nd burst into tears.

CHAPTER XII. "MR." DAWES.

The coarse tones of Maurice Frere roused him. "What do you want?" he
asked. Rufus Dawes, raising his head, contemplated the figure before
him, and recognized it. "Is it you?" he said slowly.

"What do you mean? Do you know me?" asked Frere, drawing back. But the
convict did not reply. His momentary emotion passed away, the pangs of
hunger returned, and greedily seizing upon the piece of damper, he began
to eat in silence.

"Do you hear, man?" repeated Frere, at length. "What are you?"

"An escaped prisoner. You can give me up in the morning. I've done my
best, and I'm beat."

The sentence struck Frere with dismay. The man did not know that the
settlement had been abandoned!

"I cannot give you up. There is no one but myself and a woman and child
on the settlement." Rufus Dawes, pausing in his eating, stared at him in
amazement. "The prisoners have gone away in the schooner. If you choose
to remain free, you can do so as far as I am concerned. I am as helpless
as you are."

"But how do you come here?"

Frere laughed bitterly. To give explanations to convicts was foreign to
his experience, and he did not relish the task. In this case, however,
there was no help for it. "The prisoners mutinied and seized the brig."

"What brig?"

"The Osprey."

A terrible light broke upon Rufus Dawes, and he began to understand how
he had again missed his chance. "Who took her?"

"That double-dyed villain, John Rex," says Frere, giving vent to his
passion. "May she sink, and burn, and--"

"Have they gone, then?" cried the miserable man, clutching at his hair
with a gesture of hopeless rage.

"Yes; two days ago, and left us here to starve." Rufus Dawes burst into
a laugh so discordant that it made the other shudder. "We'll starve
together, Maurice Frere," said he, "for while you've a crust, I'll share
it. If I don't get liberty, at least I'll have revenge!"

The sinister aspect of this famished savage, sitting with his chin on
his ragged knees, rocking himself to and fro in the light of the fire,
gave Mr. Maurice Frere a new sensation. He felt as might have felt that
African hunter who, returning to his camp fire, found a lion there.
"Wretch!" said he, shrinking from him, "why should you wish to be
revenged on me?"

The convict turned upon him with a snarl. "Take care what you say! I'll
have no hard words. Wretch! If I am a wretch, who made me one? If I hate
y