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CHAPTER III. A
SOCIAL EVENING.
n the house of Major Vickers, Commandant of Macqua-
Irie Harbour, there was, on this evening of December 3rd,
unusual gaiety.
Lieutenant Maurice Frere, late in command at Maria
Island, had unexpectedly come down with news from head-
quarters. The Ladybird, Government schooner, visited the
settlement on ordinary occasions twice a year, and such vis-
its were looked forward to with no little eagerness by the
settlers. To the convicts the arrival of the Ladybird meant
arrival of new faces, intelligence of old comrades, news of
how the world, from which they were exiled, was progress-
ing. When the Ladybird arrived, the chained and toil-worn
felons felt that they were yet human, that the universe was
not bounded by the gloomy forests which surrounded their
prison, but that there was a world beyond, where men, like
themselves, smoked, and drank, and laughed, and rested,
and were Free. When the Ladybird arrived, they heard such
news as interested them—that is to say, not mere foolish ac-
counts of wars or ship arrivals, or city gossip, but matters
appertaining to their own world—how Tom was with the
road gangs, Dick on a ticket-of-leave, Harry taken to the
bush, and Jack hung at the Hobart Town Gaol. Such items
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