of family matter that can hardly be
neglected. It's the government that fetches me. When I think of what
I've done for this country, and then of what this country has done for
me, it makes me fairly wild--clean drives me off my head. There's no
gratitude nor common decency left, doctor!"

He brooded over his wrongs for a few minutes, and then proceeded to lay
them before me in detail.

"Here's nine men," he said; "they've been murdering and killing for
a matter of three years, and maybe a life a week wouldn't more than
average the work that they've done. The government catches them and the
government tries them, but they can't convict; and why?--because the
witnesses have all had their throats cut, and the whole job's been very
neatly done. What happens then? Up comes a citizen called Wolf Tone
Maloney; he says, 'The country needs me, and here I am.' And with that
he gives his evidence, convicts the lot, and enables the beaks to hang
them. That's what I did. There's nothing mean about me! And now what
does the country do in return? Dogs me, sir, spies on me, watches me
night and day, turns against the very man that worked so very hard for
it. There's something mean about that, anyway. I didn't expect them to
knight me, nor to make me colonial secretary; but, damn it! I did expect
that they would let me alone!"

"Well," I remonstrated, "if you choose to break laws and assault people,
you can't expect it to be looked over on account of former services."

"I don't refer to my present imprisonment, sir," said Maloney, with
dignity. "It's the life I've been leading since that cursed trial that
takes the soul out of me. Just you sit there on that trestle, and I'll
tell you all about it, and then look me in the face and tell me that
I've been treated fair by the police."

I shall endeavor to transcribe the experience of the convict in his own
words, as far as I can remember them, preserving his curious perversions
of right and wrong. I can answer for the truth of his facts, whatever
may be said for his deductions from them. Months afterward, Inspector H.
W. Hann, formerly governor of the jail at Dunedin, showed me entries in
his ledger which corroborated every statement Maloney reeled the story
off in a dull, monotonous voice, with his head sunk upon his breast and
his hands between his knees. The glitter of his serpentlike eyes was the
only sign of the emotions which were stirred up by the recollection of
the events whic