se which I have uttered in my
despair? Horrible madness that has left me prostrate, to what heights of
frenzy didst thou not drive my soul! Like him of old time, who wandered
among the tombs, shrieking and tearing himself, I have been possessed
by a devil. For a week I have been unconscious of aught save torture.
I have gone about my daily duties as one who in his dreams repeats the
accustomed action of the day, and knows it not. Men have looked at me
strangely. They look at me strangely now. Can it be that my disease of
drunkenness has become the disease of insanity? Am I mad, or do I but
verge on madness? O Lord, whom in my agonies I have confessed, leave me
my intellect--let me not become a drivelling spectacle for the curious
to point at or to pity! At least, in mercy, spare me a little. Let not
my punishment overtake me here. Let her memories of me be clouded with
a sense of my rudeness or my brutality; let me for ever seem to her
the ungrateful ruffian I strive to show myself--but let her not behold
me--that!

CHAPTER XII. THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF Mr. NORTH.

On or about the 8th of December, Mrs. Frere noticed a sudden and
unaccountable change in the manner of the chaplain. He came to her one
afternoon, and, after talking for some time, in a vague and unconnected
manner, about the miseries of the prison and the wretched condition of
some of the prisoners, began to question her abruptly concerning Rufus
Dawes.

"I do not wish to think of him," said she, with a shudder. "I have the
strangest, the most horrible dreams about him. He is a bad man. He tried
to murder me when a child, and had it not been for my husband, he would
have done so. I have only seen him once since then--at Hobart Town, when
he was taken." "He sometimes speaks to me of you," said North, eyeing
her. "He asked me once to give him a rose plucked in your garden."

Sylvia turned pale. "And you gave it him?"

"Yes, I gave it him. Why not?"

"It was valueless, of course, but still--to a convict?"

"You are not angry?"

"Oh, no! Why should I be angry?" she laughed constrainedly. "It was a
strange fancy for the man to have, that's all."

"I suppose you would not give me another rose, if I asked you."

"Why not?" said she, turning away uneasily. "You? You are a gentleman."

"Not I--you don't know me."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it would be better for you if you had never seen me."

"Mr. North!" Terrified at the wild glea