an on the island."

"I see, Captain Frere, that you have studied the criminal classes."

"So I have, my dear sir, and know every turn and twist among 'em. I tell
you my maxim. It's some French fellow's, too, I believe, but that don't
matter--divide to conquer. Set all the dogs spying on each other."

"Oh!" said Meekin. "It's the only way. Why, my dear sir, if the
prisoners were as faithful to each other as we are, we couldn't hold
the island a week. It's just because no man can trust his neighbour that
every mutiny falls to the ground."

"I suppose it must be so," said poor Meekin.

"It is so; and, by George, sir, if I had my way, I'd have it so that no
prisoner should say a word to his right hand man, but his left hand man
should tell me of it. I'd promote the men that peached, and make the
beggars their own warders. Ha, ha!"

"But such a course, Captain Frere, though perhaps useful in a certain
way, would surely produce harm. It would excite the worst passions of
our fallen nature, and lead to endless lying and tyranny. I'm sure it
would."

"Wait a bit," cries Frere. "Perhaps one of these days I'll get a chance,
and then I'll try it. Convicts! By the Lord Harry, sir, there's only one
way to treat 'em; give 'em tobacco when they behave 'emselves, and flog
'em when they don't."

"Terrible!" says the clergyman with a shudder. "You speak of them as if
they were wild beasts."

"So they are," said Maurice Frere, calmly.

CHAPTER X. WHAT BECAME OF THE MUTINEERS OF THE "OSPREY"

At the bottom of the long luxuriant garden-ground was a rustic seat
abutting upon the low wall that topped the lane. The branches of the
English trees (planted long ago) hung above it, and between their
rustling boughs one could see the reach of the silver river. Sitting
with her face to the bay and her back to the house, Sylvia opened the
manuscript she had carried off from Meekin, and began to read. It was
written in a firm, large hand, and headed--

"A NARRATIVE OF THE SUFFERINGS AND ADVENTURES OF CERTAIN OF THE TEN
CONVICTS WHO SEIZED THE BRIG OSPREY, AT MACQUARIE HARBOUR, IN VAN
DIEMEN'S LAND, RELATED BY ONE OF THE SAID CONVICTS WHILE LYING UNDER
SENTENCE FOR THIS OFFENCE IN THE GAOL AT HOBART TOWN."

Sylvia, having read this grandiloquent sentence, paused for a moment.
The story of the mutiny, which had been the chief event of her
childhood, lay before her, and it seemed to her that, were it related
truly, she would com