Page 268 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

life—the wild supposition that he had even then inherited
the wealth of the father who had disowned him, had nev-
er entered. The knowledge of that fact would have altered
the whole current of his life, and he learnt it for the first
time now— too late. Now, lying prone upon the sand; now,
wandering aimlessly up and down among the stunted trees
that bristled white beneath the mist-barred moon; now, sit-
ting—as he had sat in the prison long ago— with the head
gripped hard between his hands, swaying his body to and
fro, he thought out the frightful problem of his bitter life.
Of little use was the heritage that he had gained. A con-
vict-absconder, whose hands were hard with menial service,
and whose back was scarred with the lash, could never be
received among the gently nurtured. Let him lay claim to
his name and rights, what then? He was a convicted felon,
and his name and rights had been taken from him by the
law. Let him go and tell Maurice Frere that he was his lost
cousin. He would be laughed at. Let him proclaim aloud
his birth and innocence, and the convict-sheds would grin,
and the convict overseer set him to harder labour. Let him
even, by dint of reiteration, get his wild story believed, what
would happen? If it was heard in England— after the lapse
of years, perhaps—that a convict in the chain-gang in Mac-
quarie Harbour—a man held to be a murderer, and whose
convict career was one long record of mutiny and punish-
ment—claimed to be the heir to an English fortune, and to
own the right to dispossess staid and worthy English folk
of their rank and station, with what feeling would the an-
nouncement be received? Certainly not with a desire to