the thought that you should come to
blush for me--you who love me, and who have seldom, I hope, had reason
to do other than respect me. But if the blow falls which is for ever
hanging over me, then I should wish you to read this that you may know
straight from me how far I have been to blame. On the other hand, if all
should go well (which may kind God Almighty grant!), then if by any
chance this paper should be still undestroyed, and should fall into
your hands, I conjure you by all you hold sacred, by the memory of your
dear mother, and by the love which has been between us, to hurl it into
the fire, and to never give one thought to it again.

"If, then, your eye goes on to read this line, I know that I shall
already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or, as is more
likely--for you know that my heart is weak--be lying with my tongue
sealed for ever in death. In either case the time for suppression is
past, and every word which I tell you is the naked truth; and this I
swear as I hope for mercy.

"My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James Armitage in my younger
days, and you can understand now the shock that it was to me a few weeks
ago when your college friend addressed me in words which seemed to imply
that he had surmised my secret. As Armitage it was that I entered a
London banking house, and as Armitage I was convicted of breaking my
country's laws, and was sentenced to transportation. Do not think very
harshly of me, laddie. It was a debt of honour, so-called, which I had
to pay, and I used money which was not my own to do it, in the certainty
that I could replace it before there could be any possibility of its
being missed. But the most dreadful ill-luck pursued me. The money which
I had reckoned upon never came to hand, and a premature examination of
accounts exposed my deficit. The case might have been dealt leniently
with, but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than
now, and on my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a felon
with thirty-seven other convicts in the 'tween decks of the barque
_Gloria Scott_, bound for Australia.

"It was the year '55, when the Crimean War was at its height, and the
old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the Black Sea.
The Government was compelled therefore to use smaller and less suitable
vessels for sending out their prisoners. The _Gloria Scott_ had been in
the Chinese tea trade, but she was an old-fashioned, h