ing the interest of the situation; and even the
good Doctor himself was the less concerned at any hindrance to his
visits to Portland, as he uniformly found his prisoner cheerful,
approved by officials, and always making some small advance in the
scale of his own world, and not, as his friends without expected of
him, showing that he felt himself injured instead of elated by such
rewards as improved diet, or increased gratuities to be set to his
account against the time when, after eight years, he might hope for
exportation with a ticket of leave to Western Australia.

The halo of approaching death no longer lighted him up, and after the
effusion of the first meeting, his inner self had closed up, he was
more ready to talk of American news than of his own feelings, and
seemed to look little beyond the petty encouragements devised to suit
the animal natures of ordinary prisoners, and his visitors sometimes
feared lest his character were not resisting the deadening, hardening
influence of the unvaried round of manual labour among such associates.
He had been soon advanced from the quarry to the carpenter's shop, and
was in favour there from his activity and skill; but his very
promotions were sad--and it was more sad, as some thought, for him to
be gratified by them. But, as Dr. May always ended, what did they know
about him?

CHAPTER XXII

Oh, Bessie Bell and Mary Grey,
They were twa bonnie lasses;
They bigged a bower on yon burn side,
And theekt it over wi' rashes.

The early glory of autumn was painting the woods of Indiana--crimson,
orange, purple, as though a rainbow of intensified tints had been
broken into fragments, and then scattered broadcast upon the forest.
But though ripe nuts hung on many a bough, the gipsyings had not yet
taken place, except at home--when Minna, in her desperate attempts at
making the best of things, observed, 'Now we have to make the fire
ourselves, let us think it is all play, and such fun.'

But 'such fun' was hard when one or other of the inmates of the house
was lying on the bed shaking with ague, and the others creeping wearily
about, even on their intermediate days. They had been deluded into
imprudent exposure in the lovely evenings of summer, and had never
shaken off the results.

'Come, Ella,' said Minna, one afternoon, as she descended the bare
rickety stairs, 'Ave is getting better; and if we can get the fire up,
and make some coffee and boil some eggs