w noticed a strong resemblance between us. Others
have remarked it.'

'I am not surprised. There is no difference in our faces but that which
years have made.'

'It was in Melbourne on the night of my arrival. I was attacked in a bar
by a man who mistook me for Solo.'

The brothers looked into each other's eyes for some little time, Jim
anxiously, Ryder with no appearance of concern in his strong, handsome
face.

'I am the man they call Solo.'

'Solo the robber!' Instinctively Jim had moved back from the other, but
Ryder took no notice of the action.

'My boy,' he said, 'there are two kinds of men--the active criminal and
the passive. I am fairly active.'

'But the blind folly of it--here, where fortunes are made so easily!'

'Are they? You have had a bit of luck. There are thousands on the rushes
who do not make tucker. In any case I could not afford to place myself
directly under the supervision of the troopers. Not that I had any weak
desire to earn an honest living, by the way.'

'What are you hoping for? Where is it all leading?' Jim felt an emotion
of despair.

'Perhaps you would rather hear no more to-night.'

'I must hear all. For God's sake, speak!'

'I have been in hell. For fifteen years I remained in the convict
prisons. It might have been fifteen centuries, an eternity. Everything
beyond is so distant that my youth seems a mere dot in the perspective.'

Ryder was talking in a clear, even, unemotional voice.

'I cannot hope to give you anything approaching a true idea of the horror
of that life. I know I can only faintly comprehend it myself now. Taken
from happiness, a comparative boy, I was plunged into a state of absolute
torment, an existence of brutalizing labour, ceaseless cruelty, and
blackest infamy. I herded with men who had degenerated from criminals
into brutes under the influence of the infamous system. Those fifteen
years served to burn out of me most of the fine emotions and sentiments
on which civilized men pride themselves, and then, during the blackest
year of all, a wild craving to preserve something of humanity arose
within me. That was my salvation. I had always before me the hope of
escape. I fought now cease to retain some qualities of clean manhood,
that I might appear amongst fellow as a man, and not like one of the
lowering monsters by whom I was surrounded--men upon whose every feature
and limb were stamped the repulsive brands of the lag. During that first
period