Page 233 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

you, sir.’
‘Help me? How?’ ‘To build a hut here for the ladies. And
we’ll live here all our lives, and never go back to the sheds
any more.’
‘He has been wandering a little,’ said Mrs. Vickers. ‘Poor
fellow, he seems quite well behaved.’
The convict began to sing a little German song, and to
beat the refrain with his hand. Frere looked at him with cu-
riosity. ‘I wonder what the story of that man’s life has been,’
he said. ‘A queer one, I’ll be bound.’
Sylvia looked up at him with a forgiving smile. ‘I’ll ask
him when he gets well,’ she said, ‘and if you are good, I’ll
tell you, Mr. Frere.’
Frere accepted the proffered friendship. ‘I am a great
brute, Sylvia, sometimes, ain’t I?’ he said, ‘but I don’t mean
it.’
‘You are,’ returned Sylvia, frankly, ‘but let’s shake hands,
and be friends. It’s no use quarrelling when there are only
four of us, is it?’ And in this way was Rufus Dawes admitted
a member of the family circle.
Within a week from the night on which he had seen the
smoke of Frere’s fire, the convict had recovered his strength,
and had become an important personage. The distrust with
which he had been at first viewed had worn off, and he was
no longer an outcast, to be shunned and pointed at, or to be
referred to in whispers. He had abandoned his rough man-
ner, and no longer threatened or complained, and though
at times a profound melancholy would oppress him, his
spirits were more even than those of Frere, who was often

For the Term of His Natural Life