ll him,
and the dog never gets a show unless he breaks his chain, and that don't
happen often.

Well, I'd learned carpentering and had a turn at mat-making and a whole
lot of other things. They kept me from thinking, as I said before, and
the neater I did 'em and the more careful I worked the better it went
with me. As for my mats, I came quite to be talked about on account of
'em. I drew a regular good picture of Rainbow, and worked it out on a
mat with different coloured thrums, and the number of people who came to
see that mat, and the notice they took of it, would surprise any one.

When my twelve years was within a couple of months or so of being up I
began to hear that there was a deal of in-and-out sort of work about my
getting my freedom. Old George Storefield and Mr. Falkland--both of 'em
in the Upper House--and one or two more people that had some say with
the Government, was working back and edge for me. There was a party on
the other side that wasn't willing as I should lose a day or an hour of
my sentence, and that made out I ought to have been hanged 'right away',
as old Arizona Bill would have said, when I was first taken. Well,
I don't blame any of 'em for that; but if they could have known the
feelings of a man that's done a matter of twelve years, and thinks he
might--yes, might--smell the fresh air and feel the grass under his feet
in a week or two--well, they'd perhaps consider a bit.

Whatever way it came out I couldn't say, but the big man of the
Government people at that time--the Minister that had his say in all
these sort of things--took it into his head that I'd had about enough of
it, if I was to be let out at all; that the steel had been pretty well
taken out of me, and that, from what he knew of my people and so on, I
wasn't likely to trouble the Government again. And he was right. All I
wanted was to be let out a pardoned man, that had done bad things, and
helped in worse; but had paid--and paid dear, God knows--for every pound
he'd got crooked and every day he'd wasted in cross work. If I'd been
sent back for them three years, I do r'aly believe something of dad's
old savage blood would have come uppermost in me, and I'd have turned
reckless and revengeful like to my life's end.

Anyhow, as I said before, the Minister--he'd been into the gaol and had
a look once or twice--made up his mind to back me right out; and he put
it so before the Governor that he gave an order for my pardon to b