ion. Dreadful
harm was done on the Erymanth estate, and the farm from which
Lewthwayte had been expelled suffered especially, the whole of the
ricks and buildings being burnt down, though the family of the occupant
was saved, partly by Prometesky's exertions.

When the troops came, both he and my brothers were taken with arms in
their hands; they were tried by the special commission and sentenced to
death. Lewthwayte and his son were actually hung; but there was great
interest made for Ambrose and Eustace, and in consideration of their
early youth (they were not twenty-two) their sentence was commuted to
transportation for life, and so was Prometesky's, because he was half a
foreigner, and because he was proved to have saved life.

My father would not see them again, but he offered their wives a
passage out to join them, and wanted to have had their two babies left
with him, but the two young women refused to part with them; and it was
after that that he married again, meaning to cast them off for ever,
though, as long as their time of servitude lasted, he sent the wives an
allowance, and as soon as his sons could hold property, he gave them a
handsome sum with which to set themselves up in a large farm in the
Bush.

And when little Percy died, he wanted again to have his eldest grandson
sent home to him, and was very much wounded by the refusal which came
only just before his death. His will had left the estate to the
grandson, as the right heir. Everyone looked on it as a bad prospect,
but no one thought of the "convict boy" as in the immediate future, as
my mother was still quite a young woman.

But when I was just three-and-twenty, an attack of diphtheria broke
out; my mother and I both caught it; and, alas! I alone recovered. The
illness was very long with me, partly from my desolateness and grief,
for, tender as my kind old servants were, and good as were my friends
and neighbours, they could only make me feel what they were _not_.

Our old lawyer, Mr. Prosser, had written to my nephew, for we knew that
both the poor brothers were dead; but he assured me that I might safely
stay on at the old place, for it would be eight months before his
letter could be answered, and the heir could not come for a long time
after.

I was very glad to linger on, for I clung to the home, and looked at
every bush and flower, blossoming for the last time, almost as if I
were dying, and leaving them to a sort of fiend. My m