--by way of a pleasant stroke
of wit--tormented Rufus Dawes with his ill-fortune. "The schooner sails
to-morrow, my man," he had said; "you'll spend your Christmas at the
mines." And congratulated himself upon the fact that Rufus Dawes
merely touched his cap, and went on with his stone-cracking in silence.
Certainly double irons and hard labour were fine things to break a man's
spirit. So that, when in the afternoon of that same day he heard the
astounding news that Rufus Dawes had freed himself from his fetters,
climbed the gaol wall in broad daylight, run the gauntlet of Macquarie
Street, and was now supposed to be safely hidden in the mountains, he
was dumbfounded.

"How the deuce did he do it, Jenkins?" he asked, as soon as he reached
the yard.

"Well, I'm blessed if I rightly know, your honour," says Jenkins. "He
was over the wall before you could say 'knife'. Scott fired and missed
him, and then I heard the sentry's musket, but he missed him, too."

"Missed him!" cries Frere. "Pretty fellows you are, all of you! I
suppose you couldn't hit a haystack at twenty yards? Why, the man wasn't
three feet from the end of your carbine!"

The unlucky Scott, standing in melancholy attitude by the empty irons,
muttered something about the sun having been in his eyes. "I don't know
how it was, sir. I ought to have hit him, for certain. I think I did
touch him, too, as he went up the wall."

A stranger to the customs of the place might have imagined that he was
listening to a conversation about a pigeon match.

"Tell me all about it," says Frere, with an angry curse. "I was just
turning, your honour, when I hears Scott sing out 'Hullo!' and when I
turned round, I saw Dawes's irons on the ground, and him a-scrambling
up the heap o' stones yonder. The two men on my right jumped up, and
I thought it was a made-up thing among 'em, so I covered 'em with my
carbine, according to instructions, and called out that I'd shoot the
first that stepped out. Then I heard Scott's piece, and the men gave a
shout like. When I looked round, he was gone."

"Nobody else moved?"

"No, sir. I was confused at first, and thought they were all in it, but
Parton and Haines they runs in and gets between me and the wall, and
then Mr. Short he come, and we examined their irons."

"All right?"

"All right, your honour; and they all swore they knowed nothing of it. I
know Dawes's irons was all right when he went to dinner."

Frere stopped and exa