e made
out, or for me to be discharged the day my twelve years was up, and to
let off the other three, along of my good behaviour in the gaol, and all
the rest of it.

This leaked out somehow, and there was the deuce's own barney over it.
When some of the Parliament men and them sort of coves in the country
that never forgives anybody heard of it they began to buck, and no
mistake. You'd have thought every bush-ranger that ever had been shopped
in New South Wales had been hanged or kept in gaol till he died; nothing
but petitions and letters to the papers; no end of bobbery. The only
paper that had a word to say on the side of a poor devil like me was
the 'Turon Star'. He said that 'Dick Marston and his brother Jim, not to
mention Starlight (who paid his debts at any rate, unlike some people
he could name who had signed their names to this petition), had
worked manly and true at the Turon diggings for over a year. They were
respected by all who knew them, and had they not been betrayed by a
revengeful woman might have lived thenceforth a life of industry and
honourable dealing. He, for one, upheld the decision of the Chief
Secretary. Thousands of the Turon miners, men of worth and intelligence,
would do the same.'

The Governor hadn't been very long in the colony, and they tried it
on all roads to get him to go back on his promise to me. They began
bullying, and flattering, and preaching at him if such a notorious
criminal as Richard Marston was to be allowed to go forth with a
free pardon after a comparatively short--short, think of that,
short!--imprisonment, what a bad example it will be to the rising
generation, and so on.

They managed to put the thing back for a week or two till I was nearly
drove mad with fretting, and being doubtful which way it would go.

Lucky for me it was, and for some other people as well, the Governor was
one of those men that takes a bit of trouble and considers over a thing
before he says yes or no. When he says a thing he sticks to it. When
he goes forward a step he puts his foot down, and all the blowing, and
cackle, and yelping in the world won't shift him.

Whether the Chief Secretary would have taken my side if he'd known
what a dust the thing would have raised, and how near his Ministers--or
whatever they call 'em--was to going out along with poor Dick Marston,
I can't tell. Some people say he wouldn't. Anyhow, he stuck to his word;
and the Governor just said he'd given his d