George Manville Fenn (continued 8)

“It’ll be your turn next,” he yelled, as he threw an arm over the side of the stretcher. “Can’t you go slow? Ah, the cowards—the cowards!”

Here the man rolled out a fierce volley of imprecations, his voice sounding hoarse and strange; but his bearers, morose, pallid-looking men, with a savage, downcast look, paid no heed, tramping on, and the guard of pensioners taking it all as a matter of course.

At a glance the difference between them was most marked.

The pensioner guard had a smart, independent air, there, was an easy-going, cheery look in their brown faces; while in those of the men they guarded, and upon whom they would have been called to fire if there were an attempt to escape, there were deeply stamped in the hollow cheek, sunken eye, and graven lines, crime, misery, and degradation, and that savage recklessness that seems to lower man to a degree far beneath the beast of the jungle or wild. The closely-cropped hair, the shorn chins with the stubble of several days’ growth, and the fierce glare of the convicts’ overshadowed eyes as they caught sight of the two well-dressed ladies, sent a thrill through Bayle’s breast, and he would gladly have even now forced his companions to retreat, but it was impossible. For as they came up, the ruffian on the stretcher to which he was strapped, uttered an agonising cry of pain, and then yelled out the one word, “Water!”

Julia uttered a low sobbing cry, and, before Bayle or Mrs Hallam could realise her act, she had started forward and laid her hand upon the old sergeant’s arm, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she cried:

“Oh, sir, do you not hear him? Is there no water here?”

“Halt!” shouted the sergeant; and with military precision the cortège stopped. “Set him down, lads.” The convicts gave a half-turn and lowered the handles of the stretcher, retaining them for a moment, and then, in the same automatic way, placed their burden on the dusty earth. It was quickly and smoothly done, in silence, but the movement seemed to cause the man intense pain, and he writhed and cursed horribly at his bearers, ending by asking again for water.

“It isn’t far to the hospital, miss,” said the sergeant; “and he has had some once. Here, Jones, give me your canteen.”

One of the guard unslung his water-tin and handed it to Julia, who seized it eagerly, while the sergeant turned to Bayle and said in a quick whisper:

“Hadn’t you better get the ladies away, sir?”

By this time Julia was on her knees by the side of the stretcher, holding the canteen to the lips of the wretched man, who drank with avidity, rolling his starting eyes from side to side.

“Has there been a battle?” whispered Julia to the pensioner who had handed her the water-tin. “He is dreadfully wounded, is he not? Will he die?”

Julia’s quickly following questions were heard by the eight convicts, who were looking on with heavy, brutal curiosity, but not one glanced at his companions.

“Bless your heart, no, miss. A few days in horspital will put him right,” said the man, smiling.

“How can you be so cruel?” panted the girl indignantly. “Suppose you were lying there?”

“Well, I hope, miss,” said the man good-humouredly, “that if I had been blackguard enough to have my back scratched, I should not be such a cur as to howl like that.”

“Julia, my child, come away,” whispered Bayle, taking her hand and, trying to raise her as the sergeant looked on good-humouredly. “The man has been flogged for some offence. This is no place for you.”

“Hush!” she cried, as, drawing away her hand, she bent over the wretched man and wiped the great drops of perspiration from his forehead.

He ceased his restless writhing and gazed up at the sweet face bending over him with a look of wonder. Then his eyes dilated, and his lips parted. The next moment he had turned his eyes upon Mrs Hallam, who was bending over her child half-trying to raise her, but with a horrible fascination in her gaze, while a curious silence seemed to have fallen on the group—so curious, that when one of the convicts moved slightly, the clank of a ring he wore sounded strangely loud in the hot sunshine.

“By your leave, miss,” said the sergeant, not unkindly. “I daren’t stop. Fall in, my lads! Stretchers! Forward!”

As the man, who was perfectly silent now, was raised by the convicts to the level of their shoulders, he wrenched his head round that he might turn his distorted features, purple with their deep flush, and continue his wondering stare at Julia and Mrs Hallam.

Then the tramp and clank, tramp and clank went on, the guard raising each a hand to his forehead, and smiling at the group they left, while the old sergeant took off his cap, the sun shining down on a good manly English face, as he took a step towards Julia.

“I beg pardon, miss,” he said; “I’m only a rough old pensioner—but if you’d let me kiss your hand.”

Julia smiled in the sergeant’s brown face as she laid her white little hand in his, and he raised it with rugged reverence to his lips.

Then, saluting Mrs Hallam, he turned quickly to Bayle:

“I did say, sir, as this place was just about like—you know what; but I see we’ve got angels even here.”

He went off at the double after his men, twenty paces ahead, while Bayle, warned by Julia, had just time to catch Mrs Hallam as she reeled, and would have fallen.

“Mother, dear mother!” cried Julia. “This scene was too terrible for you.”

“No, no! I am better now,” said Mrs Hallam hoarsely. “Let us go on. Did you see?” she whispered, turning to Bayle.

“See?” he said reproachfully. “Yes; but I tried so hard to spare you this scene.”

“Yes; but it was to be,” she said in the same hoarse whisper, as, with one hand she held Julia from her, and spoke almost in her companion’s ear. “You did not know him,” she said. “I did; at once.”

“That man?”

“Yes.”

Then, after a painful pause, she added:

“It was Stephen Crellock.”

“Her husband’s associate and friend,” said Bayle, as he stood outside the prison gates waiting; for, after the presentation of the proper forms, Millicent Hallam and her child had been admitted by special permission to see the prisoner named upon their pass, and Christie Bayle remained without, seeing in imagination the meeting between husband, wife, and child, and as he waited, seated on a block of stone, his head went down upon his hands, and his spirit sank very low, for all was dark upon the life-path now ahead.

Volume Three—Chapter Twenty.

In the Convict Barracks.

“Be firm, my darling,” whispered Mrs Hallam; and as they followed their guide, hand in hand, Julia seemed to take strength and fortitude from the proud, pale face, and eyes bright with matronly love and hope.

“Mother!”

Only that word, but it was enough. Millicent Hallam was satisfied, for she read in the tone and in the look that accompanied it the fact that her teaching had not been in vain, and that she had come to meet her martyr husband with the love of wife and child.

The officer who showed them into a bare room, with its grated windows, glanced at them curiously before leaving: and then they had to wait through, what seemed to them, an age of agony, listening to the slow, regular tramp of a couple of sentries, one seeming to be in a passage close at hand, the other beneath the window of the room where they were seated upon a rough bench.

“Courage! my child,” said Mrs Hallam, looking at Julia with a smile; and then it was the latter who had to start up and support her, for there was the distant sound of feet, and Mrs Hallam’s face contracted as from some terrible spasm, and she swayed heavily sidewise.

“Heaven give me strength!” she groaned; and then, clinging together, the suffering women watched the door as the heavy tramp came nearer, and with it a strange hollow, echoing sound.

As Julia watched the door the remembrance of the stern, handsome face of her childhood seemed to come up from the past—that face with the profusion of well-tended, wavy black hair, brushed back from the high, white forehead; the bright, piercing eyes that were shaded by long, heavy lashes; the closely-shaven lips and chin, and the thick, dark whiskers—the face of the portrait in their little London home. And it seemed to her that she would see it again directly, that the old sternness would have given place to a smile of welcome, and as her heart beat fast her eyes filled with tears, and she was gazing through a mist that dimmed her sight.

The door was thrown open; the tramp of the footsteps ceased, and as the door was abruptly closed, mother and daughter remained unmoved, clinging more tightly together, staring wildly through their tear-blinded eyes at the gaunt convict standing there with face that seemed to have been stamped in the mould of the poor wretch’s they had so lately seen: closely-cropped grey hair, stubbly, silvered beard, and face drawn in a half-derisive smile.

“Well!” he said, in a strange, hoarse voice that was brutal in its tones; and a sound issued from his throat that bore some resemblance to a laugh. “Am I so changed?”

“Robert! husband!”

The words rang through the cell-like room like the cry of some stricken life, and Millicent Hallam threw herself upon the convict’s breast.

He bent over her as he held her tightly, and placed his mouth to her ear, while the beautiful quivering lips were turned towards his in their agony of longing for his welcoming kiss.

“Hush! Listen!” he said, and he gave her a sharp shake. “Have you brought the tin case?”

She nodded as she clung to him, clasping him more tightly to her heaving breast.

“You’ve got it safely?”

She nodded quickly again.

“Where is it?”

She breathed hard, and attempted to speak, but it was some time before she could utter the expected words.

“Why don’t you speak?” he said in a rough whisper. “You have it safe?”

She nodded again.

“Where?”

“It—it is at—the hotel,” panted Mrs Hallam.

“Quite safe?”

“Yes.”

“Unopened?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God!”

His manner seemed to change, his eyes brightened, and his brutalised countenance altogether looked less repellent, as he uttered those words. As he stood there at first, his head hung, as it were, forward from between his shoulders, and his whole attitude had a despicable, cringing, trampled-down look that now seemed to pass away. He filled out and drew himself up; his eyes brightened as if hope had been borne to him by the coming of wife and child. It was no longer the same man, so it seemed to Julia as she stood aloof, trembling and waiting for him to speak to her.

“Good girl! good wife!” said Hallam, in a low voice; and with some show of affection he kissed the quivering woman, who, as she clasped him to her heart and grew to him once more, saw nothing of the change, but closed her eyes mentally and really, the longing of years satisfied, everything forgotten, even the presence of Julia, in the great joy of being united once again.

“There!” he said suddenly; “that must do now. There is only a short time, and I have lots to say, my gal.”

Millicent Hallam’s eyes opened, and she quite started back from her love romance to reality, his words sounded so harsh, his language was so coarse and strange; but she smiled again directly, a happy, joyous smile, as nestling within her husband’s left arm, she laid her cheek upon the coarse woollen convict garb, and clinging there sent with a flash from her humid eyes a loving invitation to her child.

She did not speak, but her action was eloquent as words, and bade the trembling girl take the place she had half-vacated, the share she offered—the strong right arm, and the half of her husband’s breast.

Julia read and knew, and in an instant she too was clinging to the convict, looking piteously in his scarred, brutalised countenance, with eyes that strove so hard to be full of love, but which gazed through no medium of romance. Strive how she would, all seemed so hideously real—this hard, coarse-looking, rough-voiced man was not the father she had been taught to reverence and love; and it was with a heart full of misery and despair that she gazed at him with her lips quivering, and then burst into a wild fit of sobbing as she buried her face in his breast.

“There, there, don’t cry,” he said almost impatiently; and there was no working of the face, nothing to indicate that he was moved by the passionate love of his faithful wife, or the agony of the beautiful girl whose sobs shook his breast. “Time’s precious now. Wait till I get out of this place. You go and sit down, Julie. By jingo!” he continued, with a look of admiration as he held her off at arm’s length, “what a handsome gal you’ve grown! No sweetheart yet, I hope?”

Julia shrank from him with scarlet face, and as he loosed her hand she shrank back to the rough seat, with her eyes troubled, and her hands trembling.

“Now, Milly, my gal,” said Hallam, drawing his wife’s arm through his, and leading her beneath the window as he spoke in a low voice once more, “you have that case safe and unopened?”

“Yes.”

“Then look here! Business. I must be rough and plain. You have brought me my freedom.”

“Robert!”

Only that word, but so full of frantic joy.

“Quiet, and listen. You will do exactly as I tell you?”

“Yes. Can you doubt?”

“No. Now look here. You will take a good house at once, the best you can. If you can’t get one—they’re very scarce—the hotel will do. Stay there, and behave as if you were well off—as you are.”

“Robert, I have nothing,” she gasped.

“Yes, you have,” he said with a laugh. “I have; and we are one.”

“You have? Money?”

“Of course. Do you suppose a man is at work out here for a dozen years without making some? There! don’t you worry about that: you’re new. You’ll find plenty of men, who came out as convicts, rich men now with land of their own. But we are wasting time. You have brought out my freedom.”

“Your pardon?”

“No. Nonsense! I shall have to stay out here; but it does not matter now. Only go and do as I tell you, and carefully, for you are only a woman in a strange place, and alone till you get me out.”

“Mr Bayle is here, and Sir Gordon—”

“Bayle!” cried Hallam, catching her wrist with a savage grip and staring in an angry way at the agitated face before him.

“Yes; he has been so helpful and true all through our trouble, and—”

“Curse Bayle!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a fierce, impatient way: “Never mind that now, I shall have to go back to the gang directly, and I have not said half I want to say.”

“I will not speak again,” she said eagerly. “Tell me what to do.”

“Take house or apartments at once; behave as if you were well off—I tell you that you are; do all yourself, and send in an application to the authorities for two assigned servants.”

“Assigned servants?”

“Yes—convict servants,” said Hallam impatiently. “There! you must know. There are so many that the Government are glad to get the well-behaved convicts off their hands, and into the care of settlers who undertake their charge. You want two men, as you have settled here. You will have papers to sign, and give undertakings; but do it all boldly, and you will select two. They won’t ask you any questions about your taking up land, they are too glad to get rid of us. If they do ask anything, you can boldly say you want them for butler and coachman.”

“But, Robert, I do not understand.”

“Do as I tell you,” he said sharply. “You will select two men—myself and Stephen Crellock.”

“Yourself and Stephen Crellock?”

“Yes. Don’t look so bewildered, woman. It is the regular thing, and we shall be set at liberty.”

“At liberty?”

“Yes, to go anywhere in the colony. You are answerable to the Government for us.”

“But, Robert, you would come as—my servant?”

“Pooh! Only in name. So long as you claim us as your servants, that is all that is wanted. Plenty are freed on these terms, and once they are out, go and live with their families, like any one else.”

“This is done here?”

“To be sure it is. I tell you that once a man has been in the gangs here for a few years they are glad to get him off their hands, so as to leave room for others who are coming out. Why, Milly, they could not keep all who are sent away from England, and people are easier and more forgiving out here. Hundreds of those you see here were lags.”

“Lags?”

“Bah! how innocent you are. Well, convicts. Now, quick! they are coming. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“And you will do as I tell you?”

“Everything,” said Mrs Hallam.

“Of course you cannot make this a matter of secrecy. It does not matter who knows. But the tin case; remember that is for me alone.”

“But the authorities,” said Mrs Hallam; “they will know I am your wife.”

“The authorities will trouble nothing about it. I have a fairly good record, and they will be glad. As for Crellock—”

“That man!” gasped Mrs Hallam.

“Well?”

“We saw him—as we came.”

Hallam’s face puckered.

“Poor fellow,” he said hastily. “Ah, that was a specimen of the cruel treatment we receive. It was unfortunate. But we can’t talk about that. There they are. Remember!”

She pressed the coarse, hard hand that was holding hers as the door was thrown open, and without another word Hallam obeyed the sign made by the officer in the doorway, and, as the two women crept together, Julia receiving no further recognition, they saw him sink from his erect position, his head went down, his back rounded, and he went out.

Then the door shut loudly, and they stood listening, as the steps died away, save those of the sentries in the passage and beneath the window.

The silence, as they stood in that blank, cell-like room, was terrible; and when at last Julia spoke, her mother started and stared at her wildly from the confused rush of thought that was passing through her brain.

“Mother, is it some dreadful dream?”

Mrs Hallam’s lips parted, but no words came, and for the moment she seemed to be sharing her child’s mental shock, the terrible disillusioning to which she had been subjected.

The recovery was quick, though, as she drew a long breath.

“Dream? No, my child, it is real; and at last we can rescue him from his dreadful fate.”

Whatever thoughts she may have had that militated against her hopes she crushed down, forcing herself to see nothing but the result of a terrible persecution, and ready to be angered with herself for any doubts as to her duty.

In this spirit she followed the man who had led them in back to the gates, where Bayle was waiting; and as he gazed anxiously in the faces of the two women it was to see Julie’s scared, white, and ready to look appealingly in his, while Mrs Hallam’s was radiant and proud with the light of her true woman’s love and devotion to him she told herself it was her duty to obey.

That night mother and daughter, clasped in each other’s arms, knelt and prayed, the one for strength to carry out her duty, and restore Robert Hallam to his place in the world of men; the other for power to love the father whom she had crossed the great ocean to gain—the man who had seemed to be so little like the father of her dreams.

Volume Four—Chapter One.

In the New Land—The Situation.

“Look here, Bayle, this is about the maddest thing I ever knew. Will you have the goodness to tell me why we are stopping here?”

Bayle looked up from the book he was reading in the pleasant room that formed their home, one which Tom Porter had found no difficulty in fitting up in good cabin style.

A year had glided by since they landed, a year that Sir Gordon had passed in the most unsatisfactory way.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“Yes. Didn’t I speak plainly? Why are we stopping here? For goodness’ sake, Bayle, don’t you take to aggravating me by repeating my words! I’m irritable enough without that!”

“Nonsense, my dear old friend!” cried Bayle, rising.

“Hang it, man, don’t throw my age in my teeth! I can’t help being old!”

“May I live to be as old,” said Bayle, smiling, and laying his hand on Sir Gordon’s shoulder.

“Bah! don’t pray for that, man! Why should you want to live? To see all your pet schemes knocked on the head, and those you care for go to the bad, while your aches and pains increase, and you are gliding down the hill of life a wretched, selfish old man, unloved, uncared for. There, life is all a miserable mistake.”

“Uncared for, eh?” said Bayle. “Have you no friends?”

“Not one,” groaned the old man, writhing, as he felt a twinge in his back. “Oh, this bitter south wind! it’s worse than our north!”

“Shame! Why, Tom Porter watches you night and day. He would die for you.”

“So would a dog. The scoundrel only thinks of how much money I shall leave him when I go.”

Unheard by either, Tom Porter had entered the room, sailor fashion, barefoot, in the easy canvas suit he wore when yachting with his master. He had brought in a basin of broth of his own brewing, as he termed it—for Sir Gordon was unwell—a plate with a couple of slices of bread of his own toasting in the other hand, and he was holding the silver spoon from Sir Gordon’s travelling canteen beneath his chin.

He heard every word as he stood waiting respectfully to bring in his master’s “’levens,” as he called it; and, instead of getting the sherry from the cellaret, he began screwing up his hard face, and showing his emotion by working about his bare toes.

As Sir Gordon finished his bitter speech, Tom Porter took a step forward and threw the basin of mutton broth, basin, plate, and all, under the grate with a crash, and stalked towards the door.

“You scoundrel!” roared Sir Gordon. “You, Tom Porter, stop!”

“Be damned if I do!” growled the man. “There’s mutiny on, and I leave the ship.”

Bang!

The door was closed violently, and Sir Gordon looked helplessly up at Bayle.

“You see!”

“Yes,” said Bayle, “I see. Poor fellow! Why did you wound his feelings like that?”

“There!” cried Sir Gordon; “now you side with the scoundrel. Twenty-five years has he been with me, and look at my soup!”

Bayle laughed.

“Yes: that’s right: laugh at me. I’m getting old and weak. Laugh at me. I suppose the next thing will be that you will go off and leave me here in the lurch.”

“That is just my way, is it not?” said Bayle, smiling.

“Well, no,” grumbled Sir Gordon, “I suppose it is not. But then you are such a fool, Bayle. I haven’t patience with you!”

“I’m afraid I am a great trial to you.”

“You are—a terrible trial; every one’s a terrible trial—everything goes wrong. That blundering ass Tom Porter must even go and knock a hole in the Sylph on the rocks.”

“Yes, that was unfortunate,” said Bayle.

“Here: I shall go back. It’s of no use staying here. Everything I see aggravates me. Matters are getting worse with the Hallams. Let’s go home, Bayle.”

Christie Bayle stood looking straight before him for some time, and then shook his head softly.

“No: not yet,” he said at last.

“But I can’t go back without you, man; and it is of no use to stay. As I said before—Why am I stopping here?”

Bayle looked at him in his quiet, smiling way for some moments before replying.

“In the furtherance of your old scheme of unselfishness, and in the hope of doing good to the friends we love.”

“Oh, nonsense! Tush, man! Absurd! I wanted to be friends, and be helpful; but that’s all over now. See what is going on. Look at that girl. Next thing we hear will be that she is married to one of those two fellows.”

“I think if she accepted Lieutenant Eaton, and he married her, and took her away from this place, it would be the best thing that could happen.”

“Humph! I don’t!” muttered Sir Gordon. “Then look at Mrs Hallam.”

Bayle drew in his breath with a low hiss.

“It is horrible, man—it is horrible!” cried Sir Gordon excitedly. “Bayle, you know how I loved that woman twenty years ago? Well, it was impossible; it would have been May and December even then, for I’m a very old man, Bayle—older than you think. I was an old fool, perhaps, but it was my nature. I loved her very dearly. It was not to be; but the old love isn’t dead. Bayle, old fellow, if I had been a good man I should say that the old love was purified of its grosser parts, but that would not fit with me.”

“Why judge yourself so harshly?”

“Because I deserve it, man. Well, well, time went on, and when we met again, I can’t describe what I felt over that child. At times, when her pretty dark face had the look of that scoundrel Hallam in it, I hated her; but when her eyes lit up with that sweet, innocent smile, the tears used to come into mine, and I felt as if it was Millicent Luttrell a child again, and that it would have been the culmination of earthly happiness to have said, this is my darling child.”

“Yes,” said Bayle softly.

“I worshipped that girl, Bayle. It was for her sake I came over here to this horrible pandemonium, to watch over and be her guardian. I could not have stayed away. But I must go now. I can’t bear it; I can’t stand it any longer.”

“You will not go,” said Bayle slowly.

“Yes, I tell you, I must. It is horrible. I don’t think she is ungrateful, poor child; but she is being brutalised by companionship with that scoundrel’s set.”

“No, no! For heaven’s sake don’t say that!”

“I do say it,” cried the old man impetuously, “she and her mother too. How can they help it with such surroundings? The decent people will not go—only that Eaton and Mrs Otway. Bless the woman! I thought her a forward, shameless soldier’s wife, but she has the heart of a true lady, and keeps to the Hallams in spite of all.”

“It is very horrible,” said Bayle; “but we are helpless.”

“Helpless? Yes; if he would only kill himself with his wretched drink, or get made an end of somehow.”

“Hush!” said Bayle, rather sternly; “don’t talk like that.”

“Now you are beginning to bully me, Bayle,” cried the old man querulously. “Don’t you turn against me. I get insults enough at that scoundrel Hallam’s—enough to make my blood boil.”

“Yes, I know, I know,” said Bayle.

“And yet, old idiot that I am, I go there for the sake of these women, and bear it all—I, whom people call a gentleman, I go there and am civil to the scoundrel who robbed me, and put up with his insolence and his scowls. But I’m his master still. He dare not turn upon me. I can make him quail when I like. Bayle, old fellow,” he cried, with a satisfied chuckle, “how the scoundrel would like to give me a dose!”

Bayle sat down with his brow full of the lines of care.

“I’m not like you,” continued Sir Gordon, whom the relation of his troubles seemed to relieve, “I won’t be driven away. I think you were wrong.”

“No,” said Bayle quietly, “it was causing her pain. It was plain enough that in his sordid mind my presence was a greater injury than yours. He was wearing her life away, and I thought it better that our intimacy should grow less and less.”

“But, my boy, that’s where you were wrong. Bad as the scoundrel is, he could never have had a jealous thought of that saint—there, don’t call me irreverent—I say it again, that saint of a woman.”

“Oh, no, I can’t think that myself,” said Bayle, “but my presence was a standing reproach to him.”

“How could it be more than mine?”

“You are different. He always hated me from the first time we met at King’s Castor.”

“I believe he did,” said Sir Gordon warmly; “but see how he detests the sight of me.”

“Yes, but you expressed the feeling only a few minutes ago when you said you were still his master and you made him quail. My dear old friend, if I could ever have indulged in a hope that Robert Hallam had been unjustly punished, his behaviour towards you would have swept it away. It is always that of the conscience-stricken man—his unreasoning dislike of the one whom he has wronged.”

“Perhaps you are right, Bayle, perhaps you are right. But there was no doubt about his guilt—a scoundrel, and I am as sure as I am that I live, the rascal made a hoard somehow, and is living upon it now.”

“You think that? What about the sealing speculation?”

“Ah! he and Crellock have made some money by it, no doubt; but not enough to live as they do. I know that Hallam is spending my money and triumphing over me all the time, and I would not care if those women were free of him, but I’m afraid that will never be.”

Bayle remained silent.

“Do you think she believes in his innocence still?”

Bayle remained silent for a time, and then said slowly: “I believe that Millicent Hallam, even if she discovered his guilt, and could at last believe in it, would suffer in secret, and bear with him in the hope that he would repent.”

“And never leave him?”

“Never,” aid Bayle firmly, “unless under some terrible provocation, one so great that no woman could bear; and from that provocation, and the deathblow it would be to her, I pray heaven she may be spared.”

“Amen!” said Sir Gordon softly.

“Bayle,” he added, after a pause, “I am getting old and irritable; I feel every change. I called you a fool!”

“The irritable spirit of pain within—not you.”

“Ah! well,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “you know me by heart now, my dear boy. I want to say something ivery serious to you. I never said it before, though I have thought about it ever since those happy evenings we spent at Clerkenwell.”

Bayle turned to him wonderingly.

“You will bear with me—I may hurt your feelings.”

“If you do I know you will heal them the next time we meet,” replied Bayle.

“Well, then, tell me this. When I first began visiting at Mrs Hallam’s house there in London, had you not the full intention of some day asking Julie to be your wife?”

Christie Bayle turned his manly, sincere countenance full upon his old friend, and said, in a deep, low voice, broken by emotion:

“Such a thought had never entered my mind.”

“Never?”

“Never, on my word as a man.”

“You tell me that you have never loved Julie Hallam save as a father might love his child?”

Bayle shook his head slowly, and a piteous look came into his eyes.

“No,” he said softly, “I cannot.”

“Then you do love her?” cried the old man joyfully. “Now we shall get out of the wood. Why, my dear boy—”

“Hush!” said Bayle sadly, “I first learned what was in my heart when our voyage was half over.”

“And you saw her chatting with that dandy young officer. Oh! pooh, pooh! that is nothing. She does not care for him.”

Bayle shook his head again.

“Why, my dear boy, you must end all this.”

“You forget,” said Bayle sadly. “History is repeating itself. Remember your own affair.”

“Ah! but I was an old man; you are young.”

“Young!” said Bayle sadly. “No, I was always her old teacher; and she loves this man.”

“I cannot think it,” cried Sir Gordon, “and what is more, Hallam has outrageous plans of his own—look there.”

There were the sounds of horses’ feet on the newly-made Government road that passed the house Sir Gordon had chosen on account of its leading down on one side to where lay his lugger, in which he spent half his time cruising among the islands, and in fine weather out and along the Pacific shore; on the other side to the eastward of the huge billows that rolled in with their heavy thunderous roar.

As Bayle looked up, he saw Julia in a plain grey riding habit, mounted on a handsome mare, cantering up with a well-dressed, bluff-looking, middle-aged man by her side. He, too, was well mounted, and as Julia checked her mare to walk by Sir Gordon’s cottage, the man drew rein and watched her closely. She bent forward, scanning the windows anxiously, but seeing no one, for the occupants of the room were by the fire as they passed on, and Bayle turned to Sir Gordon with an angry look in his eyes.

“Oh no! Impossible!” he exclaimed.

“There’s nothing impossible out here in this horrible penal place,” cried Sir Gordon, in a voice full of agitation.

“No,” said Bayle, whose face cleared, and he smiled; “it is not even impossible that my old friend will go on enjoying his cruises about these glorious shores, and that the mutiny—Shall I call in Tom Porter?”

“Well, yes; I suppose you must,” said Sir Gordon with a grim smile.

Bayle went to the door, and Tom Porter answered the call with an “Ay, ay, sir,” and came padding over the floor with his bare feet like a man-o’-war’s-man on a holy-stoned deck.

“Sir Gordon wants to speak to you, Porter,” said Bayle, making as if to go.

“No, no, Bayle! don’t go and leave me with this scoundrelly mutineer. He’ll murder me. There, Tom Porter,” he continued, “I’m an irritable old fool, and I’m very sorry, and I beg your pardon; but you ought to know better than to take offence.”

Tom Porter, for answer, trotted out of the room to return at the end of a few moments with another basin of soup and two slices of toast already made.

Volume Four—Chapter Two.

Mrs Hallam’s Servant.

Millicent Hallam had found that all her husband had said was correct. There was no difficulty at all in the matter, and few questions were asked, for the Government was only too glad to get convicts drafted off as assigned servants to all who applied, and so long as no complaints were made of their behaviour, the prisoners to whom passes were given remained free of the colony.

In many cases they led the lives of slaves to the settlers, and found that they had exchanged the rod for the scorpion; but they bore all for the sake of the comparative freedom, and even preferred life at some up-country station, where a slight offence was punished with the lash, to returning to the chain-gang and the prison, or the heavy work of making roads.

The cat was the cure for all ills in those days, when almost any one was appointed magistrate of his district. A., the holder of so many assigned men, would be a justice, and one of his men would offend. In that case, he would send him over to B., the magistrate of the next district. B. would also be a squatter and holder of assigned convict servants. There would be a short examination; A’s man would be well flogged and sent back. In due time B. would require the same service performed, and would send an offender over to A. to have him punished in turn.

In the growing town, assigned servants were employed in a variety of ways; and it was common enough for relatives of the convicts to apply and have husband, son, or brother assigned to them, the ticket-of-leave-man finding no difficulty there on account of being a jail-bird, where many of the most prosperous traders and squatters had once worn the prison garb.

Robert Hallam was soon released, and at the end of a very short time Stephen Crellock followed; the pair becoming ostensibly butler and coachman to a wealthy lady who had settled in Sydney—but servants only in the Government books; for, unquestioned, Hallam at once took up his position as master of the house, and, to his wife’s horror, Crellock, directly he was released, came and took possession of the room set apart for him as Hallam’s oldest friend.

A strange state of society perhaps, but it is a mere matter of history; such proceedings were frequent in the days when Botany Bay was the dépôt for the social sinners of our land.

All the same though, poor Botany Bay, with its abundant specimens of Austral growth that delighted the naturalists of the early expedition, never did become a penal settlement. It was selected, and the first convict-ship went there to form the great prison; but the place was unsuitable, and Port Jackson, the site of Sydney, proved so vastly superior that the expedition went on there at once.

At home, in England, though, Botany Bay was spoken of always as the convicts’ home, and the term embraced the whole of the penal settlements, including Norfolk Island, that horror of our laws, and Van Diemen’s Land.

Opportunity had served just after Hallam was released, and had taken up his residence in simple lodgings which Mrs Hallam, with Bayle’s help, had secured, for one of the best villas that had been built in the place—an attractive wooden bungalow, with broad verandahs and lovely garden sloping down towards the harbour—was to let.

Millicent Hallam had looked at her husband in alarm when he bade her take it; but he placed the money laughingly in her hands for furnishing; and, obeying him as if in a dream, the house was taken and handsomely fitted. Servants were engaged, horses bought, and the convicts commenced a life of luxurious ease.

The sealing business, he said with a laugh, was only carried on at certain times of the year, but it was a most paying affair, and he bade Mrs Hallam have no care about money matters.

For the first six months Hallam rarely stirred out of the house by day, contenting himself with a walk about the extensive grounds in an evening; but he made up for this abstinence from society by pampering his appetites in every way.

It was as if, these having been kept in strict subjection for so many years, he was now determined to give them full rein; and, consequently, he who had been summoned at early morn by the prison bell, breakfasted luxuriously in bed, and did not rise till midday, when his first question was about the preparations for dinner—that being the important business of his life.

His dinner was a feast at which good wine in sufficient abundance played a part, and over this he and Crellock would sit for hours, only to leave it and the dining-room for spirits and cigars in the verandah, where they stayed till bed-time.

Robert Hallam came into the house a pallid, wasted man, with sunken cheeks and eyes, closely-cropped hair and shorn beard; the villainous prison look was in his gaze and the furtive shrinking way of his stoop. His aspect was so horrible that when Millicent Hallam took him to her breast, she prayed for mental blindness that she might not see the change, while Julia’s eyes were always full of a wondering horror that she was ever fighting to suppress.

At the end of four months, Robert Hallam was completely transformed; his cheeks were filled out, and were rapidly assuming the flushed appearance of the habitual drunkard’s; his eyes had lost their cavernous aspect, and half the lines had disappeared, while his grizzled hair was of a respectable length, and his face was becoming clothed by a great black beard dashed with grey.

In six months, portly, florid and well-dressed, he was unrecognisable for the man who had been released from the great prison, and no longer confined himself to the house.

Stephen Crellock had changed in a more marked manner than his prison friend. Considerably his junior, the convict life had not seemed to affect him, so that when six months of his freedom had passed, he looked the bluff, bearded squatter in the full pride of his manhood, bronzed by the sun, and with a dash and freedom of manner that he knew how to restrain when he was in the presence of his old companion’s wife and child, for he could not conceal from himself the fact that Mrs Hallam disliked his presence and resented his being there.

At first, in her eagerness to respond to Hallam’s slightest wish, in the proud joy she felt in the change that was coming over his personal appearance, and which with the boastfulness of a young wife she pointed out to Julia, she made no objection to Crellock’s presence.

“Poor fellow! he has suffered horribly,” Hallam said. “He deserves a holiday.”

How she had watched all this gradual change, and how she crushed down the little voices that now and then strove in her heart to make themselves heard!

“No, no, no,” she said to them as it were half laughing, “there is nothing but what I ought to have pictured.”

Then one day she found herself forced to make apology to Julia.

“You have hurt him, my darling, by your coldness,” she said tenderly. “Julie, my own, he complains to me. What have you done?”

“Tried, dear mother—oh, so hard. I did not know I had been cold.”

“Then you will try more, my child,” said Mrs Hallam, caressing Julia tenderly, and with a bright, loving look in her eyes. “I have never spoken like this before. It seemed terrible to me to have to make what seems like an apology for our own, but think, dearest. He parted from us a gentleman—to be taken from his home and plunged into a life of horror, such as—no, no, no,” she cried, “I will not speak of it. I will only say that just as his face will change, so will all that terrible corrosion of the prison life in his manner drop away, and in a few months he will be again all that you have pictured. Julie, he is your father.”

Julia flung herself, sobbing passionately, into her mother’s arms, and in a burst of self-reproach vowed that she would do everything to make her father love her as she did him.

Bravely did the two women set themselves to the task of blinding their eyes with love, passing over the coarse actions and speech of the idol they had set up, yielding eagerly to his slightest whim, obeying every caprice, and, while at times something was almost too hard to bear, Millicent Hallam whispered encouragement to her child.

“Think, my own, think,” she said lovingly. “It is not his fault. Think of what he has suffered, and let us pray and thank Him that he has survived, for us to win back to all that we could wish.”

There were times when despair looked blankly from Millicent Hallam’s eyes as she saw the months glide by and her husband surely and slowly sinking into sensuality. But she roused herself to greater exertions, and was his veriest slave. Once only did she try by kindly resistance to make the stand she told herself she should have made when Crellock was first brought into the house.

It was when he had been out about six months, and Crellock, after a long debauch with Hallam and two or three chosen spirits from the town, had sunk in a brutal sleep upon the floor of the handsomely-furnished dining-room. The visitors had gone; they had dined there, Sir Gordon being of the party, and Mrs Hallam had smilingly done the honours of the table as their hostess, though sick at heart at the turn the conversation had taken before her child, who looked anxious and pale, while Sir Gordon had sat there very silent and grim of aspect. He had been the first to go, and had taken her hand in the drawing-room, as if about to speak, but had only looked at her, sighed, and gone away without a word.

“I must speak!” she had said. “Heaven help me! I must speak! This cannot go on!”

As soon as she could, she had hurried Julia to bed, and then sat and waited till the last visitor had gone, when she walked into the dining-room, where Hallam sat smoking, heavy with drink, but perfectly collected, scowling down at Crellock where he lay.

That look sent a thrill of joy through Millicent Hallam. He was evidently angry with Crellock, and disgusted with the wretched drinking scene that had taken place—one of many such scenes as would have excited comment now, but the early settlers were ready enough to smile at eccentricities like this.

“Robert—my husband! may I speak to you?”

“Speak, my dear? Of course,” he said, smiling. “Why didn’t you come in as soon as that old curmudgeon had gone? Have a glass of wine now. Nonsense!—I wish it. You must pitch over a lot of that standoffish-ness with my friends. Julia, too—the girl sits and looks at people as glum as if she had no sense.” Mrs Hallam compressed her lips, laid her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, yielding herself to him as he threw an arm round her waist, but stood pointing to where Crellock lay breathing stertorously, and every now and then muttering in his sleep.

“What are you pointing at?” said Hallam. “Steve? Yes, the pig! Why can’t he take his wine like a gentleman, and not like a brute?”

“Robert, dear,” she said tenderly, “you love me very dearly?”

“Love you, my pet! why, how could a man love wife better?”

“And our Julia—our child?”

“Why, of course. What questions!”

“Will you do something to please me—to please us both?”

“Will I? Say what you want—another carriage—diamonds—a yacht like old Bourne’s?”

“No, no, no, dearest; we have everything if we have your love, and my dear husband glides from the past misery into a life of happiness.”

“Well, I think we are doing pretty well,” he said with a laugh that sent a shudder through the suffering woman; he was so changed.

“I want to speak to you about Mr Crellock.”

“Well, what about him? Make haste; it’s getting late, and I’m tired.”

“Robert, we have made a mistake in having this man here.”

Hallam seemed perfectly sober, and he frowned.

“I would not mind if you wished him to be here, love,” she said, with her voice sounding sweetly pure and entreating; “but he is not a suitable companion for our Julia.”

“Stop there,” said Hallam, sharply.

“No, no, darling; let me speak—this time,” said Mrs Hallam, entreatingly. “I know it was out of the genuine goodness and pity of your heart that you opened your door to him. Now you have done all you need, let him go.”

Hallam shook his head.

“Think of the past, and the terrible troubles he brought upon you.”

“Oh, no! that was all a mistake,” said Hallam, quickly. “Poor brute! he was as ill-treated as I was, and now you want him kicked out.”

“No, no, dear; part from him kindly; but he was the cause of much of your suffering.”

“No, he was not,” said Hallam, quickly. “That was all a mistake. Poor Steve was always a good friend to me. He suffered along with me in that cursed hole, and he shall have his share of the comfort now.”

“No, no, do not say you wish him to stay.”

“But I do say it,” cried Hallam, angrily. “He is my best friend, and he will stay. Hang it, woman, am I to be cursed with the presence of your friends who sent me out here and not have the company of my own?”

“Robert!—husband!—don’t speak to me like that.”

“But I do speak to you like that. Here is that wretched old yachtsman forcing his company upon me day after day, insisting upon coming to the house, and reminding me by his presence who I am, and what I have been.”

“Darling, Sir Gordon ignores the past, and is grieved, I know, at the terrible mistake that brought you here. He wishes to show you this by his kindness to us all.”

“Let him keep his kindness till it is asked for,” growled Hallam. “He sits upon me like a nightmare. I don’t feel that the place is my own when he is here. As for Bayle, he has had the good sense to stay away lately.”

Mrs Hallam’s eyes were full of despair as she listened.

“I hate Sir Gordon coming here. He and Bayle have between them made that girl despise me, and look down upon me every time we speak, while I am lavishing money upon her, and she has horses and carriage, jewels and dress equal to any girl in the colony.”

“Robert, dear, you are not saying all this from your heart.”

“Indeed, but I am,” he cried angrily.

“No, no! And Julie—she loves you dearly. It is for her sake I ask this,” and she pointed to Crellock where he lay.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” said Hallam, with a meaning laugh. “Poor Steve! I don’t like him, but he has been a faithful mate to me, and I’m not going to turn round upon him now.”

“But for Julie’s sake!”

“I’m thinking about Julie, my dear,” he said, nodding his head; “and as for Steve—there, just you make yourself comfortable about him. There’s no harm in him; he is faithful as a dog to me, and if I behaved badly he might bite.”

“You need not be unkind to Mr Crellock if he has been what you say. I only ask you for our child’s sake to let him leave here.”

“Impossible; he is my partner.”

“Yes, you intimated that. In your business.”

“Speculations,” said Hallam quietly. “There, that will do.”

“But, Robert—”

“That will do!” he roared fiercely. “Stephen Crellock must live here! Do you hear—must! Now go to bed.”

“A woman’s duty,” she whispered softly, “is to obey,” and she obeyed.

She obeyed, while another six months glided away, each month filling her heart more and more with despair as she shunned her child’s questioning eyes and fought on, a harder battle every day, to keep herself in the belief that the pure gold was still beneath the blackening tarnish, and that her idol was not made of clay.

It was a terrible battle, for her eyes refused to be blinded longer by the loving veil she cast over them. The appealing, half-wondering looks of her child increased her suffering, while an idea, that filled her with horror, was growing day by day, till it was assuming proportions from which she shrank in dread.

Volume Four—Chapter Three.

Our Julia’s Lover.

“What have we done, wifie, that we should be consigned to such quarters as these?” said Captain Otway one day with a sigh. “I don’t think I’m too particular, but when I entered His Majesty’s service I did not know that I should be expected to play gaoler to the occupants of the Government Pandemonium.”

“It is a beautiful place,” said Mrs Otway laconically. “It was till we came and spoiled it. It is one great horror, ’pon my soul; and it is degrading our men to set them such duty as this.”

“Be patient. These troubles cure themselves.”

“But they take such a long time over it,” said the Captain. “It would be more bearable if Phil had not turned goose.”

“Poor Phil!” said Mrs Otway, with a sigh.

“Poor Phil? Pooh! you spoil the lad! I can’t get him out for a bit of shooting or hunting or fishing. Old Sir Gordon would often give us a cruise in his boat, but no: Phil must sit moonstruck here. The fellow’s spoiled! Can’t you knock all that on the head?”

“I perhaps could, but it must be a matter of time,” said Mrs Otway, going steadily on with her work, and mending certain articles of attire.

“But he must be cured. It is impossible.”

“Yes,” sighed Mrs Otway, “so I tell him. I wish it were not.”

“My dear Mary—a convict’s daughter!”

“The poor girl was not consulted as to whose daughter she would like to be, Jack, and she is, without exception, the sweetest lassie I ever met.”

“Yes, she is nice,” said Otway. “Mother must have been nice too.”

“Is nice,” cried Mrs Otway, flushing. “I felt a little distant with her at first, but after what I have seen and know—by George, Jack, I do feel proud of our sex!”

“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, with a smile at his wife’s bluff earnestness. “Yes, she’s a good woman; very ladylike, too. But that husband, that friend of his, Crellock! Poor creatures! it is ruining them.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Otway dryly. “That’s one of the misfortunes of marriage; we poor women are dragged down to the level of our husbands.”

“And when these husbands come out to convict settlements as gaolers they have to come with them, put up with all kinds of society, give up all their refinements, and make and mend their own dresses, and—”

“Even do their own chores, as the Americans call it,” said Mrs Otway, looking up smiling. “It makes me look very miserable, doesn’t it, Jack?”

She stopped her work, went behind her husband’s chair, put her arms round his neck, and laid her cheek upon his head.

Neither spoke for a few minutes, but the Captain looked very contented and happy, and neither of them heard the step as Bayle came through the house, and out suddenly into the verandah.

“I beg your pardon!” he cried, drawing back.

“Ah, parson! Don’t go!” cried the Captain, as Mrs Otway started up, and, in spite of her ordinary aplomb, looked disturbed. “Bad habit of ours acquired since marriage. We don’t mind you.”

Mrs Otway held out her hand to their visitor.

“Why, it is nearly a fortnight since you have been to see us. We were just talking about your friends—the Hallams.”

“Have you been to see them lately?” said Bayle, eagerly.

“I was there yesterday. Quite well; but Mrs Hallam looks worried and ill. Julia is charming, only she too is not as I should like to see her.”

She watched Bayle keenly, and saw his countenance change as she spoke.

“I am very glad they are well,” he said.

“Yes, I know you are; but why don’t you go more often?”

He looked at her rather wistfully, and made no reply. “Look here, Mr Bayle,” she said, “I don’t think you mind my speaking plainly, now do you? Come, that’s frank.”

“I will be just as frank,” he replied, smiling. “I have always liked you because you do speak so plainly.”

“That’s kind of you to say so,” she replied. “Well, I will speak out. You see there are so few women in the colony.”

“Who are ladies,” said Bayle quietly.

“Look here,” said Otway, in a much ill-used tone, “am I expected to sit here and listen to my wife putting herself under the influence of the Church?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Jack!” said Mrs Otway sharply. “This is serious.”

“I’m dumb.”

“What I want to say, Mr Bayle, is this. Don’t you think you are making a mistake in staying away from your friends yonder?”

He sat without replying for some minutes.

“No,” he said slowly. “I did not give up my visits there till after I had weighed the matter very carefully.”

“But you seemed to come out with those two ladies as their guardian, and now, when they seem most to require your help and guidance, you leave them.”

“Have you heard anything? Is anything wrong?”

“I have heard nothing, but I have seen a great deal, because I persist in visiting, in spite of Mr Hallam’s objection to my presence.”

“I say, my dear, that man is always civil to you, I hope?” cried Otway sharply.

“My dear Jack, be quiet,” said Mrs Otway. “Of course he is. I visit there because I have good reasons for so doing.”

“Tell me,” said Bayle anxiously.

“I have seen a great deal,” continued Mrs Otway: “but it all comes to one point.” Bayle looked at her inquiringly. “That it is very dreadful for those two sweet, delicate women to have come out here to such a fate. The man is dreadful!”

“They will redeem him,” said Bayle huskily. “Poor wretch! he has had a terrible experience. This convict life is worse than capital punishment. We must be patient, Mrs Otway. The habits of a number of years are not got rid of in a few months. He will change.”

“Will he?” said Mrs Otway shortly.

“Yes; they will, as I said before, redeem him. The man has great natural love for his wife and child.”

“Do you think this?”

“Yes, yes!” he cried excitedly, as he got up and began to pace the verandah. “I stop away because my presence was like a standing reproach to him. The abstinence gives me intense pain, but my going tended to make them unhappy, and caused constraint, so I stop away.”

“And so you think that they will raise him to their standard, do you?” said Mrs Otway dryly.

“Yes, I do,” he cried fervently. “It is only a matter of time.”

“How can you be so self-deceiving?” she cried quickly. “He is dragging them down to his level.”

“Oh, hush!” cried Bayle passionately. Then mastering his emotion, he continued in his old, firm, quiet way: “No, no; you must not say that. He could not. It is impossible.”

“Yes. You are wrong there, Bel,” said the Captain. “Mrs Hallam is made of too good stuff.”

“I give in,” said Mrs Otway, nodding. “Yes, you two are right. He could not bring that sweet woman down to his level; but all this is very terrible. The man is giving himself up to a life of sensuality. Drinking and feasting with that companion of his. There is gambling going on too at night with friends of his own stamp. What a life this is for a refined lady and her child!”

Bayle spoke calmly, but he wiped the great drops of sweat from his brow.

“What can I do?” he said. “I am perfectly helpless.”

“I confess I don’t know,” said Mrs Otway, with a sigh. “Only you and Sir Gordon must be at hand to help them in any emergency.”

“Emergency! What do you mean?” anxiously.

“I don’t know what may occur. Who knows? Women are so weak,” sighed Mrs Otway; “once they place their faith in a man, they follow him to the end of the world.”

“That’s true, Bayle, old fellow—to convict stations, and become slaves,” said the Captain.

“Mr Bayle,” said Mrs Otway suddenly. “I am under a promise to my old friend, Lady Eaton, and I have done my best to oppose it all; but you have seen how deeply attached Phil Eaton has become to Miss Hallam?”

“Yes,” said Bayle slowly, and he was very pale now, “I have seen it.”

“He shall not marry her if I can prevent it, much as I love the girl, for it would be a terrible mésalliance; but he is desperately fond of her, and, as my husband here says, he has taken the bit in his teeth, and he will probably travel his own way.”

“Don’t you get fathering your coarse expressions on me,” growled the Captain; but no one heeded him.

“As I say, he shall not marry her if I can stop it; but suppose he should be determined, and could get the father’s consent, would you and Sir Gordon raise any opposition?”

“Lieutenant Eaton is an officer and a gentleman.”

“He is a true-hearted lad, Mr Bayle, and I love him dearly,” said Mrs Otway. “Only that he is fighting hard between love and duty he would have been carrying on the campaign by now; but you must allow Fort Robert Hallam is a terrible one to storm and garrison afterwards, for it has to be retained for life.”

“I understand your meaning,” said Bayle, speaking very slowly. “It is a terrible position for Mr Eaton to be in.”

“Should you oppose it?”

“I have no authority whatever,” said Bayle in the same low, dreamy tone. “If I had, I should never dream of opposing anything that was for Miss Hallam’s good.”

“And it would be, to get her away from such associations, Mr Bayle.”

“Lady Eaton! Lady Eaton!” said the Captain in warning.

“Hush, Jack! pray.”

“Yes,” said Bayle; “it would be for Miss Hallam’s benefit; but it would nearly break her mother’s heart.”

“She would have to make a sacrifice for the sake of the child.”

“Yes,” said Bayle softly. “Another sacrifice;” and then softly to himself, “how long? how long?”

He rose, and was gravely bidding his friends good-bye, when a sharp, quick step was heard, and Eaton came in, coloured like a girl on seeing Bayle, hesitated, and then held out his hand.

Bayle shook it warmly and left the verandah, Eaton walking with him to the gate.

“Jack,” said Mrs Otway softly, “it’s my belief that the parson loves Julia Hallam himself.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“And will he marry her?”

“No. I’m about sure that she is desperately fond of our boy, and the parson is too true a man to stand in the way.”

“Nonsense!” said the Captain. “Such men are not made now.”

“But they were when Christie Bayle was born,” she said, nodding her head quickly. “Yes,” she said, after a pause, as they heard Eaton’s returning steps; “it’s a knot, Jack.”

“Humph!” he replied. “For time to untie.”

Volume Four—Chapter Four.

Stephen Crellock is Communicative.

“No hurry, Steve, my lad,” said Hallam, as he turned over the newspaper that had come in by the last mail, and threw one of his booted legs upon a chair.

Crellock was leaning against the chimney-piece of the room Hallam called his study; but one, which in place of books was filled with fishing and shooting gear, saddles, bridles, and hunting whips, from that usually adopted for riding, to the heavy implement so terrible in a stockman’s hands.

The man had completely lost all his old prison look; and the obedient, servile manner that distinguished him, when, years before, he had been Hallam’s willing tool in iniquity, had gone. He had developed into a sturdy, independent, restless being, with whom it would be dangerous to trifle, and Robert Hallam had felt for some time that he really was master no longer.

Crellock had dressed himself evidently for a ride. He was booted and spurred; wore tightly-fitting breeches and jacket, and a broad-brimmed felt hat was thrust back on his curly hair, as he stood beating his boot with his riding-whip, and tucking bits of his crisp beard between his white teeth to bite.

“What do you say? No hurry?”

“Yes,” said Hallam, rustling his paper. “No hurry, my lad: plenty of time.”

“You think so, do you?”

“To be sure. There, go and have your ride. I’ve got some fresh champagne just come in by the Cross. We’ll try that to-day.”

“Hang your champagne! I’ve come to talk business,” said Crellock, sternly. “You think there’s no hurry, do you? Well, look here, I think there is, and I’m not going to wait.”

“Nonsense! Don’t talk like a boy.”

“No: I’ll talk like a man, Robert Hallam. A man don’t improve by keeping. I shall do now; by-and-by perhaps I shan’t. I’m double her age and more.”

“Oh! yes, I know all about that,” said Hallam, impatiently; “but there’s plenty of time.”

“I say there is not, and I’m going to have it settled. Your wife hates me. I’m not blind, and she’ll set Julie against me all she can.”

“I’m master here.”

“Then show it, Rob Hallam, and quickly, before there’s a row. I tell you it wants doing; she’s easily led now she’s so young; but I’m not blind.”

“You said that before; what do you mean?”

“That soldier Eaton; he’s hankering after her, and if we don’t mind, she’ll listen to him. It’s only your being an old hand that keeps him back from asking for her.”

“Well, well, let it go, and I’ll see about it by-and-by,” said Hallam. “Have patience.”

“A man at my time of life can’t have patience, Rob. Now come, you know I want the girl, and it will be like tying us more tightly together.”

“And put a stop to the risk of your telling tales,” said Hallam, bitterly.

“I’m not the man to tell tales,” said Crellock, sturdily, “neither am I the man for you to make an enemy.”

“Threatening?”

“No, but I’m sure you wouldn’t care to go back to the gang and on the road, Robert Hallam. Such a good man as your wife and child think you are!”

“Hold your tongue, will you?” cried Hallam savagely.

“When I please,” replied Crellock. “Oh! come, you needn’t look so fierce, old chap. I used to think what a wonder you were, and wish I could be as cool and clever, and—”

“Well?” for the other stopped.

“Oh! nothing; only I don’t think so now.”

“Look here,” said Hallam, throwing aside the paper impatiently, “what do you want?”

“Julia.”

“You mean you want to try if she’ll listen to you.”

“No, I don’t. I mean I want her, and I mean to have her, and half share.”

“And if I say it’s impossible?”

“But you won’t,” said Crellock coolly.

Hallam sat back, frowning and biting his nails, while the other slowly beat his boot with his whip.

At last Hallam’s brow cleared, and he said in a quiet, easy way:

“She might do better, Steve; but I won’t stand in your way. Only the thing must come about gently. Talk to the girl. You shall have chances. I don’t want any scenes with her or her mother, or any flying to that old man or the parson to help her. It must be worked quietly.”

“All right. Order the horses round, and let her go for a ride with me this morning.”

Mrs Hallam was ready to object, but she gave way, and Julia went for a ride with Crellock, passing Sir Gordon’s cottage, and then riding right away into the open country. The girl had developed into a splendid horsewoman, and at last, when she had forgotten her dislike to her companion in the excitement and pleasure of the exercise, and the horses were well breathed and walking up an ascent, Crellock, on the principle that he had no time to spare, tried to forward his position.

“I say, Miss Julia,” he said, taking off his broad hat, and fanning his face, as they rode on in the bright sunshine, “do you remember when you first came over?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And meeting me as I was carried out of the prison on the stretcher?”

Julia looked at him, her eyes dilating with horror as the whole scene came back.

“Don’t,” she said hoarsely, “it is too horrible to think of? Such cruelty is dreadful.”

“I don’t consider it too horrible to think of,” he said smiling. “I’m always looking back on that day and seeing it all, every bit. That poor wretch shrieking out with pain.”

“Mr Crellock!” cried Julia.

“Yes! me. Not hardly able to move himself, or bear his pain, and half mad with thirst.”

“Oh, pray, hush!”

“Not I, my dear,” continued Crellock, “and out of it all I can see coming through the sunshine a bright angel to hold water up to my lips, and wipe the sweat of agony off my brow.”

“Mr Crellock! I cannot bear to listen to all this.”

“But you could bear to look at it all, and do it, bless you!” said the man warmly. “That day I swore something, and I’m going to keep my oath.”

“Don’t talk about it any more, please,” said Julia imploringly.

“If you don’t wish me to, I won’t,” said Crellock smiling. “I do want to talk to you though about a lot of things, and one is about the drink.”

Julia looked at him wonderingly.

“Yes, about the drink,” continued Crellock; “the old man drinks too much.”

Julia’s face contracted.

“And I’ve been a regular brute lately, my dear. You see it has been such a temptation after being kept from it for years. I haven’t been able to stop myself. It isn’t nice for a young girl like you to see a man drunk, is it?”

Julia shook her head.

“Then I shan’t never get drunk again. I’ll only take a little.”

“Oh! I am so glad,” cried Julia with girlish eagerness.

“Are you?” he said smiling, “then so am I. That’s settled then. I want to be as decent as I can. You see you’re such a good religious girl, Miss Julia, while I’m such a bad one.”

“But you could be better.”

“Could I? I don’t like being a hypocrite. I’m not ashamed to own that I was a bad one, and got into all that trouble in the old country.”

“Oh! hush, please. You did wrong, and were punished for it. Now all that is passed and forgiven.”

“I always said you were an angel,” said Crellock earnestly, “and you are.”

“Nonsense! Let us talk of something else.”

“No: let’s talk about that. I want to stand fair and square with you, and I don’t want you to think me a humbug and a hypocrite.”

“Mr Crellock, I never thought so well of you before,” said Julia warmly. “Your promise of amendment has made me feel so happy.”

“Has it?” he cried eagerly, but with a rough kind of respect mingled with his admiration. “So it has me. I mean it—that I do. You shall never see me the worse for drink again.”

“And you will attend more to the business, then?”

“What business?” he said.

“The business that you and my father carry on.”

“The business that I and your father carry on?”

“Yes, the speculations about the seals and the oil.”

Crellock stared at her. “Why, what have you got in your pretty little head?” he said at last.

“I only alluded to the business in which you and my father are partners.”

“Pooh!” cried Crellock, with a sort of laugh. “What nonsense it is of him! Why, my dear, you are not a child now. After all the trouble you and your mother went through. You are a clever, thoughtful little woman, and he ought to have taken you into his confidence.”

“What do you mean?” cried Julia, for she felt dazed.

“Your father! What’s the use of a man like him—an old hand—setting himself up as a saint, and playing innocent? It isn’t my way. As you say, when one has done wrong and suffered punishment, and is whitewashed—”

“Mr Crellock,” said Julia, flushing, “I cannot misunderstand your allusions; but if you dare to insinuate that my poor father was guilty of any wrong-doing before he suffered, it is disgraceful, and it is not true.”

Crellock looked at her admiringly.

“Bless you!” he said warmly. “I didn’t think you had so much spirit in you. Now be calm, my dear; there’s nothing worse than being a sham—a hypocrite. I never was. I always owned up to what I had done. Your father never did.”

“My father never did anything wrong!” cried Julia.

Crellock smiled.

“Come, I should like us to begin by being well in each other’s confidence,” he said as he leaned over and patted the arching neck of Julia’s mare. “You must know it, so what’s the use of making a pretence about it to me?”

“I do not understand you,” said Julia indignantly.

“Not understand me? Why, my dear girl, you know your father was transported for life?”

“Do I know it?” cried Julia, with an indignant flash of her eyes.

“Yes, of course you do. Well, what was it for?”

“Because appearances were cruelly against him,” cried Julia.

“They were,” said Crellock dryly.

“Because his friends doubted him, consequent upon the conduct of a man he trusted,” said Julia bitterly.

“I never knew your father trust any one, Miss Julia, and I knew him before he went to King’s Castor. We were clerks in the same office.”

“He trusted you,” cried Julia indignantly; “and you deceived him, and he suffered for your wicked sin.”

She struck the mare with her whip, and it would have dashed off, but Crellock was smoothing her mane above the reins, and as they tightened they came into his hand, and he checked the little animal which began to rear.

“Quiet! quiet!” cried Crellock fiercely; and he held the mare back with ears twitching and nostril quivering.

“Let my rein go,” cried Julia.

“Wait a bit; I’ve a lot to say to you yet, my dear,” cried Crellock indignantly. “Look here. Did your father say that?”

“Yes; and you know it is true.”

“I say again, did your father say that to your mother?”

“Yes,” indignantly.

“Then that’s why she has always shown me such a stiff upper lip, and been so bitter against me. I wouldn’t have stopped in her house a day, she was so hard on me, only I wanted to be near you, and to think about that day coming out of the prison. Well, of all the mean, cowardly things for a man to do!”

“My father is no coward. You dare not speak to him like that.”

“I dare say a deal more to him, and I will if he runs me down before you and your mother, when I wanted to show you I wasn’t such a bad one after all. It’s mean,” he cried, working himself up. “It’s cowardly. But it’s just like him. When that robbery took place before, he escaped and I took the blame.”

“Loose my rein!” cried Julia. “Man, you are mad.”

“See here,” cried Crellock, catching her arm, and looking white with rage. “I’ll take my part; but I’m not going to have the credit of the Dixons’ business put on to my shoulders. I’m not a hypocrite, Miss Julia. I’ve done wrong, as I said before, and was punished. There, it’s of no use for you to struggle. I mean you to hear. I want to stand well with you. I always did after you gave me that drink of water, and now I find I’ve been made out to be a regular bad one, so as some one else may get off.”

“Will you loose my rein?” cried Julia.

“No, I won’t. Now you are going to call out for help?”

“No,” cried Julia. “I’m not such a coward as to be afraid of you.”

“That you are not,” he said admiringly, in spite of the passion he was in. “Now once more tell me this. I’ll believe you. You never told a lie, and you never would. Is this a sham to back up your father?”

She did not answer, only gave him a haughtily indignant look.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know that your father did all that Dixons’ business himself?”

“I know it is false.”

“And that I only did what he told me, and planted the deeds at the different banks?”

“It is false, I tell you.”

“You’re making me savage,” he cried in his blundering way. “I tell you I’m not such a brute. Look here once more. Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know that we have all been living on what he—your father—got from Dixons’ bank?”

“How dare you!” cried Julia, scarlet with anger.

“And that you and your mother brought over the plunder when you came?”

For answer, Julia struck his hand with her whip, giving so keen a cut that he loosened his hold, and she went off like the wind towards home.

“What a fool I was to talk like that!” he cried biting his lips, as he set spurs to his horse and galloped off in pursuit. “I’ve been talking like a madman. It all comes of being regularly in love.”

Volume Four—Chapter Five.

“You are my Wife.”

Stephen Crellock was fifty yards behind, with his horse completely blown, when Julia quickly slipped from her saddle, threw the rein over the hook at the door-post, and ran upstairs to the room where her mother loved to sit gazing over the beauties of the cove-marked estuary.

Mrs Hallam started up in alarm, and she had evidently been weeping.

“What is it, my child?” she cried, as Julia threw herself sobbing in her arms.

“That man—that man!” cried Julia. “Has he dared to insult you?” cried Mrs Hallam, with her eyes flashing, and her motherly indignation giving her the mien of an outraged queen.

“Yes—you—my father,” sobbed Julia; and in broken words she panted out the story of the ride.

Mrs Hallam had been indignant, and a strange shiver of horror had passed through her, as it seemed as she listened that she was going to hear in form of words the dread that had been growing in her mind for a long time past.

It was then at first with a sense of relief that she gathered from her child’s incoherent statement that Crellock had uttered few words of love. When, however, she thoroughly realised what had passed, and the charge that Crellock had made, it came with such a shock in its possibility, that her brain reeled.

“It is not true,” she cried, recovering herself quickly. “Julia, it is as false as the man who made it.”

“I knew—I knew it was, dear mother,” sobbed Julia. “My father shall drive him from the house.”

“Stay here,” said Mrs Hallam sternly. Then, more gently, “My child, you are flushed, and hot. There, there! we have been so happy lately. We must not let a petty accusation like this disturb us.”

“So happy, mother,” cried Julia piteously, “when our friends forsake us; and Mr Bayle is as good as forbidden the house?”

“Hush, my darling?” said Mrs Hallam agitatedly. “There, go to your room.”

She hurried Julia away, for she heard the trampling of the horses’ feet as they were led round to the stables, and then a familiar step upon the stairs.

“I was coming to speak to you,” she said as Hallam opened the door.

“And I was coming to you,” he said roughly. “What has that little idiot been saying to Crellock to put him in such a rage?”

“Sit down,” she said, pushing a chair towards him, and there was a look in her eyes he had never seen before.

“Well, there. Now be sharp. I don’t care to be bothered with trifles; I’ve had troubles enough. Has that champagne been put to cool?”

She looked, half wonderingly, in the heavy, sensual face, growing daily more flushed and changed.

“Come, go on,” he said, as if the look troubled him. “Now, then, what is it? Crellock is half mad. She has offended him horribly.”

“She has been defending her father’s honour,” said Mrs Hallam slowly.

“Defending my honour?” he said, smiling. “Ah!” Mrs Hallam clasped her hands, and a sigh full of the agony of her heart escaped her lips. The scales seemed to be falling from her eyes, but she wilfully closed them again in her passion of love and trust.

But it was in vain. Something seemed to be tearing these scales away—something seemed to be rending that thick veil of love, and the voices she had so long quelled were clamouring to be heard, and making her ears sing with the terrible tale they told.

She writhed in spirit. She denied it all as a calumny, but as she walked to and fro there the tiny voices in her soul seemed to be ringing out the destruction of her idol, and to her swimming eyes it seemed tottering to its fall.

“You are very strange,” he said roughly. “What’s the matter? I thought you were going to tell me about Julia and Steve.”

“I am,” she cried at last, as if mastering herself after some terrible spasm. “Robert, I have been told something to-day that makes me tremble.”

“Some news?” he said coolly.

“Yes, news—terrible news.”

“Let’s have it—if you like,” he said. “I don’t care. It don’t matter, unless it will do you good to tell it.”

Her face was wrung by the agony of her soul as she heard his callous words. The veil was being terribly rent now; and as her eyes saw more clearly, she tried in vain to close her mental sight; but no, she seemed forced to gaze now, and the idol that was tottering began to show that it was indeed of clay.

“Well, don’t look like that,” he said. “A man who has been transported is pretty well case-hardened. There is no worse trouble in life.”

“No worse?” she panted out in a quick, angry way, as words had never before left her lips; “not if he lost the love and trust of wife and child?”

“Well, that would be unpleasant,” he said coolly. “Perhaps the poor wretch would be able to get over it in time. What is your news?”

“I have heard you freshly accused to-day of that old crime, of which you were innocent.”

“Of which I was innocent, of course,” he said coolly. “Is that all?”

She did not answer for a few minutes, and then as he half rose impatiently, as if to go, she said excitedly: “That case I brought over, Robert.”

“Case?” he said with a slight start.

“From the old house.”

“Well—what about it?”

“Tell me at once, or I shall go mad. What did it contain?”

“Papers. I told you when I wrote.”

“That would set him free,” the voices in her heart insisted.

“Who has been setting you to ask about that, eh?” She did not reply.

“You did not keep faith with me,” he cried angrily. “You have been telling Sir Gordon, or that Bayle.”

“I told no one,” she said hoarsely.

“Hah!” he ejaculated with a sigh of relief.

“Stephen Crellock has told Julia what she—and I—declare is false.”

“Stephen Crellock is a fool,” he cried quickly. “Go and fetch Julia here. She must be talked to.”

“Robert! my husband,” cried Mrs Hallam, throwing herself upon her knees and catching his hands, “you do not speak out. Why do you not passionately say it is false? How dare he accuse you of such a crime! You do not speak!”

She gazed up at him wildly.

“What do you want me to say?” he cried angrily. “Do you think me mad, woman? Here, let’s have an end of all this nonsense. What does Crellock say?” She could not speak for a few minutes, so overladen was her heart; and when she did, the words were hoarse that fell upon his ears.

“He said—he told our simple, loving girl, whom I have taught to trust in and reverence her martyred father’s name; whose faith has been in your innocency of the crime for which you were sent here—the girl I taught to pray that your innocence might be proved—”

“Will you go on?” he cried brutally. “I’m sick of this. Now, what did he say?”

“That—Oh, Robert, my husband, I cannot say it! His words cannot be true!”

“Will you speak?” he cried. “Out with it at once! When will you grow to be a woman of the world, and stop this childishness? Now what did the chattering fool say?”

“That the box I brought over contained the proceeds of the bank robbery—money that you had hidden away.”

Millicent Hallam started up and gazed about her with a dazed look, as if she were startled by the words she heard—words that seemed to have come from other lips than hers; and then she pressed her hands to her heaving bosom as her husband spoke.

“Stephen Crellock must be getting tired of his leave,” he said coolly. “An idiot! He had better have kept his tongue between his teeth. How came he to be chattering about that? If he don’t mind—” He did not finish the sentence, and his wife’s eyes dilated as she gazed at him in a horrified way.

“You do not deny it!” she said at last. “You do not declare that this is all cruelly false!”

“No,” he said slowly, “I am not going to worry myself about his words. He can’t prove anything.”

“But it is a charge against your honour,” she cried; “against me. Robert! you will not let this go uncontradicted for an hour longer?”

“Stephen Crellock had better mind,” said Hallam, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had not heard his wife.

“But, Robert—my husband! you will speak for your own sake—for your child’s sake—for mine?”

There was a growing intensity in the words, whose tones rose to one of passionate appeal.

He made an impatient motion that implied a negative, and she threw herself once more upon her knees at his feet.

“You will deny this atrocious charge?”

“If I am asked I shall deny it of course,” he said coolly; “but you don’t suppose I am going to talk about it without?”

“But—but—that man believes it to be true!”

“Well, let him.”

“Robert—dear Robert,” she cried, “you must not, you shall not treat it like that! It is as if you were indifferent to this dreadful statement.”

“Because it is better to let it rest, madam, so let it be.”

“No!” she cried, with a wave as it were of her old trust sweeping all before it; “I cannot let it rest. If you will not speak in your own defence, I must!”

“What do you mean?” he said hastily.

“That if for his child’s sake, Robert Hallam will not defend himself against such a vile and cruel lie, his wife will!”

“What will you do?” he said, with an ugly sneer upon his lip.

“See this man myself, and force him to deny it—to declare that it is not true. My husband cannot sit down patiently with that charge flung against his wife’s honour and his own.”

Me sat gazing at her from beneath his thick eyebrows for a few minutes as she paced the room, agitated almost beyond bearing; and then he spoke in the most matter-of-fact way.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

“Not speak?”

“No; I forbid it.”

“Forbid it?”

“Yes. Do you suppose I want my leave stopped? Do you want to send me back to the gang who are chained like dogs?”

“Hush!” she cried, with a shudder; and she covered her face, as if to shut out some terrible sight. “Do you not feel that you are running risks by remaining silent?”

“I should run greater risks by having the matter talked about. That great fool, Steve, must be warned to be more cautious in what he says, for all our sakes.”

“Robert!” in a tone of horror.

“There, there, wife, that will do! Let’s talk it over without sentiment; I haven’t a bit of romance left in me, my dear. Life out here has cleared it off. You may as well know the truth as at any future time. Bah! Let’s throw away all this flimsy foolery. You’ve known it all along, only you’ve been too brave to show it.”

“I—known the truth?” she faltered. “You believe this?”

“Yes,” he said, without reading the horror and despair in her eyes; and the brutal callousness of his manner seemed to grow. “What’s the use of shamming innocence? You knew what was in the box.”

“I knew what my husband told me; that there were papers to prove his innocence,” she replied.

“You knew that?”

“They were my husband’s words; and in my wifely faith I said that they were true.”

He looked at her mockingly.

“You play your part well, Millicent,” he said; “but remember we are in Sydney, both twenty years older than when we first met at King’s Castor. Is it not time we talked like man and woman, and not, after all that we have gone through, like a sentimental boy and girl?”

“Robert!”

“There, that will do,” he said. “You understand now why you must hold your tongue.”

It was as if once more she had snatched at the veil and thrust it over her eyes, to gaze at him in the old, old way, as if it were impossible to give up the faith to which she had clung for so many years.

“No,” she said softly, “I cannot. Some things are too hard to understand, and this is one.”

“Then I’ll make you understand,” he said, almost fiercely. “If another word is uttered about this it will go like wildfire. Some meddling fool in the Government service will take it up; everything will be seized, and I shall be sent back to the gang through you. Do you hear? through you!”

She stood now gazing at him with her eyes contracting. Her lips parted several times as if she were about to speak, and as if her brain were striving, indeed, to comprehend this thing that she had declared to be too hard. At last she spoke.

“You shall say,” she cried hoarsely. “Tell me what it was I brought over to you.”

“What, again!” he cried. “Well, then, what I had saved up for the rainy day that I knew was coming. My fortune, that I have been waiting all these years to spend; notes that would change at any time; diamonds that would always fetch their price. You did not guess all this? You did not see through it all? Bah! I’m sick of this miserable mock sentiment and twaddle about innocence!”

She drew her breath hard.

“I had to fight the world when I was unlucky in my speculations, and the world got me down. Now my turn has come, and I can laugh at the world. Let’s have no more fooling. You have understood it all from the beginning, and have played your part well. Let me play mine in peace.”

An angry reply rose to her lips, but it died away, and she caught at his hand.

“It is true, then?” she whispered.

“True? Yes, of course,” he said brutally.

“That money, then? Robert, husband, it is not ours. You will give it up—everything?”

“Give it up!” he said, laughing. “Not a shilling. They hounded me down most cruelly!”

“For the sake of our old love, Robert,” she whispered, as she clung to him. “Let us begin again, and I will work for you. Let us try, in a future of toil, to wash away this clinging disgrace. My husband, my husband! for the sake of our innocent child!”

“Give up what I have!” he cried. “Now that I have schemed till success is mine! Not a shilling if it were to save old Sir Gordon’s life.”

“But, Robert, for the sake of our child. I am your wife, and I will bear this blow; but let her go on believing in him whom I have taught her to love. Let the past be dead; begin a new life—repentance for that which has gone. Robert, my husband, I have loved you so dearly, and so long.”

“Pish!” he cried, impatiently. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Lead a new life—a life of repentance! I have had a fine preparation for it here. Why, I tell you they would turn a saint here into a fiend! I sinned against their laws, and they sent me here, herded with hundreds, some of whom might have been brought to better lives; but it has been one long course of brutal treatment, and the lash. Hope was dead to us all, and we had to drag on our lives in misery and despair. I tell you I’ve had to do with people who sought to make us demons, and you talk to me now of repentance for the past.”

“Yes, and you shall repent!” she cried, wildly.

“Silence!” he said, fiercely. “You are my wife, and it is your duty to obey. Not a word of this to Julie. I will speak to her; and as to Crellock—oh, I can manage him.”

He thrust her aside, and strode out of the room without another word, leaving her standing with her hands clasped together, gazing into vacancy, as if stunned by the blow that had fallen—as if the savage acceptance of the truth of the charges by her husband had robbed her of her reason.

During her long trial, whenever a shadowy doubt had crept into her sight, she had slain it. Always he had been her martyr, and she had been ready, in fierce resentment, to turn upon those who would have cast the slightest reflection upon his fame. He, the idol of her young life, her first love, had suffered through misfortune, through an ugly turn of fate, and she had gone on waiting for the day when he would be cleared.

In that spirit, she had crossed the wide ocean, bearing with her his freedom, as she believed; and now, after fighting a year against the terrible disillusions that had been showing Robert Hallam in his true light, the veil that she had so obstinately held was rent in twain, torn away for ever. By his own confession, the husband of her love was a despicable thief; and as she realised how she had been made his accomplice in bringing over the fruits of his theft, the blow seemed now greater than she could bear, the future one terrible void.

Volume Four—Chapter Six.

The Shadow across the Path.

What to do? How to bear it? How far she—woman of purest thought—had sinned in participating as she had in Hallam’s crime?

It was as if the shock had blunted and confused her understanding, so that she could not think clearly or make out any plan for her future proceeding. And all the time she was haunted as by a great horror.