hat had dimly haunted her girlhood, and
only lately vanished from her dreams. This face looked on her--she
thought--with bitterest loathing and scorn, and she felt relieved when
at the midday halt its owner was ordered to fall out from the rest, and
was with four others re-chained for the homeward journey. Frere, struck
with the appearance of the five, said, "By Jove, Poppet, there are our
old friends Rex and Dawes, and the others. They won't let 'em come all
the way, because they are such a desperate lot, they might make a rush
for it." Sylvia comprehended now the face was the face of Dawes; and
as she looked after him, she saw him suddenly raise his hands above his
head with a motion that terrified her. She felt for an instant a great
shock of pitiful recollection. Staring at the group, she strove to
recall when and how Rufus Dawes, the wretch from whose clutches her
husband had saved her, had ever merited her pity, but her clouded memory
could not complete the picture, and as the wagons swept round a curve,
and the group disappeared, she awoke from her reverie with a sigh.

"Maurice," she whispered, "how is it that the sight of that man always
makes me sad?"

Her husband frowned, and then, caressing her, bade her forget the man
and the place and her fears. "I was wrong to have insisted on your
coming," he said. They stood on the deck of the Sydney-bound vessel the
next morning, and watched the "Natural Penitentiary" grow dim in the
distance. "You were not strong enough."

* * * * *

"Dawes," said John Rex, "you love that girl! Now that you've seen her
another man's wife, and have been harnessed like a beast to drag him
along the road, while he held her in his arms!--now that you've seen and
suffered that, perhaps you'll join us."

Rufus Dawes made a movement of agonized impatience.

"You'd better. You'll never get out of this place any other way. Come,
be a man; join us!"

"No!"

"It is your only chance. Why refuse it? Do you want to live here all
your life?"

"I want no sympathy from you or any other. I will not join you."

Rex shrugged his shoulders and walked away. "If you think to get any
good out of that 'inquiry', you are mightily mistaken," said he, as he
went. "Frere has put a stopper upon that, you'll find." He spoke truly.
Nothing more was heard of it, only that, some six months afterwards,
Mr. North, when at Parramatta, received an official lett