e case into Court created a new position. An
accommodation that would have been easy enough at first--an excusable
compounding of a felony--became impossible under the eyes of the Bench.
And this more especially because one of the Judges of Assize who tried
the case acquired an interest in Maisie analogous to the one King David
took in the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and perceived the advantages he
would derive if this forger and gambler was packed off to a life far
worse than the death the astute monarch schemed for the great-hearted
soldier who was serving him. Whether the two were lawfully man and wife
made no difference to this Judge. Maisie's devotion to her scoundrel was
the point his lordship's legal acumen was alive to, and he himself was
scarcely King of Israel. One wonders sometimes--at least, the present
writer has done so--what Bathsheba's feelings were on the occasion
referred to. We can only surmise, and can do little more in the case of
Maisie. The materials for the retelling of this story are very slight.
Their source may be referred to later. For the moment it must be content
with the bare facts.

This Bathsheba was able to say "Hands off!" to _her_ King David, and
also able--but Heaven knows how!--to keep up a correspondence with the
worthless parallel of the Hittite throughout the period of his detention
in an English gaol, or, it may be, on the river hulks, until his
deportation in a convict ship to Sydney, from which place occasional
letters reached her, which were probably as frequent as his
opportunities of sending them, until, a considerable time later--perhaps
as much as five years; dates are not easy to fix--one came saying that
he expected shortly to be transferred to the new penal settlement in Van
Diemen's Land.

At the beginning of last century the black hulks on the Thames and
elsewhere were known and spoken of truly as "floating Hells." Any penal
colony was in one point worse; he who went there left Hope behind, so
far as his hopes were centred in his native land. For to return was
Death.

After his transfer to Van Diemen's Land, no letter reached her for some
months. Then came news that Thornton had benefited by the extraordinary
fulness of the powers granted to the Governors of these penal
settlements, who practically received the convicts on lease for the term
of their service. They were, in fact, slaves. But this told well for
Maisie's husband, whose father had been at school with t