lculation
concerning a race, John Rex often wondered at the strange ease with
which he had carried out so monstrous and seemingly difficult an
imposture. After he was landed in Sydney, by the vessel which Sarah
Purfoy had sent to save him, he found himself a slave to a bondage
scarcely less galling than that from which he had escaped--the bondage
of enforced companionship with an unloved woman. The opportune death of
one of her assigned servants enabled Sarah Purfoy to instal the escaped
convict in his room. In the strange state of society which prevailed
of necessity in New South Wales at that period, it was not unusual for
assigned servants to marry among the free settlers, and when it was
heard that Mrs. Purfoy, the widow of a whaling captain, had married John
Carr, her storekeeper, transported for embezzlement, and with two years
of his sentence yet to run, no one expressed surprise. Indeed, when the
year after, John Carr blossomed into an "expiree", master of a fine wife
and a fine fortune, there were many about him who would have made his
existence in Australia pleasant enough. But John Rex had no notion of
remaining longer than he could help, and ceaselessly sought means of
escape from this second prison-house. For a long time his search was
unsuccessful. Much as she loved the scoundrel, Sarah Purfoy did not
scruple to tell him that she had bought him and regarded him as her
property. He knew that if he made any attempt to escape from his
marriage-bonds, the woman who had risked so much to save him would
not hesitate to deliver him over to the authorities, and state how the
opportune death of John Carr had enabled her to give name and employment
to John Rex, the absconder. He had thought once that the fact of her
being his wife would prevent her from giving evidence against him, and
that he could thus defy her. But she reminded him that a word to Blunt
would be all sufficient.

"I know you don't care for me now, John," she said, with grim
complacency; "but your life is in my hands, and if you desert me I will
bring you to the gallows."

In vain, in his secret eagerness to be rid of her, he raged and chafed.
He was tied hand and foot. She held his money, and her shrewd wit had
more than doubled it. She was all-powerful, and he could but wait until
her death or some lucky accident should rid him of her, and leave him
free to follow out the scheme he had matured. "Once rid of her," he
thought, in his solitary ride