I dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I

ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature

before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In the

act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the

horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although

I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and

shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind

that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a

screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than

before. They very first words I heard them interchange as I became

conscious were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."

"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.

"How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away

somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."

"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that

I had 'em here."

"Two one pound notes, or friends?"

"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had, for one,

and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says - ?"

"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized - "it was all

said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the

Dockyard - 'You're a-going to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I

find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him

them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."

"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a Man,

in wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he

knowed nothing of you?"

"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried

again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."

"And was that - Honour! - the only time you worked out, in this

part of the country?"

"The only time."

"What might have been your opinion of the place?"

"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp,

mist, and mudbank."

They both execrated the place in very strong language, and

gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.

After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down

and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for

feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity.

Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature, but so

differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it was

not at all likely he could have known me without accidental help.

Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, was

sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other

coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my

name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched

the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device I executed

successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet;

I had but to turn a hinge to get it out: I threw it down before me,

got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the first

stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went their

way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited

off to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew

waiting for them at the slime-washed stairs, - again heard the

gruff "Give way, you!" like and order to dogs - again saw the

wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water.

I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was

altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me.

As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding

the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition,

made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of

shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror

of childhood.