They were chained two and two together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape; there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct; there was hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement climate, in all weathers: what wonder if men died off like rotten sheep?
And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest accident,--such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a prisoner, produced a sudden rising, un-preconcerted, objectless, the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many lunatic women, and five or six stations lighting up the hill-side, night after night, while the whole available force of the colony was unable to stop the ruin for months?
But to the point.

Mary was a widow.

When she heard of her husband's death, she had said to herself, "Thank God!" But when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker--another husband bearing the same name; but surely that handsome curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this desperate convict?
She was glad the convict was dead and out of the way; there was no doubt of that; but she could still find a corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover,--her handsome old lover,--ah me! But that even was passed now, and George Hawker was as one who had never lived.

Now on this evening we speak of, his memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of the father, but it was gone again directly.

She called her servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles looked suddenly in, and said,--"Here they are!" There they were, sure enough, putting the rams into the sheep-yard.