had paved the way to freedom.
This knowledge coming upon him while the thrill of exultation at the
astounding news of his riches yet vibrated in his brain, made him
grind his teeth with rage at his own hard fate. Bound by the purest and
holiest of ties--the affection of a son to his mother--he had condemned
himself to social death, rather than buy his liberty and life by a
revelation which would shame the gentle creature whom he loved. By a
strange series of accidents, fortune had assisted him to maintain the
deception he had practised. His cousin had not recognized him. The very
ship in which he was believed to have sailed had been lost with every
soul on board. His identity had been completely destroyed--no link
remained which could connect Rufus Dawes, the convict, with Richard
Devine, the vanished heir to the wealth of the dead ship-builder.

Oh, if he had only known! If, while in the gloomy prison, distracted by
a thousand fears, and weighed down by crushing evidence of circumstance,
he had but guessed that death had stepped between Sir Richard and his
vengeance, he might have spared himself the sacrifice he had made. He
had been tried and condemned as a nameless sailor, who could call no
witnesses in his defence, and give no particulars as to his previous
history. It was clear to him now that he might have adhered to his
statement of ignorance concerning the murder, locked in his breast
the name of the murderer, and have yet been free. Judges are just, but
popular opinion is powerful, and it was not impossible that Richard
Devine, the millionaire, would have escaped the fate which had overtaken
Rufus Dawes, the sailor. Into his calculations in the prison--when,
half-crazed with love, with terror, and despair, he had counted up his
chances of life--the wild supposition that he had even then inherited
the wealth of the father who had disowned him, had never entered. The
knowledge of that fact would have altered the whole current of his life,
and he learnt it for the first time now--too late. Now, lying prone upon
the sand; now, wandering aimlessly up and down among the stunted trees
that bristled white beneath the mist-barred moon; now, sitting--as he
had sat in the prison long ago--with the head gripped hard between his
hands, swaying his body to and fro, he thought out the frightful problem
of his bitter life. Of little use was the heritage that he had gained. A
convict-absconder, whose hands were hard with menial