sed and torn all over.
He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they were both
separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself from
falling.

"Take notice, guard,--he tried to murder me," were his first words.

"Tried to murder him?" said my convict, disdainfully. "Try, and not
do it? I took him, and giv' him up; that's what I done. I not only
prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here,--dragged
him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if you please, this
villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. Murder
him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I could do worse and drag
him back!"

The other one still gasped, "He tried--he tried-to--murder me.
Bear--bear witness."

"Lookee here!" said my convict to the sergeant. "Single-handed I got
clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha' got
clear of these death-cold flats likewise--look at my leg: you won't find
much iron on it--if I hadn't made the discovery that he was here. Let
him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found out? Let him make a
tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no. If I had died at
the bottom there," and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch with his
manacled hands, "I'd have held to him with that grip, that you should
have been safe to find him in my hold."

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead
man if you had not come up."

"He lies!" said my convict, with fierce energy. "He's a liar born, and
he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let him turn
those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it."

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not, however,
collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set expression, looked
at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes and at the sky, but
certainly did not look at the speaker.

"Do you see him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he is?
Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he looked
when we were tried together. He never looked at me."

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his eyes
restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a moment on
the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look at," and with
a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my convict