Starlight and the other prisoner in the great Momberah
cattle robbery were to be brought in this particular day. There was a
fair-sized crowd gathered as we were helped down from the coach. At the
side of the crowd was a small mob of blacks with their dogs, spears,
'possum rugs and all complete. They and their gins and pickaninnies
appeared to take great notice of the whole thing. One tallish gin,
darker than the others, and with her hair tucked under an old bonnet,
wrapped her 'possum cloak closely round her shoulders and pushed up
close to us. She looked hard at Starlight, who appeared not to see her.
As she drew back some one staggered against her; an angry scowl passed
over her face, so savage and bitter that I felt quite astonished. I
should have been astonished, I mean, if I had not been able, by that
very change, to know again the restless eyes and grim set mouth of
Warrigal.

It was only a look, and he was gone. The lock creaked, the great iron
door swung back, and we were swallowed up in a tomb--a stone vault where
men are none the less buried because they have separate cells. They
do not live, though they appear to be alive; they move, and sometimes
speak, and appear to hear words. Some have to be sent away and buried
outside. They have been dead a long time, but have not seemed to want
putting in the ground. That makes no change in them--not much, I mean.
If they sleep it's all right; if they don't sleep anything must be
happiness after the life they have escaped. 'Happy are the dead' is
written on all prison walls.

What I suffered in that first time no tongue can tell. I can't bear now
to think of it and put it down. The solitary part of it was enough to
drive any man mad that had been used to a free life. Day after day,
night after night, the same and the same and the same over again.

Then the dark cells. I got into them for a bit. I wasn't always as cool
as I might be--more times that mad with myself that I could have smashed
my own skull against the wall, let alone any one else's. There was one
of the warders I took a dislike to from the first, and he to me, I don't
doubt. I thought he was rough and surly. He thought I wanted to have my
own way, and he made it up to take it out of me, and run me every way
he could. We had a goodish spell of fighting over it, but he gave in at
last. Not but what I'd had a lot to bear, and took a deal of punishment
before he jacked up. I needn't have had it. It was all