This was the end--the end--the end! I used to call it out sometimes
louder and louder, till the warder would come in to see if I had gone
mad.

Bit by bit I came to my right senses. I almost think I felt sharper and
clearer in my head than I had done for ever so long. Then I was able to
realise the misery I had come down to after all our blowing and roving.
This was the crush-yard and no gateway. I was safe to be hanged in six
weeks, or thereabouts--hanged like a dog! Nothing could alter that, and
I didn't want it if it could.

And how did the others get on, those that had their lives bound up with
ours, so that we couldn't be hurt without their bleeding, almost in
their hearts?--that is, mother's bled to death, at any rate; when she
heard of Jim's death and my being taken it broke her heart clean; she
never held her head up after. Aileen told me in her letter she used to
nurse his baby and cry over him all day, talking about her dear boy Jim.
She was laid in the burying-ground at St. Kilda. As to Aileen, she had
long vowed herself to the service of the Virgin. She knew that she was
committing sin in pledging herself to an earthly love. She had been
punished for her sin by the death of him she loved, and she had settled
in her mind to go into the convent at Soubiaca, where she should be able
to wear out her life in prayer for those of her blood who still lived,
as well as for the souls of those who lay in the little burying-ground
on the banks of the far Warrego.

Jeanie settled to stop in Melbourne. She had money enough to keep her
comfortable, and her boy would be brought up in a different style from
his father.

As for Gracey, she sent me a letter in which she said she was like the
bird that could only sing one song. She would remain true to me in life
and death. George was very kind, and would never allow any one to speak
harshly of his former friends. We must wait and make the best of it.

So I was able, you see, to get bits of news even in a condemned cell,
from time to time, about the outside world. I learned that Wall and
Hulbert and Moran and another fellow were still at large, and following
up their old game. Their time, like ours, was drawing short, though.

. . . . .

Well, this has been a thundering long yarn, hasn't it? All my whole life
I seem to have lived over again. It didn't take so long in the telling;
it's a month to-day since I began. And this life itself has reeled away
so q