was not her husband; a thing with a
spurious identity; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own
life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man
than hers of him, when she thanked God that at least the only fruit of
that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had
crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more
than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature--yes! but
lovable enough for all that. Not indeed without a sort of charm for any
passing friend, quite short of any spell akin to love. How could this
monstrous personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the
same man? The dreadful change in the identity of the maniac--the maniac
proper, the victim of brain-disease--is at least complete; so complete
often as to force the idea of possession on minds reluctant to receive
it. This man remained himself, but it was as though this identity had
been saturated with evil--had soaked it up as the sponge soaks water.
There was nothing in the old self M'riar remembered to make her glad his
child was not born alive. There was everything in his seeming of to-day
to make her shudder at the thought that it might have lived.

The cause of the change is not far to seek. He had lived for twenty
years in Norfolk Island as a convict; for fourteen years certainly as an
inmate of the prisons, even if a period of qualified liberty preceded
his discharge and return to Sydney. He was by that time practically
damned beyond redemption, and his brilliant career as a bushranger
followed as a matter of course.

Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settlements in
the early part of last century may--even _must_--remember the tale told
by the Catholic priest who went to give absolution to a whole gang of
convicts who were to be hanged for mutiny. He carried with him a boon--a
message of mercy--for half the number; for they had been _pardoned_;
that is to say, had permission now to live on as denizens of a hell on
earth. As it turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was
the one contained or implied in an official absolution from sin, and it
is possible that belief in its validity occasioned the outburst of
rejoicing that greeted its announcement. For there was no rejoicing
among the recipients of His Majesty's clemency--heart-broken silence
alone, and chill despair! For they were to remain on the rack, while
their more for