Page 354 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER VII. RUFUS

DAWES’S IDYLL.

hat afternoon, while Mr. Meekin was digesting his
Tlunch, and chatting airily with Sylvia, Rufus Dawes
began to brood over a desperate scheme. The intelligence
that the investigation he had hoped for was not to be grant-
ed to him had rendered doubly bitter those galling fetters
of self restraint which he had laid upon himself. For five
years of desolation he had waited and hoped for a chance
which might bring him to Hobart Town, and enable him
to denounce the treachery of Maurice Frere. He had, by an
almost miraculous accident, obtained that chance of open
speech, and, having obtained it, he found that he was not
allowed to speak. All the hopes he had formed were dashed
to earth. All the calmness with which he had forced himself
to bear his fate was now turned into bitterest rage and fury.
Instead of one enemy he had twenty. All—judge, jury, gaol-
er, and parson—were banded together to work him evil and
deny him right. The whole world was his foe: there was no
honesty or truth in any living creature—save one.
During the dull misery of his convict life at Port Arthur
one bright memory shone upon him like a star. In the depth
of his degradation, at the height of his despair, he cherished
one pure and ennobling thought— the thought of the child