For two reasons: because
it was itself in bad odour, and hoped by this trial to divert public
attention from its own dirty position; and because he had against him
not only his personal enemy, but those who wanted to hit the Company
through him. He'd filched to be able to meet the large expenses of his
wife's establishment. Into this he didn't enter minutely, and he didn't
blame her for having so big a menage; he only said he was sorry that he
hadn't been able to support it without having to come, even for a day,
to the stupidity of stealing. After two years he escaped. He asked me
to write a letter to his wife, which he'd dictate. Marmion, you or I
couldn't have dictated that letter if we'd taken a year to do it. There
was no religion in it, no poppy-cock, but straightforward talk, full of
sorrow for what he'd done, and for the disgrace he'd brought on her.
I remember the last few sentences as if I'd seen them yesterday. 'I am
dying on the open sea, disgraced, but free,' he said. 'I am not innocent
in act, but I was not guilty of intentional wrong. I did what I did
that you should have all you wished, all you ought to have. I ask
but this--and I shall soon ask for nothing--that you will have a kind
thought, now and then, for the man who always loved you, and loves
you yet. I have never blamed you that you did not come near me in my
trouble; but I wish you were here for a moment before I go away for
ever. You must forgive me now, for you will be free. If I were a better
man I would say, God bless you. In my last conscious moments I will
think of you, and speak your name. And now good-bye--an everlasting
good-bye. I was your loving husband, and am your lover until death.' And
it was signed, 'Boyd Madras.'

"However, he didn't die. Between the captain and myself, we kept life
in him, and at last landed him at Port Darwin; all of us, officers and
crew, swearing to let no one know he was a convict. And I'll say this
for the crew of the 'Dancing Kate' that, so far as I know, they kept
their word. That letter, addressed in care of a firm of Melbourne
bankers, I gave back to him before we landed. We made him up a purse
of fifty pounds,--for the crew got to like him,--and left him at Port
Darwin, sailing away again in a few days to another pearl-field farther
east. What happened to him at Port Darwin and elsewhere, I don't know;
but one day I found him on a fashionable steamer in the Indian Ocean,
looking almost as near to King