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"I wish," said this pleasant young man to himself, as he stumbled along, "I wish that the mine would fall in and crush Pierre; he's such a dead weight to be hanging round my neck; besides, he has such a gaol-bird look about him that it's enough to make the police find out where he came from; if they do, good-bye to wealth and respectability."
Now, we propose to be beforehand with these old companions by taking the gaol-bird under our wing and setting before him an open door of hope the moment he crosses the threshold of the prison, assuring him that if he is willing to work and comply with our discipline, he never need know want any more.
A natural aptitude drove him from the fiddle to the centre-bit. He did but rob, because genius followed the impulse. He had studied the remotest details of his business; he was sternly professional in the conduct of his life, and, as became an old gaol-bird, there was no antic of the policeman wherewith he was not familiar.
As row by row filled with squalid occupants, I could but scan from my vantage-ground in the gallery the various physiognomies. I am bound to say the typical gaol-bird was but feebly represented. The visitors looked like hard-working men a little pinched and hungry, perhaps, and in many cases obviously dejected and ashamed of the qualification which gave them their seat.
Crow laughed at me when I appealed to him; and the other fellows reminded me that as they had not the pleasure of knowing my pet gaol-bird they were afraid they couldn't tell him what I had done, much as they would like. Flanagan alone treated it seriously. "Batchelor," said he, "I never believed you were such a fool. Can't you see you're only making things worse by your fuss?
The immediate reward of this bungled attack was thirty pounds, but two days later he was committed with Barney to the Durham Assizes, where he exchanged the obscurity of the perfect craftsman for the notoriety of the dangerous gaol-bird.
From these men and the ill-disciplined and gaol-bird soldiers of the New South Wales Corps the peaceably disposed inhabitants were in much greater danger than they ever were from the aborigines.
I learned something of you from your friend, Captain Volnay, and amongst other things I find you are playing Quixote. When the campaign is over you'll be going back to the old thief's thousands. I will give you a gaol-bird to go back to. I have at quarters what amounts to a confession. It's an offer of restitution from Mr. Jervase; and I am not disposed to accept it.
I believe he tried to make an honest living, but couldn't: the brand of the gaol-bird was upon him; and if he ever did get a chance, it was taken away from him before the sincerity of any apparent reformation had been tested. This is his history, and the history of many other men like him. "And Margaret was the daughter of this man.
On a well-educated young lady, whose fall will cause a scandal, the daughter of an enemy, of a Voltairian, almost a radical, a gaol-bird in fine who will be happy to seize the occasion to raise a terrible outcry, and to proclaim your conduct to the four quarters of the horizon. You see I know all. And who has informed you so correctly? I know all, I tell you. You can therefore keep your temper.
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