's evidence against Russen, he was convicted of the murder of Lyons, and executed. We were then placed on board the Leviathan hulk, and remained there until shipped in the Lady Jane, which was chartered, with convicts, for Van Diemen's Land, in order to be tried in the colony, where the offence was committed, for piratically seizing the brig Osprey, and arrived here on the 15th December, 1838."

* * * * *

Coming, breathless, to the conclusion of this wonderful relation, Sylvia suffered her hand to fall into her lap, and sat meditative. The history of this desperate struggle for liberty was to her full of vague horror. She had never before realized among what manner of men she had lived. The sullen creatures who worked in the chain-gangs, or pulled in the boats—their faces brutalized into a uniform blankness—must be very different men from John Rex and his companions. Her imagination pictured the voyage in the leaky brig, the South American slavery, the midnight escape, the desperate rowing, the long, slow agony of starvation, and the heart-sickness that must have followed upon recapture and imprisonment. Surely the punishment of "penal servitude" must have been made very terrible for men to dare such hideous perils to escape from it. Surely John Rex, the convict, who, alone, and prostrated by sickness, quelled a mutiny and navigated a vessel through a storm-ravaged ocean, must possess qualities which could be put to better use than stone-quarrying. Was the opinion of Maurice Frere the correct one after all, and were these convict monsters gifted with unnatural powers of endurance, only to be subdued and tamed by unnatural and inhuman punishments of lash and chain? Her fancies growing amid the fast gathering gloom, she shuddered as she guessed to what extremities of evil might such men proceed did an opportunity ever come to them to retaliate upon their gaolers. Perhaps beneath each mask of servility and sullen fear that was the ordinary prison face, lay hid a courage and a despair as mighty as that which sustained those ten poor wanderers over the Pacific Ocean. Maurice had told her that these people had their secret signs, their secret language. She had just seen a specimen of the skill with which this very Rex—still bent upon escape—could send a hidden message to his friends beneath the eyes of his gaolers. What if the whole island was but one smouldering volcano of revolt and murder—the whole convict population but one incarnated conspiracy, bound together by crime and suffering! Terrible to think of—yet not impossible.

Oh, how strangely must the world have been civilized, that this most lovely corner of it must needs be set apart as a place of banishment for the monsters that civilization had brought forth and bred! She cast her eyes around, and all beauty seemed blotted out from the scene before her. The graceful foliage melting into indistinctness in the gathering twilight, appeared to her horrible and treacherous. The river seemed to flow sluggishly, as though thickened with blood and tears. The shadow of the trees seemed to hold lurking shapes of cruelty and danger. Even the whispering breeze bore with it sighs, and threats, and mutterings of revenge. Oppressed by a terror of loneliness, she hastily caught up the manuscript, and turned to seek the house, when, as if summoned from the earth by the power of her own fears, a ragged figure barred her passage.

To the excited girl this apparition seemed the embodiment of the unknown evil she had dreaded. She recognized the yellow clothing, and marked the eager hands outstretched to seize her. Instantly upon her flashed the story that three days since had set the prison-town agog. The desperado of Port Arthur, the escaped mutineer and murderer, was before her, with unchained arms, free to wreak his will of her.

"Sylvia! It is you! Oh, at last! I have escaped, and come to ask—What? Do you not know me?"

Pressing both hands to her bosom, she stepped back a pace, speechless with terror.

"I am Rufus Dawes," he said, looking in her face for the grateful smile of recognition that did not come—"Rufus Dawes."

The party at the house had finished their wine, and, sitting on the broad verandah, were listening to some gentle dullness of the clergyman, when there broke upon their ears a cry.

"What's that?" said Vickers.

Frere sprang up, and looked down the garden. He saw two figures that seemed to struggle together. One glance was enough, and, with a shout, he leapt the flower-beds, and made straight at the escaped prisoner.

Rufus Dawes saw him coming, but, secure in the protection of the girl who owed to him so much, he advanced a step nearer, and loosing his respectful clasp of her hand, caught her dress.

"Oh, help, Maurice, help!" cried Sylvia again.

Into the face of Rufus Dawes came an expression of horror-stricken bewilderment. For three days the unhappy man had contrived to keep life and freedom, in order to get speech with the one being who, he thought, cherished for him some affection. Having made an unparalleled escape from the midst of his warders, he had crept to the place where lived the idol of his dreams, braving recapture, that he might hear from her two words of justice and gratitude. Not only did she refuse to listen to him, and shrink from him as from one accursed, but, at the sound of his name, she summoned his deadliest foe to capture him. Such monstrous ingratitude was almost beyond belief. She, too,—the child he had nursed and fed, the child for whom he had given up his hard-earned chance of freedom and fortune, the child of whom he had dreamed, the child whose image he had worshipped—she, too, against him! Then there was no justice, no Heaven, no God! He loosed his hold of her dress, and, regardless of the approaching footsteps, stood speechless, shaking from head to foot. In another instant Frere and McNab flung themselves upon him, and he was borne to the ground. Though weakened by starvation, he shook them off with scarce an effort, and, despite the servants who came hurrying from the alarmed house, might even then have turned and made good his escape. But he seemed unable to fly. His chest heaved convulsively, great drops of sweat beaded his white face, and from his eyes tears seemed about to break. For an instant his features worked convulsively, as if he would fain invoke upon the girl, weeping on her father's shoulder, some hideous curse. But no words came—only thrusting his hand into his breast, with a supreme gesture of horror and aversion, he flung something from him. Then a profound sigh escaped him, and he held out his hands to be bound.

There was something so pitiable about this silent grief that, as they led him away, the little group instinctively averted their faces, lest they should seem to triumph over him.



CHAPTER XI. A RELIC OF MACQUARIE HARBOUR.



"You must try and save him from further punishment," said Sylvia next day to Frere. "I did not mean to betray the poor creature, but I had made myself nervous by reading that convict's story."

"You shouldn't read such rubbish," said Frere. "What's the use? I don't suppose a word of it's true."

"It must be true. I am sure it's true. Oh, Maurice, these are dreadful men. I thought I knew all about convicts, but I had no idea that such men as these were among them."

"Thank God, you know very little," said Maurice. "The servants you have here are very different sort of fellows from Rex and Company."

"Oh, Maurice, I am so tired of this place. It's wrong, perhaps, with poor papa and all, but I do wish I was somewhere out of the sight of chains. I don't know what has made me feel as I do."

"Come to Sydney," said Frere. "There are not so many convicts there. It was arranged that we should go to Sydney, you know."

"For our honeymoon? Yes," said Sylvia, simply. "I know it was. But we are not married yet."

"That's easily done," said Maurice.

"Oh, nonsense, sir! But I want to speak to you about this poor Dawes. I don't think he meant any harm. It seems to me now that he was rather going to ask for food or something, only I was so nervous. They won't hang him, Maurice, will they?"

"No," said Maurice. "I spoke to your father this morning. If the fellow is tried for his life, you may have to give evidence, and so we came to the conclusion that Port Arthur again, and heavy irons, will meet the case. We gave him another life sentence this morning. That will make the third he has had."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. I sent him down aboard the schooner at once. He ought to be out of the river by this time." "Maurice, I have a strange feeling about that man."

"Eh?" said Maurice.

"I seem to fear him, as if I knew some story about him, and yet didn't know it."

"That's not very clear," said Maurice, forcing a laugh, "but don't let's talk about him any more. We'll soon be far from Port Arthur and everybody in it."

"Maurice," said she, caressingly, "I love you, dear. You'll always protect me against these men, won't you?"

Maurice kissed her. "You have not got over your fright, Sylvia," he said. "I see I shall have to take a great deal of care of my wife."

"Of course," replied Sylvia.

And then the pair began to make love, or, rather, Maurice made it, and Sylvia suffered him.

Suddenly her eye caught something. "What's that—there, on the ground by the fountain?" They were near the spot where Dawes had been seized the night before. A little stream ran through the garden, and a Triton—of convict manufacture—blew his horn in the middle of a—convict built—rockery. Under the lip of the fountain lay a small packet. Frere picked it up. It was made of soiled yellow cloth, and stitched evidently by a man's fingers. "It looks like a needle-case," said he.

"Let me see. What a strange-looking thing! Yellow cloth, too. Why, it must belong to a prisoner. Oh, Maurice, the man who was here last night!"

"Ay," says Maurice, turning over the packet, "it might have been his, sure enough."

"He seemed to fling something from him, I thought. Perhaps this is it!" said she, peering over his arm, in delicate curiosity. Frere, with something of a scowl on his brow, tore off the outer covering of the mysterious packet, and displayed a second envelope, of grey cloth—the "good-conduct" uniform. Beneath this was a piece, some three inches square, of stained and discoloured merino, that had once been blue.

"Hullo!" says Frere. "Why, what's this?"

"It is a piece of a dress," says Sylvia.

It was Rufus Dawes's talisman—a portion of the frock she had worn at Macquarie Harbour, and which the unhappy convict had cherished as a sacred relic for five weary years.

Frere flung it into the water. The running stream whirled it away. "Why did you do that?" cried the girl, with a sudden pang of remorse for which she could not account. The shred of cloth, caught by a weed, lingered for an instant on the surface of the water. Almost at the same moment, the pair, raising their eyes, saw the schooner which bore Rufus Dawes back to bondage glide past the opening of the trees and disappear. When they looked again for the strange relic of the desperado of Port Arthur, it also had vanished.



CHAPTER XII. AT PORT ARTHUR.



The usual clanking and hammering was prevalent upon the stone jetty of Port Arthur when the schooner bearing the returned convict, Rufus Dawes, ran alongside. On the heights above the esplanade rose the grim front of the soldiers' barracks; beneath the soldiers' barracks was the long range of prison buildings with their workshops and tan-pits; to the left lay the Commandant's house, authoritative by reason of its embrasured terrace and guardian sentry; while the jetty, that faced the purple length of the "Island of the Dead," swarmed with parti-coloured figures, clanking about their enforced business, under the muskets of their gaolers.

Rufus Dawes had seen this prospect before, had learnt by heart each beauty of rising sun, sparkling water, and wooded hill. From the hideously clean jetty at his feet, to the distant signal station, that, embowered in bloom, reared its slender arms upwards into the cloudless sky, he knew it all. There was no charm for him in the exquisite blue of the sea, the soft shadows of the hills, or the soothing ripple of the waves that crept voluptuously to the white breast of the shining shore. He sat with his head bowed down, and his hands clasped about his knees, disdaining to look until they roused him.

"Hallo, Dawes!" says Warder Troke, halting his train of ironed yellow-jackets. "So you've come back again! Glad to see yer, Dawes! It seems an age since we had the pleasure of your company, Dawes!" At this pleasantry the train laughed, so that their irons clanked more than ever. They found it often inconvenient not to laugh at Mr. Troke's humour. "Step down here, Dawes, and let me introduce you to your h'old friends. They'll be glad to see yer, won't yer, boys? Why, bless me, Dawes, we thort we'd lost yer! We thort yer'd given us the slip altogether, Dawes. They didn't take care of yer in Hobart Town, I expect, eh, boys? We'll look after yer here, Dawes, though. You won't bolt any more."

"Take care, Mr. Troke," said a warning voice, "you're at it again! Let the man alone!"

By virtue of an order transmitted from Hobart Town, they had begun to attach the dangerous prisoner to the last man of the gang, riveting the leg-irons of the pair by means of an extra link, which could be removed when necessary, but Dawes had given no sign of consciousness. At the sound of the friendly tones, however, he looked up, and saw a tall, gaunt man, dressed in a shabby pepper-and-salt raiment, and wearing a black handkerchief knotted round his throat. He was a stranger to him.

"I beg yer pardon, Mr. North," said Troke, sinking at once the bully in the sneak. "I didn't see yer reverence."

"A parson!" thought Dawes with disappointment, and dropped his eyes.

"I know that," returned Mr. North, coolly. "If you had, you would have been all butter and honey. Don't trouble yourself to tell a lie; it's quite unnecessary."

Dawes looked up again. This was a strange parson.

"What's your name, my man?" said Mr. North, suddenly, catching his eye.

Rufus Dawes had intended to scowl, but the tone, sharply authoritative, roused his automatic convict second nature, and he answered, almost despite himself, "Rufus Dawes."

"Oh," said Mr. North, eyeing him with a curious air of expectation that had something pitying in it. "This is the man, is it? I thought he was to go to the Coal Mines."

"So he is," said Troke, "but we hain't a goin' to send there for a fortnit, and in the meantime I'm to work him on the chain."

"Oh!" said Mr. North again. "Lend me your knife, Troke."

And then, before them all, this curious parson took a piece of tobacco out of his ragged pocket, and cut off a "chaw" with Mr. Troke's knife. Rufus Dawes felt what he had not felt for three days—an interest in something. He stared at the parson in unaffected astonishment. Mr. North perhaps mistook the meaning of his fixed stare, for he held out the remnant of tobacco to him.

The chain line vibrated at this, and bent forward to enjoy the vicarious delight of seeing another man chew tobacco. Troke grinned with a silent mirth that betokened retribution for the favoured convict. "Here," said Mr. North, holding out the dainty morsel upon which so many eyes were fixed. Rufus Dawes took the tobacco; looked at it hungrily for an instant, and then—to the astonishment of everybody—flung it away with a curse.

"I don't want your tobacco," he said; "keep it."

From convict mouths went out a respectful roar of amazement, and Mr. Troke's eyes snapped with pride of outraged janitorship. "You ungrateful dog!" he cried, raising his stick.

Mr. North put up a hand. "That will do, Troke," he said; "I know your respect for the cloth. Move the men on again."

"Get on!" said Troke, rumbling oaths beneath his breath, and Dawes felt his newly-riveted chain tug. It was some time since he had been in a chain-gang, and the sudden jerk nearly overbalanced him. He caught at his neighbour, and looking up, met a pair of black eyes which gleamed recognition. His neighbour was John Rex. Mr. North, watching them, was struck by the resemblance the two men bore to each other. Their height, eyes, hair, and complexion were similar. Despite the difference in name they might be related. "They might be brothers," thought he. "Poor devils! I never knew a prisoner refuse tobacco before." And he looked on the ground for the despised portion. But in vain. John Rex, oppressed by no foolish sentiment, had picked it up and put it in his mouth.

So Rufus Dawes was relegated to his old life again, and came back to his prison with the hatred of his kind, that his prison had bred in him, increased a hundred-fold. It seemed to him that the sudden awakening had dazed him, that the flood of light so suddenly let in upon his slumbering soul had blinded his eyes, used so long to the sweetly-cheating twilight. He was at first unable to apprehend the details of his misery. He knew only that his dream-child was alive and shuddered at him, that the only thing he loved and trusted had betrayed him, that all hope of justice and mercy had gone from him for ever, that the beauty had gone from earth, the brightness from Heaven, and that he was doomed still to live. He went about his work, unheedful of the jests of Troke, ungalled by his irons, unmindful of the groans and laughter about him. His magnificent muscles saved him from the lash; for the amiable Troke tried to break him down in vain. He did not complain, he did not laugh, he did not weep. His "mate" Rex tried to converse with him, but did not succeed. In the midst of one of Rex's excellent tales of London dissipation, Rufus Dawes would sigh wearily. "There's something on that fellow's mind," thought Rex, prone to watch the signs by which the soul is read. "He has some secret which weighs upon him."

It was in vain that Rex attempted to discover what this secret might be. To all questions concerning his past life—however artfully put—Rufus Dawes was dumb. In vain Rex practised all his arts, called up all his graces of manner and speech—and these were not few—to fascinate the silent man and win his confidence. Rufus Dawes met his advances with a cynical carelessness that revealed nothing; and, when not addressed, held a gloomy silence. Galled by this indifference, John Rex had attempted to practise those ingenious arts of torment by which Gabbett, Vetch, or other leading spirits of the gang asserted their superiority over their quieter comrades. But he soon ceased. "I have been longer in this hell than you," said Rufus Dawes, "and I know more of the devil's tricks than you can show me. You had best be quiet." Rex neglected the warning, and Rufus Dawes took him by the throat one day, and would have strangled him, but that Troke beat off the angered man with a favourite bludgeon. Rex had a wholesome respect for personal prowess, and had the grace to admit the provocation to Troke. Even this instance of self-denial did not move the stubborn Dawes. He only laughed. Then Rex came to a conclusion. His mate was plotting an escape. He himself cherished a notion of the kind, as did Gabbett and Vetch, but by common distrust no one ever gave utterance to thoughts of this nature. It would be too dangerous. "He would be a good comrade for a rush," thought Rex, and resolved more firmly than ever to ally himself to this dangerous and silent companion.

One question Dawes had asked which Rex had been able to answer: "Who is that North?"

"A chaplain. He is only here for a week or so. There is a new one coming. North goes to Sydney. He is not in favour with the Bishop."

"How do you know?"

"By deduction," says Rex, with a smile peculiar to him. "He wears coloured clothes, and smokes, and doesn't patter Scripture. The Bishop dresses in black, detests tobacco, and quotes the Bible like a concordance. North is sent here for a month, as a warming-pan for that ass Meekin. Ergo, the Bishop don't care about North."

Jemmy Vetch, who was next to Rex, let the full weight of his portion of tree-trunk rest upon Gabbett, in order to express his unrestrained admiration of Mr. Rex's sarcasm. "Ain't the Dandy a one'er?" said he.

"Are you thinking of coming the pious?" asked Rex. "It's no good with North. Wait until the highly-intelligent Meekin comes. You can twist that worthy successor of the Apostles round your little finger!"

"Silence there!" cries the overseer. "Do you want me to report yer?"

Amid such diversions the days rolled on, and Rufus Dawes almost longed for the Coal Mines. To be sent from the settlement to the Coal Mines, and from the Coal Mines to the settlement, was to these unhappy men a "trip". At Port Arthur one went to an out-station, as more fortunate people go to Queenscliff or the Ocean Beach now-a-days for "change of air".



CHAPTER XIII. THE COMMANDANT'S BUTLER.



Rufus Dawes had been a fortnight at the settlement when a new-comer appeared on the chain-gang. This was a young man of about twenty years of age, thin, fair, and delicate. His name was Kirkland, and he belonged to what were known as the "educated" prisoners. He had been a clerk in a banking house, and was transported for embezzlement, though, by some, grave doubts as to his guilt were entertained. The Commandant, Captain Burgess, had employed him as butler in his own house, and his fate was considered a "lucky" one. So, doubtless, it was, and might have been, had not an untoward accident occurred. Captain Burgess, who was a bachelor of the "old school", confessed to an amiable weakness for blasphemy, and was given to condemning the convicts' eyes and limbs with indiscriminate violence. Kirkland belonged to a Methodist family and owned a piety utterly out of place in that region. The language of Burgess made him shudder, and one day he so far forgot himself and his place as to raise his hands to his ears. "My blank!" cried Burgess. "You blank blank, is that your blank game? I'll blank soon cure you of that!" and forthwith ordered him to the chain-gang for "insubordination".

He was received with suspicion by the gang, who did not like white-handed prisoners. Troke, by way of experiment in human nature, perhaps, placed him next to Gabbett. The day was got through in the usual way, and Kirkland felt his heart revive.

The toil was severe, and the companionship uncouth, but despite his blistered hands and aching back, he had not experienced anything so very terrible after all. When the muster bell rang, and the gang broke up, Rufus Dawes, on his silent way to his separate cell, observed a notable change of custom in the disposition of the new convict. Instead of placing him in a cell by himself, Troke was turning him into the yard with the others.

"I'm not to go in there?" says the ex-bank clerk, drawing back in dismay from the cloud of foul faces which lowered upon him.

"By the Lord, but you are, then!" says Troke. "The Governor says a night in there'll take the starch out of ye. Come, in yer go."

"But, Mr. Troke—"

"Stow your gaff," says Troke, with another oath, and impatiently striking the lad with his thong—"I can't argue here all night. Get in." So Kirkland, aged twenty-two, and the son of Methodist parents, went in.

Rufus Dawes, among whose sinister memories this yard was numbered, sighed. So fierce was the glamour of the place, however, that when locked into his cell, he felt ashamed for that sigh, and strove to erase the memory of it. "What is he more than anybody else?" said the wretched man to himself, as he hugged his misery close.

About dawn the next morning, Mr. North—who, amongst other vagaries not approved of by his bishop, had a habit of prowling about the prison at unofficial hours—was attracted by a dispute at the door of the dormitory.

"What's the matter here?" he asked.

"A prisoner refractory, your reverence," said the watchman. "Wants to come out."

"Mr. North! Mr. North!" cried a voice, "for the love of God, let me out of this place!"

Kirkland, ghastly pale, bleeding, with his woollen shirt torn, and his blue eyes wide open with terror, was clinging to the bars.

"Oh, Mr. North! Mr. North! Oh, Mr. North! Oh, for God's sake, Mr. North!"

"What, Kirkland!" cried North, who was ignorant of the vengeance of the Commandant. "What do you do here?"

But Kirkland could do nothing but cry,—"Oh, Mr. North! For God's sake, Mr. North!" and beat on the bars with white and sweating hands.

"Let him out, watchman!" said North.

"Can't sir, without an order from the Commandant."

"I order you, sir!" North cried, indignant.

"Very sorry, your reverence; but your reverence knows that I daren't do such a thing." "Mr. North!" screamed Kirkland. "Would you see me perish, body and soul, in this place? Mr. North! Oh, you ministers of Christ—wolves in sheep's clothing—you shall be judged for this!"

"Let him out!" cried North again, stamping his foot.

"It's no good," returned the gaoler. "I can't. If he was dying, I can't."

North rushed away to the Commandant, and the instant his back was turned, Hailes, the watchman, flung open the door, and darted into the dormitory.

"Take that!" he cried, dealing Kirkland a blow on the head with his keys, that stretched him senseless. "There's more trouble with you bloody aristocrats than enough. Lie quiet!"

The Commandant, roused from slumber, told Mr. North that Kirkland might stop where he was, and that he'd thank the chaplain not to wake him up in the middle of the night because a blank prisoner set up a blank howling.

"But, my good sir," protested North, restraining his impulse to overstep the bounds of modesty in his language to his superior officer, "you know the character of the men in that ward. You can guess what that unhappy boy has suffered."

"Impertinent young beggar!" said Burgess. "Do him good, curse him! Mr. North, I'm sorry you should have had the trouble to come here, but will you let me go to sleep?"

North returned to the prison disconsolately, found the dutiful Hailes at his post, and all quiet.

"What's become of Kirkland?" he asked.

"Fretted hisself to sleep, yer reverence," said Hailes, in accents of parental concern. "Poor young chap! It's hard for such young 'uns."

In the morning, Rufus Dawes, coming to his place on the chain-gang, was struck by the altered appearance of Kirkland. His face was of a greenish tint, and wore an expression of bewildered horror.

"Cheer up, man!" said Dawes, touched with momentary pity. "It's no good being in the mopes, you know."

"What do they do if you try to bolt?" whispered Kirkland.

"Kill you," returned Dawes, in a tone of surprise at so preposterous a question.

"Thank God!" said Kirkland.

"Now then, Miss Nancy," said one of the men, "what's the matter with you!" Kirkland shuddered, and his pale face grew crimson.

"Oh," he said, "that such a wretch as I should live!"

"Silence!" cried Troke. "No. 44, if you can't hold your tongue I'll give you something to talk about. March!"

The work of the gang that afternoon was the carrying of some heavy logs to the water-side, and Rufus Dawes observed that Kirkland was exhausted long before the task was accomplished. "They'll kill you, you little beggar!" said he, not unkindly. "What have you been doing to get into this scrape?"

"Have you ever been in that—that place I was in last night?" asked Kirkland.

Rufus Dawes nodded.

"Does the Commandant know what goes on there?"

"I suppose so. What does he care?"

"Care! Man, do you believe in a God?" "No," said Dawes, "not here. Hold up, my lad. If you fall, we must fall over you, and then you're done for."

He had hardly uttered the words, when the boy flung himself beneath the log. In another instant the train would have been scrambling over his crushed body, had not Gabbett stretched out an iron hand, and plucked the would-be suicide from death.

"Hold on to me, Miss Nancy," said the giant, "I'm big enough to carry double."

Something in the tone or manner of the speaker affected Kirkland to disgust, for, spurning the offered hand, he uttered a cry and then, holding up his irons with his hands, he started to run for the water.

"Halt! you young fool," roared Troke, raising his carbine. But Kirkland kept steadily on for the river. Just as he reached it, however, the figure of Mr. North rose from behind a pile of stones. Kirkland jumped for the jetty, missed his footing, and fell into the arms of the chaplain.

"You young vermin—you shall pay for this," cries Troke. "You'll see if you won't remember this day."

"Oh, Mr. North," says Kirkland, "why did you stop me? I'd better be dead than stay another night in that place."

"You'll get it, my lad," said Gabbett, when the runaway was brought back. "Your blessed hide'll feel for this, see if it don't."

Kirkland only breathed harder, and looked round for Mr. North, but Mr. North had gone. The new chaplain was to arrive that afternoon, and it was incumbent on him to be at the reception. Troke reported the ex-bank clerk that night to Burgess, and Burgess, who was about to go to dinner with the new chaplain, disposed of his case out of hand. "Tried to bolt, eh! Must stop that. Fifty lashes, Troke. Tell Macklewain to be ready—or stay, I'll tell him myself—I'll break the young devil's spirit, blank him."

"Yes, sir," said Troke. "Good evening, sir."

"Troke—pick out some likely man, will you? That last fellow you had ought to have been tied up himself. His flogging wouldn't have killed a flea."

"You can't get 'em to warm one another, your honour," says Troke.

"They won't do it."

"Oh, yes, they will, though," says Burgess, "or I'll know the reason why. I won't have my men knocked up with flogging these rascals. If the scourger won't do his duty, tie him up, and give him five-and-twenty for himself. I'll be down in the morning myself if I can."

"Very good, your honour," says Troke.

Kirkland was put into a separate cell that night; and Troke, by way of assuring him a good night's rest, told him that he was to have "fifty" in the morning. "And Dawes'll lay it on," he added. "He's one of the smartest men I've got, and he won't spare yer, yer may take your oath of that."



CHAPTER XIV. Mr. NORTH'S DISPOSITION.



"You will find this a terrible place, Mr. Meekin," said North to his supplanter, as they walked across to the Commandant's to dinner. "It has made me heartsick."

"I thought it was a little paradise," said Meekin. "Captain Frere says that the scenery is delightful." "So it is," returned North, looking askance, "but the prisoners are not delightful."

"Poor, abandoned wretches," says Meekin, "I suppose not. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank! Eh!"

"Abandoned, indeed, by God and man—almost."

"Mr. North, Providence never abandons the most unworthy of His servants. Never have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor His seed begging their bread. In the valley of the shadow of death He is with us. His staff, you know, Mr. North. Really, the Commandant's house is charmingly situated!"

Mr. North sighed again. "You have not been long in the colony, Mr. Meekin. I doubt—forgive me for expressing myself so freely—if you quite know of our convict system."

"An admirable one! A most admirable one!" said Meekin. "There were a few matters I noticed in Hobart Town that did not quite please me—the frequent use of profane language for instance—but on the whole I was delighted with the scheme. It is so complete."

North pursed up his lips. "Yes, it is very complete," he said; "almost too complete. But I am always in a minority when I discuss the question, so we will drop it, if you please."

"If you please," said Meekin gravely. He had heard from the Bishop that Mr. North was an ill-conditioned sort of person, who smoked clay pipes, had been detected in drinking beer out of a pewter pot, and had been heard to state that white neck-cloths were of no consequence. The dinner went off successfully. Burgess—desirous, perhaps, of favourably impressing the chaplain whom the Bishop delighted to honour—shut off his blasphemy for a while, and was urbane enough. "You'll find us rough, Mr. Meekin," he said, "but you'll find us 'all there' when we're wanted. This is a little kingdom in itself."

"Like Beranger's?" asked Meekin, with a smile. Captain Burgess had never heard of Beranger, but he smiled as if he had learnt his words by heart.

"Or like Sancho Panza's island," said North. "You remember how justice was administered there?"

"Not at this moment, sir," said Burgess, with dignity. He had been often oppressed by the notion that the Reverend Mr. North "chaffed" him. "Pray help yourself to wine."

"Thank you, none," said North, filling a tumbler with water. "I have a headache." His manner of speech and action was so awkward that a silence fell upon the party, caused by each one wondering why Mr. North should grow confused, and drum his fingers on the table, and stare everywhere but at the decanter. Meekin—ever softly at his ease—was the first to speak. "Have you many visitors, Captain Burgess?"

"Very few. Sometimes a party comes over with a recommendation from the Governor, and I show them over the place; but, as a rule, we see no one but ourselves."

"I asked," said Meekin, "because some friends of mine were thinking of coming."

"And who may they be?"

"Do you know Captain Frere?"

"Frere! I should say so!" returned Burgess, with a laugh, modelled upon Maurice Frere's own. "I was quartered with him at Sarah Island. So he's a friend of yours, eh?"

"I had the pleasure of meeting him in society. He is just married, you know."

"Is he?" said Burgess. "The devil he is! I heard something about it, too."

"Miss Vickers, a charming young person. They are going to Sydney, where Captain Frere has some interest, and Frere thinks of taking Port Arthur on his way down."

"A strange fancy for a honeymoon trip," said North.

"Captain Frere takes a deep interest in all relating to convict discipline," went on Meekin, unheeding the interruption, "and is anxious that Mrs. Frere should see this place."

"Yes, one oughtn't to leave the colony without seeing it," says Burgess; "it's worth seeing."

"So Captain Frere thinks. A romantic story, Captain Burgess. He saved her life, you know."

"Ah! that was a queer thing, that mutiny," said Burgess. "We've got the fellows here, you know."

"I saw them tried at Hobart Town," said Meekin. "In fact, the ringleader, John Rex, gave me his confession, and I sent it to the Bishop."

"A great rascal," put in North. "A dangerous, scheming, cold—blooded villain."

"Well now!" said Meekin, with asperity, "I don't agree with you. Everybody seems to be against that poor fellow—Captain Frere tried to make me think that his letters contained a hidden meaning, but I don't believe they did. He seems to me to be truly penitent for his offences—a misguided, but not a hypocritical man, if my knowledge of human nature goes for anything."

"I hope he is," said North. "I wouldn't trust him."

"Oh! there's no fear of him," said Burgess cheerily; "if he grows uproarious, we'll soon give him a touch of the cat."

"I suppose severity is necessary," returned Meekin; "though to my ears a flogging sounds a little distasteful. It is a brutal punishment."

"It's a punishment for brutes," said Burgess, and laughed, pleased with the nearest approach to an epigram he ever made in his life.

Here attention was called by the strange behaviour of Mr. North. He had risen, and, without apology, flung wide the window, as though he gasped for air. "Hullo, North! what's the matter?"

"Nothing," said North, recovering himself with an effort. "A spasm. I have these attacks at times." "Have some brandy," said Burgess.

"No, no, it will pass. No, I say. Well, if you insist." And seizing the tumbler offered to him, he half-filled it with raw spirit, and swallowed the fiery draught at a gulp.

The Reverend Meekin eyed his clerical brother with horror. The Reverend Meekin was not accustomed to clergymen who wore black neckties, smoked clay pipes, chewed tobacco, and drank neat brandy out of tumblers.

"Ha!" said North, looking wildly round upon them. "That's better."

"Let us go on to the verandah," said Burgess. "It's cooler than in the house."

So they went on to the verandah, and looked down upon the lights of the prison, and listened to the sea lapping the shore. The Reverend Mr. North, in this cool atmosphere, seemed to recover himself, and conversation progressed with some sprightliness.

By and by, a short figure, smoking a cheroot, came up out of the dark, and proved to be Dr. Macklewain, who had been prevented from attending the dinner by reason of an accident to a constable at Norfolk Bay, which had claimed his professional attention.

"Well, how's Forrest?" cried Burgess. "Mr. Meekin—Dr. Macklewain."

"Dead," said Dr. Macklewain. "Delighted to see you, Mr. Meekin."

"Confound it—another of my best men," grumbled Burgess. "Macklewain, have a glass of wine." But Macklewain was tired, and wanted to get home.

"I must also be thinking of repose," said Meekin; "the journey—though most enjoyable—has fatigued me."

"Come on, then," said North. "Our roads lie together, doctor."

"You won't have a nip of brandy before you start?" asked Burgess.

"No? Then I shall send round for you in the morning, Mr. Meekin. Good night. Macklewain, I want to speak with you a moment."

Before the two clergymen had got half-way down the steep path that led from the Commandant's house to the flat on which the cottages of the doctor and chaplain were built, Macklewain rejoined them. "Another flogging to-morrow," said he grumblingly. "Up at daylight, I suppose, again."

"Whom is he going to flog now?"

"That young butler-fellow of his." "What, Kirkland?" cried North. "You don't mean to say he's going to flog Kirkland?"

"Insubordination," says Macklewain. "Fifty lashes."

"Oh, this must be stopped," cried North, in great alarm. "He can't stand it. I tell you, he'll die, Macklewain."

"Perhaps you'll have the goodness to allow me to be the best judge of that," returned Macklewain, drawing up his little body to its least insignificant stature.

"My dear sir," replied North, alive to the importance of conciliating the surgeon, "you haven't seen him lately. He tried to drown himself this morning."

Mr. Meekin expressed some alarm; but Dr. Macklewain re-assured him. "That sort of nonsense must be stopped," said he. "A nice example to set. I wonder Burgess didn't give him a hundred."

"He was put into the long dormitory," said North; "you know what sort of a place that is. I declare to Heaven his agony and shame terrified me."

"Well, he'll be put into the hospital for a week or so to-morrow," said Macklewain, "and that'll give him a spell."

"If Burgess flogs him I'll report it to the Governor," cries North, in great heat. "The condition of those dormitories is infamous."

"If the boy has anything to complain of, why don't he complain? We can't do anything without evidence."

"Complain! Would his life be safe if he did? Besides, he's not the sort of creature to complain. He'd rather kill himself."

"That's all nonsense," says Macklewain. "We can't flog a whole dormitory on suspicion. I can't help it. The boy's made his bed, and he must lie on it."

"I'll go back and see Burgess," said North. "Mr. Meekin, here's the gate, and your room is on the right hand. I'll be back shortly."

"Pray, don't hurry," said Meekin politely. "You are on an errand of mercy, you know. Everything must give way to that. I shall find my portmanteau in my room, you said."

"Yes, yes. Call the servant if you want anything. He sleeps at the back," and North hurried off.

"An impulsive gentleman," said Meekin to Macklewain, as the sound of Mr. North's footsteps died away in the distance. Macklewain shook his head seriously.

"There is something wrong about him, but I can't make out what it is. He has the strangest fits at times. Unless it's a cancer in the stomach, I don't know what it can be."

"Cancer in the stomach! dear me, how dreadful!" says Meekin. "Ah! Doctor, we all have our crosses, have we not? How delightful the grass smells! This seems a very pleasant place, and I think I shall enjoy myself very much. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir. I hope you will be comfortable."

"And let us hope poor Mr. North will succeed in his labour of love," said Meekin, shutting the little gate, "and save the unfortunate Kirkland. Good-night, once more."

Captain Burgess was shutting his verandah-window when North hurried up.

"Captain Burgess, Macklewain tells me you are going to flog Kirkland."

"Well, sir, what of that?" said Burgess.

"I have come to beg you not to do so, sir. The lad has been cruelly punished already. He attempted suicide to-day—unhappy creature."

"Well, that's just what I'm flogging him for. I'll teach my prisoners to attempt suicide!"

"But he can't stand it, sir. He's too weak."

"That's Macklewain's business."

"Captain Burgess," protested North, "I assure you that he does not deserve punishment. I have seen him, and his condition of mind is pitiable."

"Look here, Mr. North, I don't interfere with what you do to the prisoner's souls; don't you interfere with what I do to their bodies."

"Captain Burgess, you have no right to mock at my office."

"Then don't you interfere with me, sir."

"Do you persist in having this boy flogged?"

"I've given my orders, sir."

"Then, Captain Burgess," cried North, his pale face flushing, "I tell you the boy's blood will be on your head. I am a minister of God, sir, and I forbid you to commit this crime."

"Damn your impertinence, sir!" burst out Burgess. "You're a dismissed officer of the Government, sir. You've no authority here in any way; and, by God, sir, if you interfere with my discipline, sir, I'll have you put in irons until you're shipped out of the island."

This, of course, was mere bravado on the part of the Commandant. North knew well that he would never dare to attempt any such act of violence, but the insult stung him like the cut of a whip. He made a stride towards the Commandant, as though to seize him by the throat, but, checking himself in time, stood still, with clenched hands, flashing eyes, and beard that bristled.

The two men looked at each other, and presently Burgess's eyes fell before those of the chaplain.

"Miserable blasphemer," says North, "I tell you that you shall not flog the boy."

Burgess, white with rage, rang the bell that summoned his convict servant.

"Show Mr. North out," he said, "and go down to the Barracks, and tell Troke that Kirkland is to have a hundred lashes to-morrow. I'll show you who's master here, my good sir."

"I'll report this to the Government," said North, aghast. "This is murderous."

"The Government may go to——, and you, too!" roared Burgess. "Get out!" And God's viceregent at Port Arthur slammed the door.

North returned home in great agitation. "They shall not flog that boy," he said. "I'll shield him with my own body if necessary. I'll report this to the Government. I'll see Sir John Franklin myself. I'll have the light of day let into this den of horrors." He reached his cottage, and lighted the lamp in the little sitting-room. All was silent, save that from the adjoining chamber came the sound of Meekin's gentlemanly snore. North took down a book from the shelf and tried to read, but the letters ran together. "I wish I hadn't taken that brandy," he said. "Fool that I am."

Then he began to walk up and down, to fling himself on the sofa, to read, to pray. "Oh, God, give me strength! Aid me! Help me! I struggle, but I am weak. O, Lord, look down upon me!"

To see him rolling on the sofa in agony, to see his white face, his parched lips, and his contracted brow, to hear his moans and muttered prayers, one would have thought him suffering from the pangs of some terrible disease. He opened the book again, and forced himself to read, but his eyes wandered to the cupboard. There lurked something that fascinated him. He got up at length, went into the kitchen, and found a packet of red pepper. He mixed a teaspoonful of this in a pannikin of water and drank it. It relieved him for a while.

"I must keep my wits for to-morrow. The life of that lad depends upon it. Meekin, too, will suspect. I will lie down."

He went into his bedroom and flung himself on the bed, but only to toss from side to side. In vain he repeated texts of Scripture and scraps of verse; in vain counted imaginary sheep, or listened to imaginary clock-tickings. Sleep would not come to him. It was as though he had reached the crisis of a disease which had been for days gathering force. "I must have a teaspoonful," he said, "to allay the craving."

Twice he paused on the way to the sitting-room, and twice was he driven on by a power stronger than his will. He reached it at length, and opening the cupboard, pulled out what he sought. A bottle of brandy. With this in his hand, all moderation vanished. He raised it to his lips and eagerly drank. Then, ashamed of what he had done, he thrust the bottle back, and made for his room. Still he could not sleep. The taste of the liquor maddened him for more. He saw in the darkness the brandy bottle—vulgar and terrible apparition! He saw its amber fluid sparkle. He heard it gurgle as he poured it out. He smelt the nutty aroma of the spirit. He pictured it standing in the corner of the cupboard, and imagined himself seizing it and quenching the fire that burned within him. He wept, he prayed, he fought with his desire as with a madness. He told himself that another's life depended on his exertions, that to give way to his fatal passion was unworthy of an educated man and a reasoning being, that it was degrading, disgusting, and bestial. That, at all times debasing, at this particular time it was infamous; that a vice, unworthy of any man, was doubly sinful in a man of education and a minister of God. In vain. In the midst of his arguments he found himself at the cupboard, with the bottle at his lips, in an attitude that was at once ludicrous and horrible.

He had no cancer. His disease was a more terrible one. The Reverend James North—gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest—was what the world calls "a confirmed drunkard".



CHAPTER XV. ONE HUNDRED LASHES.



The morning sun, bright and fierce, looked down upon a curious sight. In a stone-yard was a little group of persons—Troke, Burgess, Macklewain, Kirkland, and Rufus Dawes.

Three wooden staves, seven feet high, were fastened together in the form of a triangle. The structure looked not unlike that made by gypsies to boil their kettles. To this structure Kirkland was bound. His feet were fastened with thongs to the base of the triangle; his wrists, bound above his head, at the apex. His body was then extended to its fullest length, and his white back shone in the sunlight. During his tying up he had said nothing—only when Troke pulled off his shirt he shivered.

"Now, prisoner," said Troke to Dawes, "do your duty."

Rufus Dawes looked from the three stern faces to Kirkland's white back, and his face grew purple. In all his experience he had never been asked to flog before. He had been flogged often enough.

"You don't want me to flog him, sir?" he said to the Commandant.

"Pick up the cat, sir!" said Burgess, astonished; "what is the meaning of this?" Rufus Dawes picked up the heavy cat, and drew its knotted lashes between his fingers.

"Go on, Dawes," whispered Kirkland, without turning his head. "You are no more than another man."

"What does he say?" asked Burgess.

"Telling him to cut light, sir," said Troke, eagerly lying; "they all do it." "Cut light, eh! We'll see about that. Get on, my man, and look sharp, or I'll tie you up and give you fifty for yourself, as sure as God made little apples."

"Go on, Dawes," whispered Kirkland again. "I don't mind."

Rufus Dawes lifted the cat, swung it round his head, and brought its knotted cords down upon the white back.

"Wonn!" cried Troke.

The white back was instantly striped with six crimson bars. Kirkland stifled a cry. It seemed to him that he had been cut in half.

"Now then, you scoundrel!" roared Burgess; "separate your cats! What do you mean by flogging a man that fashion?"

Rufus Dawes drew his crooked fingers through the entangled cords, and struck again. This time the blow was more effective, and the blood beaded on the skin.

The boy did not cry; but Macklewain saw his hands clutch the staves tightly, and the muscles of his naked arms quiver.

"Tew!"

"That's better," said Burgess.

The third blow sounded as though it had been struck upon a piece of raw beef, and the crimson turned purple.

"My God!" said Kirkland, faintly, and bit his lips.

The flogging proceeded in silence for ten strikes, and then Kirkland gave a screech like a wounded horse.

"Oh!...Captain Burgess!...Dawes!...Mr. Troke!...Oh, my God!... Oh! oh!...Mercy!...Oh, Doctor!...Mr. North!...Oh! Oh! Oh!"

"Ten!" cried Troke, impassively counting to the end of the first twenty.

The lad's back, swollen into a lump, now presented the appearance of a ripe peach which a wilful child had scored with a pin. Dawes, turning away from his bloody handiwork, drew the cats through his fingers twice. They were beginning to get clogged a little.

"Go on," said Burgess, with a nod; and Troke cried "Wonn!" again.

Roused by the morning sun streaming in upon him, Mr. North opened his bloodshot eyes, rubbed his forehead with hands that trembled, and suddenly awakening to a consciousness of his promised errand, rolled off the bed and rose to his feet. He saw the empty brandy bottle on his wooden dressing-table, and remembered what had passed. With shaking hands he dashed water over his aching head, and smoothed his garments. The debauch of the previous night had left the usual effects behind it. His brain seemed on fire, his hands were hot and dry, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He shuddered as he viewed his pale face and red eyes in the little looking-glass, and hastily tried the door. He had retained sufficient sense in his madness to lock it, and his condition had been unobserved. Stealing into the sitting-room, he saw that the clock pointed to half-past six. The flogging was to have taken place at half-past five. Unless accident had favoured him he was already too late. Fevered with remorse and anxiety, he hurried past the room where Meekin yet slumbered, and made his way to the prison. As he entered the yard, Troke called "Ten!" Kirkland had just got his fiftieth lash.

"Stop!" cried North. "Captain Burgess, I call upon you to stop."

"You're rather late, Mr. North," retorted Burgess. "The punishment is nearly over." "Wonn!" cried Troke again; and North stood by, biting his nails and grinding his teeth, during six more lashes.

Kirkland ceased to yell now, and merely moaned. His back was like a bloody sponge, while in the interval between lashes the swollen flesh twitched like that of a new-killed bullock. Suddenly, Macklewain saw his head droop on his shoulder. "Throw him off! Throw him off!" he cried, and Troke hurried to loosen the thongs.

"Fling some water over him!" said Burgess; "he's shamming."

A bucket of water made Kirkland open his eyes. "I thought so," said Burgess. "Tie him up again."

"No. Not if you are Christians!" cried North.

He met with an ally where he least expected one. Rufus Dawes flung down the dripping cat. "I'll flog no more," said he.

"What?" roared Burgess, furious at this gross insolence.

"I'll flog no more. Get someone else to do your blood work for you. I won't."

"Tie him up!" cried Burgess, foaming. "Tie him up. Here, constable, fetch a man here with a fresh cat. I'll give you that beggar's fifty, and fifty more on the top of 'em; and he shall look on while his back cools."

Rufus Dawes, with a glance at North, pulled off his shirt without a word, and stretched himself at the triangles. His back was not white and smooth, like Kirkland's had been, but hard and seamed. He had been flogged before. Troke appeared with Gabbett—grinning. Gabbett liked flogging. It was his boast that he could flog a man to death on a place no bigger than the palm of his hand. He could use his left hand equally with his right, and if he got hold of a "favourite", would "cross the cuts".

Rufus Dawes planted his feet firmly on the ground, took fierce grasp on the staves, and drew in his breath. Macklewain spread the garments of the two men upon the ground, and, placing Kirkland upon them, turned to watch this new phase in the morning's amusement. He grumbled a little below his breath, for he wanted his breakfast, and when the Commandant once began to flog there was no telling where he would stop. Rufus Dawes took five-and-twenty lashes without a murmur, and then Gabbett "crossed the cuts". This went on up to fifty lashes, and North felt himself stricken with admiration at the courage of the man. "If it had not been for that cursed brandy," thought he, with bitterness of self-reproach, "I might have saved all this." At the hundredth lash, the giant paused, expecting the order to throw off, but Burgess was determined to "break the man's spirit".

"I'll make you speak, you dog, if I cut your heart out!" he cried. "Go on, prisoner."

For twenty lashes more Dawes was mute, and then the agony forced from his labouring breast a hideous cry. But it was not a cry for mercy, as that of Kirkland's had been. Having found his tongue, the wretched man gave vent to his boiling passion in a torrent of curses. He shrieked imprecation upon Burgess, Troke, and North. He cursed all soldiers for tyrants, all parsons for hypocrites. He blasphemed his God and his Saviour. With a frightful outpouring of obscenity and blasphemy, he called on the earth to gape and swallow his persecutors, for Heaven to open and rain fire upon them, for hell to yawn and engulf them quick. It was as though each blow of the cat forced out of him a fresh burst of beast-like rage. He seemed to have abandoned his humanity. He foamed, he raved, he tugged at his bonds until the strong staves shook again; he writhed himself round upon the triangles and spat impotently at Burgess, who jeered at his torments. North, with his hands to his ears, crouched against the corner of the wall, palsied with horror. It seemed to him that the passions of hell raged around him. He would fain have fled, but a horrible fascination held him back.

In the midst of this—when the cat was hissing its loudest—Burgess laughing his hardest, and the wretch on the triangles filling the air with his cries, North saw Kirkland look at him with what he thought a smile. Was it a smile? He leapt forward, and uttered a cry of dismay so loud that all turned.

"Hullo!" says Troke, running to the heap of clothes, "the young 'un's slipped his wind!"

Kirkland was dead.

"Throw him off!" says Burgess, aghast at the unfortunate accident; and Gabbett reluctantly untied the thongs that bound Rufus Dawes. Two constables were alongside him in an instant, for sometimes newly tortured men grew desperate. This one, however, was silent with the last lash; only in taking his shirt from under the body of the boy, he muttered, "Dead!" and in his tone there seemed to be a touch of envy. Then, flinging his shirt over his bleeding shoulders, he walked out—defiant to the last.

"Game, ain't he?" said one constable to the other, as they pushed him, not ungently, into an empty cell, there to wait for the hospital guard. The body of Kirkland was taken away in silence, and Burgess turned rather pale when he saw North's threatening face.

"It isn't my fault, Mr. North," he said. "I didn't know that the lad was chicken-hearted." But North turned away in disgust, and Macklewain and Burgess pursued their homeward route together.

"Strange that he should drop like that," said the Commandant.

"Yes, unless he had any internal disease," said the surgeon.

"Disease of the heart, for instance," said Burgess.

"I'll post-mortem him and see."

"Come in and have a nip, Macklewain. I feel quite qualmish," said Burgess. And the two went into the house amid respectful salutes from either side. Mr. North, in agony of mind at what he considered the consequence of his neglect, slowly, and with head bowed down, as one bent on a painful errand, went to see the prisoner who had survived. He found him kneeling on the ground, prostrated. "Rufus Dawes."

At the low tone Rufus Dawes looked up, and, seeing who it was, waved him off.

"Don't speak to me," he said, with an imprecation that made North's flesh creep. "I've told you what I think of you—a hypocrite, who stands by while a man is cut to pieces, and then comes and whines religion to him."

North stood in the centre of the cell, with his arms hanging down, and his head bent.

"You are right," he said, in a low tone. "I must seem to you a hypocrite. I a servant of Christ? A besotted beast rather! I am not come to whine religion to you. I am come to—to ask your pardon. I might have saved you from punishment—saved that poor boy from death. I wanted to save him, God knows! But I have a vice; I am a drunkard. I yielded to my temptation, and—I was too late. I come to you as one sinful man to another, to ask you to forgive me." And North suddenly flung himself down beside the convict, and, catching his blood-bespotted hands in his own, cried, "Forgive me, brother!"

Rufus Dawes, too much astonished to speak, bent his black eyes upon the man who crouched at his feet, and a ray of divine pity penetrated his gloomy soul. He seemed to catch a glimpse of misery more profound than his own, and his stubborn heart felt human sympathy with this erring brother. "Then in this hell there is yet a man," said he; and a hand-grasp passed between these two unhappy beings. North arose, and, with averted face, passed quickly from the cell. Rufus Dawes looked at his hand which his strange visitor had taken, and something glittered there. It was a tear. He broke down at the sight of it, and when the guard came to fetch the tameless convict, they found him on his knees in a corner, sobbing like a child.



CHAPTER XVI. KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS.



The morning after this, the Rev. Mr. North departed in the schooner for Hobart Town. Between the officious chaplain and the Commandant the events of the previous day had fixed a great gulf. Burgess knew that North meant to report the death of Kirkland, and guessed that he would not be backward in relating the story to such persons in Hobart Town as would most readily repeat it. "Blank awkward the fellow's dying," he confessed to himself. "If he hadn't died, nobody would have bothered about him." A sinister truth. North, on the other hand, comforted himself with the belief that the fact of the convict's death under the lash would cause indignation and subsequent inquiry. "The truth must come out if they only ask," thought he. Self-deceiving North! Four years a Government chaplain, and not yet attained to a knowledge of a Government's method of "asking" about such matters! Kirkland's mangled flesh would have fed the worms before the ink on the last "minute" from deliberating Authority was dry.

Burgess, however, touched with selfish regrets, determined to baulk the parson at the outset. He would send down an official "return" of the unfortunate occurrence by the same vessel that carried his enemy, and thus get the ear of the Office. Meekin, walking on the evening of the flogging past the wooden shed where the body lay, saw Troke bearing buckets filled with dark-coloured water, and heard a great splashing and sluicing going on inside the hut. "What is the matter?" he asked.

"Doctor's bin post-morticing the prisoner what was flogged this morning, sir," said Troke, "and we're cleanin' up."

Meekin sickened, and walked on. He had heard that unhappy Kirkland possessed unknown disease of the heart, and had unhappily died before receiving his allotted punishment. His duty was to comfort Kirkland's soul; he had nothing to do with Kirkland's slovenly unhandsome body, and so he went for a walk on the pier, that the breeze might blow his momentary sickness away from him. On the pier he saw North talking to Father Flaherty, the Roman Catholic chaplain. Meekin had been taught to look upon a priest as a shepherd might look upon a wolf, and passed with a distant bow. The pair were apparently talking on the occurrence of the morning, for he heard Father Flaherty say, with a shrug of his round shoulders, "He woas not one of moi people, Mr. North, and the Govermint would not suffer me to interfere with matters relating to Prhotestint prisoners." "The wretched creature was a Protestant," thought Meekin. "At least then his immortal soul was not endangered by belief in the damnable heresies of the Church of Rome." So he passed on, giving good-humoured Denis Flaherty, the son of the butter-merchant of Kildrum, a wide berth and sea-room, lest he should pounce down upon him unawares, and with Jesuitical argument and silken softness of speech, convert him by force to his own state of error—as was the well-known custom of those intellectual gladiators, the Priests of the Catholic Faith. North, on his side, left Flaherty with regret. He had spent many a pleasant hour with him, and knew him for a narrow-minded, conscientious, yet laughter-loving creature, whose God was neither his belly nor his breviary, but sometimes in one place and sometimes in the other, according to the hour of the day, and the fasts appointed for due mortification of the flesh. "A man who would do Christian work in a jog-trot parish, or where men lived too easily to sin harshly, but utterly unfit to cope with Satan, as the British Government had transported him," was North's sadly satirical reflection upon Father Flaherty, as Port Arthur faded into indistinct beauty behind the swift-sailing schooner. "God help those poor villains, for neither parson nor priest can."

He was right. North, the drunkard and self-tormented, had a power for good, of which Meekin and the other knew nothing. Not merely were the men incompetent and self-indulgent, but they understood nothing of that frightful capacity for agony which is deep in the soul of every evil-doer. They might strike the rock as they chose with sharpest-pointed machine-made pick of warranted Gospel manufacture, stamped with the approval of eminent divines of all ages, but the water of repentance and remorse would not gush for them. They possessed not the frail rod which alone was powerful to charm. They had no sympathy, no knowledge, no experience. He who would touch the hearts of men must have had his own heart seared. The missionaries of mankind have ever been great sinners before they earned the divine right to heal and bless. Their weakness was made their strength, and out of their own agony of repentance came the knowledge which made them masters and saviours of their kind. It was the agony of the Garden and the Cross that gave to the world's Preacher His kingdom in the hearts of men. The crown of divinity is a crown of thorns.

North, on his arrival, went straight to the house of Major Vickers. "I have a complaint to make, sir," he said. "I wish to lodge it formally with you. A prisoner has been flogged to death at Port Arthur. I saw it done."

Vickers bent his brow. "A serious accusation, Mr. North. I must, of course, receive it with respect, coming from you, but I trust that you have fully considered the circumstances of the case. I always understood Captain Burgess was a most humane man."

North shook his head. He would not accuse Burgess. He would let the events speak for themselves. "I only ask for an inquiry," said he.

"Yes, my dear sir, I know. Very proper indeed on your part, if you think any injustice has been done; but have you considered the expense, the delay, the immense trouble and dissatisfaction all this will give?"

"No trouble, no expense, no dissatisfaction, should stand in the way of humanity and justice," cried North.

"Of course not. But will justice be done? Are you sure you can prove your case? Mind, I admit nothing against Captain Burgess, whom I have always considered a most worthy and zealous officer; but, supposing your charge to be true, can you prove it?"

"Yes. If the witnesses speak the truth."

"Who are they?" "Myself, Dr. Macklewain, the constable, and two prisoners, one of whom was flogged himself. He will speak the truth, I believe. The other man I have not much faith in."

"Very well; then there is only a prisoner and Dr. Macklewain; for if there has been foul play the convict-constable will not accuse the authorities. Moreover, the doctor does not agree with you."

"No?" cried North, amazed.

"No. You see, then, my dear sir, how necessary it is not to be hasty in matters of this kind. I really think—pardon me for my plainness—that your goodness of heart has misled you. Captain Burgess sends a report of the case. He says the man was sentenced to a hundred lashes for gross insolence and disobedience of orders, that the doctor was present during the punishment, and that the man was thrown off by his directions after he had received fifty-six lashes. That, after a short interval, he was found to be dead, and that the doctor made a post-mortem examination and found disease of the heart."

North started. "A post-mortem? I never knew there had been one held."

"Here is the medical certificate," said Vickers, holding it out, "accompanied by the copies of the evidence of the constable and a letter from the Commandant."

Poor North took the papers and read them slowly. They were apparently straightforward enough. Aneurism of the ascending aorta was given as the cause of death; and the doctor frankly admitted that had he known the deceased to be suffering from that complaint he would not have permitted him to receive more than twenty-five lashes. "I think Macklewain is an honest man," said North, doubtfully. "He would not dare to return a false certificate. Yet the circumstances of the case—the horrible condition of the prisoners—the frightful story of that boy—"

"I cannot enter into these questions, Mr. North. My position here is to administer the law to the best of my ability, not to question it."

North bowed his head to the reproof. In some sort of justly unjust way, he felt that he deserved it. "I can say no more, sir. I am afraid I am helpless in this matter—as I have been in others. I see that the evidence is against me; but it is my duty to carry my efforts as far as I can, and I will do so." Vickers bowed stiffly and wished him good morning. Authority, however well-meaning in private life, has in its official capacity a natural dislike to those dissatisfied persons who persist in pushing inquiries to extremities.

North, going out with saddened spirits, met in the passage a beautiful young girl. It was Sylvia, coming to visit her father. He lifted his hat and looked after her. He guessed that she was the daughter of the man he had left—the wife of the Captain Frere concerning whom he had heard so much. North was a man whose morbidly excited brain was prone to strange fancies; and it seemed to him that beneath the clear blue eyes that flashed upon him for a moment, lay a hint of future sadness, in which, in some strange way, he himself was to bear part. He stared after her figure until it disappeared; and long after the dainty presence of the young bride—trimly booted, tight-waisted, and neatly-gloved—had faded, with all its sunshine of gaiety and health, from out of his mental vision, he still saw those blue eyes and that cloud of golden hair.



CHAPTER XVII. CAPTAIN AND MRS. FRERE.



Sylvia had become the wife of Maurice Frere. The wedding created excitement in the convict settlement, for Maurice Frere, though oppressed by the secret shame at open matrimony which affects men of his character, could not in decency—seeing how "good a thing for him" was this wealthy alliance—demand unceremonious nuptials. So, after the fashion of the town—there being no "continent" or "Scotland" adjacent as a hiding place for bridal blushes—the alliance was entered into with due pomp of ball and supper; bride and bridegroom departing through the golden afternoon to the nearest of Major Vickers's stations. Thence it had been arranged they should return after a fortnight, and take ship for Sydney.

Major Vickers, affectionate though he was to the man whom he believed to be the saviour of his child, had no notion of allowing him to live on Sylvia's fortune. He had settled his daughter's portion—ten thousand pounds—upon herself and children, and had informed Frere that he expected him to live upon an income of his own earning. After many consultations between the pair, it had been arranged that a civil appointment in Sydney would best suit the bridegroom, who was to sell out of the service. This notion was Frere's own. He never cared for military duty, and had, moreover, private debts to no inconsiderable amount. By selling his commission he would be enabled at once to pay these debts, and render himself eligible for any well-paid post under the Colonial Government that the interest of his father-in-law, and his own reputation as a convict disciplinarian, might procure. Vickers would fain have kept his daughter with him, but he unselfishly acquiesced in the scheme, admitting that Frere's plea as to the comforts she would derive from the society to be found in Sydney was a valid one.

"You can come over and see us when we get settled, papa," said Sylvia, with a young matron's pride of place, "and we can come and see you. Hobart Town is very pretty, but I want to see the world."

"You should go to London, Poppet," said Maurice, "that's the place. Isn't it, sir?"

"Oh, London!" cries Sylvia, clapping her hands. "And Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and St. James's Palace, and Hyde Park, and Fleet-street! 'Sir,' said Dr. Johnson, 'let us take a walk down Fleet-street.' Do you remember, in Mr. Croker's book, Maurice? No, you don't I know, because you only looked at the pictures, and then read Pierce Egan's account of the Topping Fight between Bob Gaynor and Ned Neal, or some such person."

"Little girls should be seen and not heard," said Maurice, between a laugh and a blush. "You have no business to read my books."

"Why not?" she asked, with a gaiety which already seemed a little strained; "husband and wife should have no secrets from each other, sir. Besides, I want you to read my books. I am going to read Shelley to you."

"Don't, my dear," said Maurice simply. "I can't understand him."

This little scene took place at the dinner-table of Frere's cottage, in New Town, to which Major Vickers had been invited, in order that future plans might be discussed.

"I don't want to go to Port Arthur," said the bride, later in the evening. "Maurice, there can be no necessity to go there."

"Well," said Maurice. "I want to have a look at the place. I ought to be familiar with all phases of convict discipline, you know."

"There is likely to be a report ordered upon the death of a prisoner," said Vickers. "The chaplain, a fussy but well-meaning person, has been memorializing about it. You may as well do it as anybody else, Maurice."

"Ay. And save the expenses of the trip," said Maurice.

"But it is so melancholy," cried Sylvia.

"The most delightful place in the island, my dear. I was there for a few days once, and I really was charmed."

It was remarkable—so Vickers thought—how each of these newly-mated ones had caught something of the other's manner of speech. Sylvia was less choice in her mode of utterance; Frere more so. He caught himself wondering which of the two methods both would finally adopt.

"But those dogs, and sharks, and things. Oh, Maurice, haven't we had enough of convicts?"

"Enough! Why, I'm going to make my living out of 'em," said Maurice, with his most natural manner.

Sylvia sighed.

"Play something, darling," said her father; and so the girl, sitting down to the piano, trilled and warbled in her pure young voice, until the Port Arthur question floated itself away upon waves of melody, and was heard of no more for that time. But upon pursuing the subject, Sylvia found her husband firm. He wanted to go, and he would go. Having once assured himself that it was advantageous to him to do a certain thing, the native obstinacy of the animal urged him to do it despite all opposition from others, and Sylvia, having had her first "cry" over the question of the visit, gave up the point. This was the first difference of their short married life, and she hastened to condone it. In the sunshine of Love and Marriage—for Maurice at first really loved her; and love, curbing the worst part of him, brought to him, as it brings to all of us, that gentleness and abnegation of self which is the only token and assurance of a love aught but animal—Sylvia's fears and doubts melted away, as the mists melt in the beams of morning. A young girl, with passionate fancy, with honest and noble aspiration, but with the dark shadow of her early mental sickness brooding upon her childlike nature, Marriage made her a woman, by developing in her a woman's trust and pride in the man to whom she had voluntarily given herself. Yet by-and-by out of this sentiment arose a new and strange source of anxiety. Having accepted her position as a wife, and put away from her all doubts as to her own capacity for loving the man to whom she had allied herself, she began to be haunted by a dread lest he might do something which would lessen the affection she bore him. On one or two occasions she had been forced to confess that her husband was more of an egotist than she cared to think. He demanded of her no great sacrifices—had he done so she would have found, in making them, the pleasure that women of her nature always find in such self-mortification—but he now and then intruded on her that disregard for the feeling of others which was part of his character. He was fond of her—almost too passionately fond, for her staider liking—but he was unused to thwart his own will in anything, least of all in those seeming trifles, for the consideration of which true selfishness bethinks itself. Did she want to read when he wanted to walk, he good-humouredly put aside her book, with an assumption that a walk with him must, of necessity, be the most pleasing thing in the world. Did she want to walk when he wanted to rest, he laughingly set up his laziness as an all-sufficient plea for her remaining within doors. He was at no pains to conceal his weariness when she read her favourite books to him. If he felt sleepy when she sang or played, he slept without apology. If she talked about a subject in which he took no interest, he turned the conversation remorselessly. He would not have wittingly offended her, but it seemed to him natural to yawn when he was weary, to sleep when he was fatigued, and to talk only about those subjects which interested him. Had anybody told him that he was selfish, he would have been astonished. Thus it came about that Sylvia one day discovered that she led two lives—one in the body, and one in the spirit—and that with her spiritual existence her husband had no share. This discovery alarmed her, but then she smiled at it. "As if Maurice could be expected to take interest in all my silly fancies," said she; and, despite a harassing thought that these same fancies were not foolish, but were the best and brightest portion of her, she succeeded in overcoming her uneasiness. "A man's thoughts are different from a woman's," she said; "he has his business and his worldly cares, of which a woman knows nothing. I must comfort him, and not worry him with my follies."

As for Maurice, he grew sometimes rather troubled in his mind. He could not understand his wife. Her nature was an enigma to him; her mind was a puzzle which would not be pieced together with the rectangular correctness of ordinary life. He had known her from a child, had loved her from a child, and had committed a mean and cruel crime to obtain her; but having got her, he was no nearer to the mystery of her than before. She was all his own, he thought. Her golden hair was for his fingers, her lips were for his caress, her eyes looked love upon him alone. Yet there were times when her lips were cold to his kisses, and her eyes looked disdainfully upon his coarser passion. He would catch her musing when he spoke to her, much as she would catch him sleeping when she read to him—but she awoke with a start and a blush at her forgetfulness, which he never did. He was not a man to brood over these things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he "gave it up". How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and remembered that he had noticed it when she was a child. Then it was a thing of no moment, now it was a marvellous discovery. He was in daily wonderment at the treasure he had obtained. He marvelled at her feminine devices of dress and adornment. Her dainty garments seemed to him perfumed with the odour of sanctity.

The fact was that the patron of Sarah Purfoy had not met with many virtuous women, and had but just discovered what a dainty morsel Modesty was.



CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE HOSPITAL.



The hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but to the tortured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed a paradise. There at least—despite the roughness and contempt with which his gaolers ministered to him—he felt that he was considered. There at least he was free from the enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and to whose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that he was daily sinking. Throughout his long term of degradation he had, as yet, aided by the memory of his sacrifice and his love, preserved something of his self-respect, but he felt that he could not preserve it long. Little by little he had come to regard himself as one out of the pale of love and mercy, as one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which the eye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the garden of Hobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage and his despair. "I am forgotten or despised; I have no name in the world; what matter if I become like one of these?" It was under the influence of this feeling that he had picked up the cat at the command of Captain Burgess. As the unhappy Kirkland had said, "As well you as another"; and truly, what was he that he should cherish sentiments of honour or humanity? But he had miscalculated his own capacity for evil. As he flogged, he blushed; and when he flung down the cat and stripped his own back for punishment, he felt a fierce joy in the thought that his baseness would be atoned for in his own blood. Even when, unnerved and faint from the hideous ordeal, he flung himself upon his knees in the cell, he regretted only the impotent ravings that the torture had forced from him. He could have bitten out his tongue for his blasphemous utterings—not because they were blasphemous, but because their utterance, by revealing his agony, gave their triumph to his tormentors. When North found him, he was in the very depth of this abasement, and he repulsed his comforter—not so much because he had seen him flogged, as because he had heard him cry. The self-reliance and force of will which had hitherto sustained him through his self-imposed trial had failed him—he felt—at the moment when he needed it most; and the man who had with unflinched front faced the gallows, the desert, and the sea, confessed his debased humanity beneath the physical torture of the lash. He had been flogged before, and had wept in secret at his degradation, but he now for the first time comprehended how terrible that degradation might be made, for he realized how the agony of the wretched body can force the soul to quit its last poor refuge of assumed indifference, and confess itself conquered.

Not many months before, one of the companions of the chain, suffering under Burgess's tender mercies, had killed his mate when at work with him, and, carrying the body on his back to the nearest gang, had surrendered himself—going to his death thanking God he had at last found a way of escape from his miseries, which no one would envy him—save his comrades. The heart of Dawes had been filled with horror at a deed so bloody, and he had, with others, commented on the cowardice of the man that would thus shirk the responsibility of that state of life in which it had pleased man and the devil to place him. Now he understood how and why the crime had been committed, and felt only pity. Lying awake with back that burned beneath its lotioned rags, when lights were low, in the breathful silence of the hospital, he registered in his heart a terrible oath that he would die ere he would again be made such hideous sport for his enemies. In this frame of mind, with such shreds of honour and worth as had formerly clung to him blown away in the whirlwind of his passion, he bethought him of the strange man who had deigned to clasp his hand and call him "brother". He had wept no unmanly tears at this sudden flow of tenderness in one whom he had thought as callous as the rest. He had been touched with wondrous sympathy at the confession of weakness made to him, in a moment when his own weakness had overcome him to his shame. Soothed by the brief rest that his fortnight of hospital seclusion had afforded him, he had begun, in a languid and speculative way, to turn his thoughts to religion. He had read of martyrs who had borne agonies unspeakable, upheld by their confidence in Heaven and God. In his old wild youth he had scoffed at prayers and priests; in the hate to his kind that had grown upon him with his later years he had despised a creed that told men to love one another. "God is love, my brethren," said the chaplain on Sundays, and all the week the thongs of the overseer cracked, and the cat hissed and swung. Of what practical value was a piety that preached but did not practise? It was admirable for the "religious instructor" to tell a prisoner that he must not give way to evil passions, but must bear his punishment with meekness. It was only right that he should advise him to "put his trust in God". But as a hardened prisoner, convicted of getting drunk in an unlicensed house of entertainment, had said, "God's terrible far from Port Arthur."

Rufus Dawes had smiled at the spectacle of priests admonishing men, who knew what he knew and had seen what he had seen, for the trivialities of lying and stealing. He had believed all priests impostors or fools, all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, he began to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely was not a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it something vital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with faith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, and turned—as all men turn when in such case—to the Unknown. Had now there been at hand some Christian priest, some Christian-spirited man even, no matter of what faith, to pour into the ears of this poor wretch words of comfort and grace; to rend away from him the garment of sullenness and despair in which he had wrapped himself; to drag from him a confession of his unworthiness, his obstinacy, and his hasty judgment, and to cheer his fainting soul with promise of immortality and justice, he might have been saved from his after fate; but there was no such man. He asked for the chaplain. North was fighting the Convict Department, seeking vengeance for Kirkland, and (victim of "clerks with the cold spurt of the pen") was pushed hither and thither, referred here, snubbed there, bowed out in another place. Rufus Dawes, half ashamed of himself for his request, waited a long morning, and then saw, respectfully ushered into his cell as his soul's physician—Meekin.



CHAPTER XIX. THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION.



"Well, my good man," said Meekin, soothingly, "so you wanted to see me."

"I asked for the chaplain," said Rufus Dawes, his anger with himself growing apace. "I am the chaplain," returned Meekin, with dignity, as who should say—"none of your brandy-drinking, pea-jacketed Norths, but a Respectable chaplain who is the friend of a Bishop!"

"I thought that Mr. North was—"

"Mr. North has left, sir," said Meekin, dryly, "but I will hear what you have to say. There is no occasion to go, constable; wait outside the door."

Rufus Dawes shifted himself on the wooden bench, and resting his scarcely-healed back against the wall, smiled bitterly. "Don't be afraid, sir; I am not going to harm you," he said. "I only wanted to talk a little."

"Do you read your Bible, Dawes?" asked Meekin, by way of reply. "It would be better to read your Bible than to talk, I think. You must humble yourself in prayer, Dawes."

"I have read it," said Dawes, still lying back and watching him.

"But is your mind softened by its teachings? Do you realize the Infinite Mercy of God, Who has compassion, Dawes, upon the greatest sinners?" The convict made a move of impatience. The old, sickening, barren cant of piety was to be recommenced then. He came asking for bread, and they gave him the usual stone.

"Do you believe that there is a God, Mr. Meekin?"

"Abandoned sinner! Do you insult a clergyman by such a question?"

"Because I think sometimes that if there is, He must often be dissatisfied at the way things are done here," said Dawes, half to himself.

"I can listen to no mutinous observations, prisoner," said Meekin. "Do not add blasphemy to your other crimes. I fear that all conversation with you, in your present frame of mind, would be worse than useless. I will mark a few passages in your Bible, that seem to me appropriate to your condition, and beg you to commit them to memory. Hailes, the door, if you please."

So, with a bow, the "consoler" departed.

Rufus Dawes felt his heart grow sick. North had gone, then. The only man who had seemed to have a heart in his bosom had gone. The only man who had dared to clasp his horny and blood-stained hand, and call him "brother", had gone. Turning his head, he saw through the window—wide open and unbarred, for Nature, at Port Arthur, had no need of bars—the lovely bay, smooth as glass, glittering in the afternoon sun, the long quay, spotted with groups of parti-coloured chain-gangs, and heard, mingling with the soft murmur of the waves, and the gentle rustling of the trees, the never-ceasing clashing of irons, and the eternal click of hammer. Was he to be for ever buried in this whitened sepulchre, shut out from the face of Heaven and mankind!

The appearance of Hailes broke his reverie. "Here's a book for you," said he, with a grin. "Parson sent it."

Rufus Dawes took the Bible, and, placing it on his knees, turned to the places indicated by slips of paper, embracing some twenty marked texts.

"Parson says he'll come and hear you to-morrer, and you're to keep the book clean."

"Keep the book clean!" and "hear him!" Did Meekin think that he was a charity school boy? The utter incapacity of the chaplain to understand his wants was so sublime that it was nearly ridiculous enough to make him laugh. He turned his eyes downwards to the texts. Good Meekin, in the fullness of his stupidity, had selected the fiercest denunciations of bard and priest. The most notable of the Psalmist's curses upon his enemies, the most furious of Isaiah's ravings anent the forgetfulness of the national worship, the most terrible thunderings of apostle and evangelist against idolatry and unbelief, were grouped together and presented to Dawes to soothe him. All the material horrors of Meekin's faith—stripped, by force of dissociation from the context, of all poetic feeling and local colouring—were launched at the suffering sinner by Meekin's ignorant hand. The miserable man, seeking for consolation and peace, turned over the leaves of the Bible only to find himself threatened with "the pains of Hell", "the never-dying worm", "the unquenchable fire", "the bubbling brimstone", the "bottomless pit", from out of which the "smoke of his torment" should ascend for ever and ever. Before his eyes was held no image of a tender Saviour (with hands soft to soothe, and eyes brimming with ineffable pity) dying crucified that he and other malefactors might have hope, by thinking on such marvellous humanity. The worthy Pharisee who was sent to him to teach him how mankind is to be redeemed with Love, preached only that harsh Law whose barbarous power died with the gentle Nazarene on Calvary.

Repelled by this unlooked-for ending to his hopes, he let the book fall to the ground. "Is there, then, nothing but torment for me in this world or the next?" he groaned, shuddering. Presently his eyes sought his right hand, resting upon it as though it were not his own, or had some secret virtue which made it different from the other. "He would not have done this? He would not have thrust upon me these savage judgments, these dreadful threats of Hell and Death. He called me 'Brother'!" And filled with a strange wild pity for himself, and yearning love towards the man who befriended him, he fell to nursing the hand on which North's tears had fallen, moaning and rocking himself to and fro.

Meekin, in the morning, found his pupil more sullen than ever.

"Have you learned these texts, my man?" said he, cheerfully, willing not to be angered with his uncouth and unpromising convert.

Rufus Dawes pointed with his foot to the Bible, which still lay on the floor as he had left it the night before. "No!"

"No! Why not?"

"I would learn no such words as those. I would rather forget them."

"Forget them! My good man, I—"

Rufus Dawes sprang up in sudden wrath, and pointing to his cell door with a gesture that—chained and degraded as he was—had something of dignity in it, cried, "What do you know about the feelings of such as I? Take your book and yourself away. When I asked for a priest, I had no thought of you. Begone!"

Meekin, despite the halo of sanctity which he felt should surround him, found his gentility melt all of a sudden. Adventitious distinctions had disappeared for the instant. The pair had become simply man and man, and the sleek priest-master quailing before the outraged manhood of the convict-penitent, picked up his Bible and backed out.

"That man Dawes is very insolent," said the insulted chaplain to Burgess. "He was brutal to me to-day—quite brutal."