"What did he say ?"

"Nothing. I sent him down aboard the

schooner at once.

He ought to be out of the

river by this time."

"Maurice, I have a strange feeling about that man."

"Eh?" said Maurice.

"I seem to fear him, as if I knew some story about him, and yet didn't know it."

"That's not very clear," said Maurice, forcing a laugh; "but don't let's talk about him any more.

We'll soon be far from Port

Arthur and everybody in it."

"Maurice," said she, caressingly, "I love you, dear. You'll always protect me against these men, won't you?"

Maurice kissed her. "You have not got

"I see I shall have to take a great deal of care of my wife."

over your fright, Sylvia," he said.

"Of course," replied Sylvia.

And then the pair began to make love, or rather Maurice made it, and Sylvia suffered him.

Suddenly her eye caught something. "What's that--there, on the ground by the fountain ?" They were near the spot where Dawes had been seized the night before. A little stream

ran through the garden, and a Triton-of convict manufacture-blew his horn in the middle of a—convict built-rockery. Under the lip of the fountain lay a small packet. Frere picked it up. It was made of soiled yellow cloth, and stitched evidently by a man's fingers. "It looks like a needle-case," said he.

66 Let me see. What a strange-looking thing! Yellow cloth, too. Why, it must belong to a prisoner. Oh, Maurice, the man who was here last night!"

"Ay," says Maurice, turning over the packet, "it might have been his, sure enough." "He seemed to fling something from him, I thought. Perhaps this is it?" said she, peering over his arm, in delicate curiosity. Frere, with something of a scowl on his brow, tore off the outer covering of the mysterious packet, and displayed a second envelope, of grey cloth cloth the "good-conduct" uniform. Beneath this was a piece, some three inches square, of stained and discoloured merino, that had once been blue.

"Hullo!" says Frere. "Why, what's this?" "It is a piece of a dress," says Sylvia.

It was Rufus Dawes' talisman,—a portion of the frock she had worn at Macquarie Harbour, and which the unhappy convict had

cherished as a sacred relic for five weary

years.

Frere flung it into the water. The running stream whirled it away.

'Why did you do that?" cried the girl, with a sudden pang of remorse for which she could not account. The shred of cloth, caught by a weed, lingered for an instant on the surface of the water. Almost at the same moment, the pair, raising their eyes, saw the schooner which bore Rufus Dawes back to bondage glide past the opening of the trees and disappear. When they looked again for the strange relic of the desperado of Port Arthur, it also had vanished.

HE usual clanking and hammering was prevalent upon the stone jetty of Port Arthur when the schooner bearing the returned convict, Rufus Dawes, ran alongside. On the heights above the esplanade rose the grim front of the soldiers' barracks; beneath the soldiers' barracks was the long range of prison buildings, with their workshops and tan-pits; to the left lay the Commandant's house, authoritative by reason of its embrasured terrace and guardian sentry; while the jetty, that faced the purple length of the "Island of the Dead," swarmed with parti-coloured figures, clanking about their enforced business, under the muskets of their gaolers.

VOL. II.

15

Rufus Dawes had seen this prospect before, had learnt by heart each beauty of rising sun, sparkling water, and wooded hill. From the hideously clean jetty at his feet, to the signal station, that, embowered in bloom, reared its slender arms upwards into the cloudless sky, he knew it all. There was no charm for him in the exquisite blue of the sea, the soft shadows of the hills, or the soothing ripple of the waves that crept voluptuously to the white breast of the shining shore. He sat with his head bowed down, and his hands clasped about his knees, disdaining to look until they roused him.

"Hallo, Dawes!" says Warder Troke, halting his train of ironed yellow-jackets. "So you've come back again! Glad to see yer, Dawes! It seems an age since we had the pleasure of your company, Dawes !" At this pleasantry the train laughed, so that their irons clanked more than ever. They found it often inconvenient not to laugh at Mr. Troke's humour. "Step down here, Dawes, and let me introduce yer to your h'old friends. They'll be glad to see yer, won't yer, boys? Why, bless me, Dawes, we thort we'd lost yer! We thort yer'd given us the slip altogether, Dawes. They didn't take care of yer