moment on the speaker, with the words, " You
are not much to look at," and with a half-taunting
glance at the bound hands. At that point,
my convict became so frantically exasperated,
that he would have rushed upon him but for the
interposition of the soldiers. "Didn't I tell
you," said the other convict then, "that he
would murder me, if he could?" And any one
could see that he shook with fear, and that there
broke out upon his lips, curious white flakes,
like thin snow.

"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant.
"Light those torches."

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket
in lieu of a gun, went down on his knee to open
it, my convict looked round him for the first
time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's
back on the brink of the ditch when we came up,
and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly
when he looked at me, and slightly moved my
hands and shook my head. I had been waiting
for him to see me, that I might try to assure
him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed
to me that he even comprehended my intention,
for he gave me a look that I did not
understand, and it all passed in a moment. But
if he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I
could not have remembered his face ever afterwards,
as having been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light,
and lighted three or four torches, and took one
himself and distributed the others. It had been
almost dark before, but now it seemed quite
dark, and soon afterwards very dark. Before
we departed from that spot, four soldiers standing
in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently
we saw other torches kindled at some distance
behind us, and others on the marshes on the
opposite bank of the river. " All right," said
the sergeant. " March."

We had not gone far when three cannon were
fired ahead of us with a sound that seemed to
burst something inside my ear. "You are expected
on board," said the sergeant to my convict;
"they know you are coming. Don't straggle,
my man. Close up here."

The two were kept apart, and each walked
surrounded by a separate guard. I had hold of
Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of the
torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back,
but Joe was resolved to see it out, so we went
on with the party. There was a reasonably good
path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with
a divergence here and there where a dyke came,
with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy
sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see
the other lights coming in after us. The torches
we carried, dropped great blotches of fire upon the
track, and I could see those, too, lying smoking
and flaring. I could see nothing else but black
darkness. Our lights warmed the air about us
with their pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners
seemed rather to like that, as they limped
along in the midst of the muskets. We could
not go fast, because of their lameness, and they
were so spent, that two or three times we had to
halt while they rested.

After an hour or so of this travelling, we came
to a rough wooden hut and a landing-place.
There was a guard in the hut, and they challenged,
and the sergeant answered. Then, we
went into the hut where there was a smell of
tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and
a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum,
and a low wooden bedstead, like an overgrown
mangle without the machinery, capable of holding
about a dozen soldiers all at once. Three
or four soldiers who lay upon it in their greatcoats,
were not much interested in us, but just
lifted their heads and took a sleepy stare, and
then lay down again. The sergeant made some
kind of report, and some entry in a book, and
then the convict whom I call the other convict
was drafted off with his guard, to go on board
first.

My convict never looked at me, except that
once. While we stood in the hut, he stood before
the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting
up his feet by turns upon the hob, and
looking thoughtfully at them as if he pitied
them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, he
turned to the sergeant, and remarked:

"I wish to say something respecting this
escape. It may prevent some persons laying
under suspicion alonger me."

"You can say what you like," returned the
sergeant, standing coolly looking at him with
his arms folded, " but you have no call to say it
here. You'll have opportunity enough to say
about it, and hear about it, before it's done
with, you know."

"I know, but this is another pint, a separate
matter. A man can't starve; at least I can't.
I took some wittles, up at the willage over
yonder—where the church stands a'most out on
the marshes."

"You mean stole," said the sergeant.

"And I'll tell you where from. From the
blacksmith's."

"Halloa!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

"Halloa, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.

"It was some broken wittles—that's what it
was—and a dram of liquor, and a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article
as a pie, blacksmith?" asked the sergeant, confidentially.

"My wife did, at the very moment when
you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"

"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on
Joe in a moody manner, and without the least
glance at me; "so you're the blacksmith, are
you? Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."

"God knows you're welcome to it—so far as
it was ever mine," returned Joe, with a saving
remembrance of Mrs. Joe. " We don't know
what you have done, but we wouldn't have you
starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-
creatur.—Would us, Pip?"

The something that I had noticed before,
clicked in the man's throat again, and he turned
his back. The boat had returned, and his guard
were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place
made of rough stakes and stones,
and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed