it not
stamped upon his face we should have stared at him as on a man born with
but one eye. But though his look was sad, yet Elzevir had a kind smile
and hearty greeting for me as he passed, and on the march, when they
served out our food, we got a chance to speak a word or two together.
Yet how could we find room for much gladness, for even the pleasure of
meeting was marred because we were forced thus to take note, as it were,
of each other's misery, and to know that the one had nothing for his old
age but to break in prison, and the other nothing but the prison to eat
away the strength of his prime.

Before long, all knew whither we were bound, for it leaked out we were
to march to the Hague and thence to Scheveningen, to take ship to the
settlements of Java, where they use transported felons on the sugar
farms. Was this the end of young hopes and lofty aims--to live and die a
slave in the Dutch plantations? Hopes of Grace, hopes of seeing
Moonfleet again, were dead long long ago; and now was there to be no
hope of liberty, or even wholesome air, this side the grave, but only
burning sun and steaming swamps, and the crack of the slave-driver's
whip till the end came? Could it be so? Could it be so? And yet what
help was there, or what release? Had I not watched ten years for any
gleam or loophole of relief, and never found it? If we were shut in
cells or dungeons in the deepest rock we might have schemed escape, but
here in the open, fettered up in-droves, what could we do? They were
bitter thoughts enough that filled my heart as I trudged along the rough
roads, fettered by my wrist to the long bar; and seeing Elzevir's white
hair and bowed shoulders trudging in front of me, remembered when that
head had scarce a grizzle on it, and the back was straight as the
massive stubborn pillars in old Moonfleet church. What was it had
brought us to this pitch? And then I called to mind a July evening,
years ago, the twilight summer-house and a sweet grave voice that said,
'Have a care how you touch the treasure: it was evilly come by and will
bring a curse with it.' Ay, 'twas the diamond had done it all, and
brought a blight upon my life, since that first night I spent in
Moonfleet vault; and I cursed the stone, and Blackbeard and his lost
Mohunes, and trudged on bearing their cognizance branded on my face.

We marched back to the Hague, and through that very street where
Aldobrand dwelt, only the house was shut, and the boa