at those two women told me gave me some insight into your character. I
perceived that at least the flame had scorched the bloom from your soul.'

'Here I am a new man. I have known happiness, I have tasted love, and
made friends with good men. Here I can live!'

Ryder looked at him closely. 'You must tell me of your life,' he said--'
the life in Chisley after my supposed hanging. No, no; not now. Go to
your tent and sleep.'

'Sleep! I shall not sleep.'

'Think over what I have told you.'

'There is more behind?' 'There may be.'

'You think I will join you?'

'In my present career? No. For the time being, let us say no more. I need
not ask you to be silent. Meet me here to-morrow night at nine. While you
are thinking, bear always in mind the fact that Peter Cannon is there
'--he pointed in the direction of Stony's tent--' a living man.
Good-night.'

The reminder was well timed; pity stirred warmly in Jim's heart again,
and he offered his hand.

'So long,' he said, dropping into the vernacular of mateship.

Ryder took his hand with no demonstration of emotion. 'So long,' he
replied.

XVI

BURTON found his mate gloomy and taciturn all next day, a condition so
remarkable in Done that it gave Mike some little concern, but he made no
comment; and Jim was too absorbed in the strange, new development in his
life to discover his friend's uneasiness. Ryder's story brought Jim's
youthful sufferings back to him with painful vividness; it awakened some
animosities he had thought dead, and he recognised, though shrinking from
the idea with actual terror, in Ryder's attitude towards his kind the
frame of mind into which he was drifting when he broke away from Chisley
and its associations. Remembering well his own heart up to the time when
human interests and sympathies began to awaken kindred emotions within
him, he understood that the resemblance between himself and his brother
was as close on the moral side as it was on the physical, but with Ryder
the demoralizing influences had worked their utmost. How like their
sufferings had been! differing only in degree; but his own sufferings
looked pale and fanciful now beside those of his brother. His afflictions
were of the spirit only. He and Ryder were of a supersensitive race and
every soul-pang he endured had been augmented a thousand times in his
brother's case, and driven in by the prison cell, the leg-irons, the
loathsome associations, the animalizing toil in the qua