visited him, and finding his "spirit" not yet "broken," ordered that he should be put to grind maize. Dawes declined to work. So they chained his hand to one arm of the grindstone, and placed another prisoner at the other arm. As the second prisoner turned,

the hand of Dawes of course revolved.

"You're not such a pebble as folks seemed to think," grinned Frere, pointing to the turning wheel.

Upon which the indomitable poor devil straightened his sorely-tried muscles, and prevented the wheel from turning at all. Frere gave him fifty more lashes, and sent him the next day to grind cayenne pepper. This was a punishment more dreaded by the convicts than any other. The pungent dust filled their eyes and lungs, causing them the most excruciating torments. For a man with a raw back the work was one continued agony. In four days, Rufus Dawes, emaciated, blistered, blinded, broke down.

"For God's sake, Captain Frere, kill me at once!" he said.

'No fear," said the other, rejoiced at this proof of his power. "You've given in; that's all I wanted. Troke, take him to the hospital."

When he was in hospital, North visited him.

"I would have come to see you before," said the clergyman, "but I have been very ill."

In truth he looked so. He had had a fever, it seemed, and they had shaved his beard, and cropped cropped his hair. Dawes could see that the haggard, wasted man had passed through as great as his own.

some agony almost

The next day Frere

visited him, complimented him on his courage, and offered to make him a constable.

Dawes turned his scarred back to his torturer, and resolutely declined to answer.

"I am afraid you have made an enemy of the Commandant," said North, the next day. Why not accept his offer ?"

Dawes cast on him a glance of quiet scorn. "And betray my mates? I'm not one of that sort."

The clergyman spoke to him of hope, of release, of repentance, and redemption. The prisoner laughed. "Who's to redeem me?" he said, expressing his thoughts in phraseology that to ordinary folks might seem blasphemous. "It would take a Christ to die again to save such as I."

VOL. III.

13

North spoke to him of immortality. "There is another life," said he. "Do not risk your chance of happiness in it. You have a future to live for, man."

"I hope not," said the victim of the "system." "I want to rest-to rest, and never to be disturbed again."

His "spirit" was broken enough by this time. Yet he had resolution enough to refuse Frere's repeated offers. "I'll never 'jump' it," he said to North, "if they cut me in half first."

North pityingly implored the stubborn. mind to have mercy on the lacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart. gave him the key to read the cipher of this. man's life. "A noble nature ruined,” said he to himself. "What is the secret of his. history?"

Dawes, on his part, seeing how different. from other black coats was this priest-at once so ardent and so gloomy, so stern and so tender-began to speculate on the cause of his monitor's sunken cheeks, fiery eyes, and pre-occupied manner, to wonder what grief inspired those agonized prayers, those eloquent and daring supplications, which were daily poured out over his rude bed. So between

these two-the priest and the sinner-was a sort of sympathetic bond.

One day this bond was drawn so close as to tug at both their heart-strings. The chaplain had a flower in his coat. Dawes eyed it with hungry looks, and, as the clergyman was about to quit the room, said, "Mr. North, will you give me that rosebud ?” North paused irresolutely, and finally, as if after a struggle with himself, took it carefully from his button-hole, and placed it in the prisoner's brown, scarred hand. In another instant, Dawes, believing himself alone, pressed the gift to his lips. North returned abruptly, and the eyes of the pair met. Dawes flushed crimson, but North turned white as death. Neither spoke, but each was drawn closer to the other, since both had kissed the rosebud plucked by Sylvia's fingers.

CTOBER 21st.-I am safe for another six months if I am careful, for my last bout lasted longer than I

expected. I suppose one of these days I shall have a paroxysm that will kill me. I shall not regret it.

I wonder if this familiar of mine-I begin to detest the expression-will accuse me of endeavouring to make a case for myself if Isay that I believe my madness to be a disease? I do believe it. I honestly can no more help getting drunk, than a lunatic can help screaming and gibbering. It would be different with me, perhaps, were I a contented man, happily married, with children about me, and family