Page 470 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

‘What about this Kirkland business?’ Frere asked. ‘I sup-
pose I can have half an hour with you in the morning, and
take the depositions?’
‘Any time you like, my dear fellow,’ said Burgess. ‘It’s all
the same to me.’
‘I don’t want to make more fuss than I can help,’ Frere
said apologetically— the dinner had been good—‘but I
must send these people up a ‘full, true and particular’, don’t
you know.’
‘Of course,’ cried Burgess, with friendly nonchalance.
‘That’s all right. I want Mrs. Frere to see Point Puer.’
‘Where the boys are?’ asked Sylvia.
‘Exactly. Nearly three hundred of ‘em. We’ll go down to-
morrow, and you shall be my witness, Mrs. Frere, as to the
way they are treated.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sylvia, protesting, ‘I would rather not. I—I
don’t take the interest in these things that I ought, perhaps.
They are very dreadful to me.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Frere, with a scowl. ‘We’ll come, Burgess,
of course.’ The next two days were devoted to sight-seeing.
Sylvia was taken through the hospital and the workshops,
shown the semaphores, and shut up by Maurice in a ‘dark
cell”. Her husband and Burgess seemed to treat the prison
like a tame animal, whom they could handle at their lei-
sure, and whose natural ferocity was kept in check by their
superior intelligence. This bringing of a young and pretty
woman into immediate contact with bolts and bars had
about it an incongruity which pleased them. Maurice pen-
etrated everywhere, questioned the prisoners, jested with