After about ten years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the chain-gang for life; and lastly, that he was dead.
About his being sentenced for life, there was no doubt, for she had a piece of newspaper which told of his crime,--and a frightful piece of villany it was,--and after that, the report of his death was so probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth.

Men did not live long in the chain-gang, in Van Diemen's Land, in those days, brother.
Men would knock out one another's brains in order to get hung, and escape it.

Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless.
Penal servitude for life, as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in old times.

With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron carried by each man.

I cannot exactly remember, but it would strike you as being incredible.