Page 487 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

independence, paused, indignant, feeling half inclined to
enter despite opposition. As he looked through the break of
the trees, he saw the masts of a brig lying at anchor off the
extremity of the point on which the house was built, and
understood that the cottage commanded communication
by water as well as by land. Could there be a special motive
in choosing such a situation, or was it mere chance? He was
uneasy, but strove to dismiss his alarm.
Sarah had kept faith with him so far. She had entered
upon a new and more reputable life, and why should he
seek to imagine evil where perhaps no evil was? Blunt was
evidently honest. Women like Sarah Purfoy often emerged
into a condition of comparative riches and domestic virtue.
It was likely that, after all, some wealthy merchant was the
real owner of the house and garden, pleasure yacht, and tal-
low warehouse, and that he had no cause for fear.
The experienced convict disciplinarian did not rate the
ability of John Rex high enough.
From the instant the convict had heard his sentence of
life banishment, he had determined upon escaping, and
had brought all the powers of his acute and unscrupulous
intellect to the consideration of the best method of achiev-
ing his purpose. His first care was to procure money. This
he thought to do by writing to Blick, but when informed by
Meekin of the fate of his letter, he adopted the—to him—less
pleasant alternative of procuring it through Sarah Purfoy.
It was peculiar to the man’s hard and ungrateful na-
ture that, despite the attachment of the woman who had
followed him to his place of durance, and had made it the

For the Term of His Natural Life