their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as
if they were lower animals; their ironed legs,
apologetically garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs;
and the way in which all present looked
at them and kept from them; made them (as
Herbert had said) a most disagreeable and
degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it. It came
out that the whole of the back of the coach had
been taken by a family removing from London,
and that there were no places for the two
prisoners but on the seat in front behind the
coachman, Hereupon, a choleric gentleman,
who had taken the fourth place on that seat,
flew into a most violent passion, and said that
it was a breach of contract to mix him up with
such villanous company, and that it was
poisonous and pernicious and infamous and
shameful and I don't know what else. At this time
the coach was ready and the coachman
impatient, and we were all preparing to get up, and
the prisoners had come over with their keeper—
bringing with them that curious flavour of bread-
poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone,
which attends the convict presence.

"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded
the keeper to the angry passenger; "I'll sit next
you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside of the
row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You
needn't know they're there."

"And don't blame me," growled the convict
I had recognised, "I don't want to go. I am
quite ready to stay behind. As far as I am
concerned any one's welcome to my place."

"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I
wouldn't have incommoded none of you, if I'd
a had my way." Then they both laughed, and
began cracking nuts, and spitting the shells
about.—As I really think I should have liked to
do myself, if I had been in their place and so
despised.

At length it was voted that there was no
help for the angry gentleman, and that he must
either go in his chance company or remain
behind. So he got into his place, still making
complaints, and the keeper got into the place
next him, and the convicts hauled themselves
up as well as they could, and the convict I had
recognised sat behind me with his breath on
the hair of my head.

"Good-by, Handel!" Herbert called out as
we started. I thought what a blessed fortune it
was that he had found another name for me
than Pip.

It is impossible to express with what acuteness
I felt the convict's breathing, not only on
the back of my head, but all along my spine.
The sensation was like being touched in the
marrow with some pungent and searching acid,
and it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed
to have more breathing business to do than
another man, and to make more noise in doing
it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered
on one side, in my shrinking endeavours
to fend him off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two
cursed the cold. It made us all lethargic before
we had gone far, and when we had left the
Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and
shivered and were silent. I dozed off, myself,
in considering the question whether I ought to
restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature
before losing sight of him, and how it could best
be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I
were going to bathe among the horses, I woke
in a fright and took the question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had
thought, since, although I could recognise
nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights
and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh
country in the cold damp wind that blew at us.
Cowering forward for warmth and to make me
a screen against the wind, the convicts were
closer to me than before. The very first words
I heard them interchange as I became
conscious, were the words of my own thought
"Two One Pound notes."

"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I
had never seen.

"How should I know?" returned the other.
"He had 'em stowed away somehows. Giv him
by friends, I expect."

"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse
upon the cold, " that I had 'em here."

"Two one pound notes, or friends?"

"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the
friends I ever had, for one, and think it a blessed
good bargain. Well? So he says——?"

"So he says," resumed the convict I had
recognised—"it was all said and done in half a
minute, behind a pile of timber in the Dockyard
—'you're a going to be discharged?' Yes, I was.
Would I find out that boy that had fed him and
kep his secret, and give him them two one
pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."

"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd
have spent 'em on a Man, in wittles and drink.
He must have been a green one. Mean to say
he knowed nothing of you?"

"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and
different ships. He was tried again for prison
breaking, and got made a Lifer."

"And was that—Honour!—the only time you
worked out, in this part of the country?"

"The only time."

"What might have been your opinion of the
place?"

"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist,
swamp, and work; work, swamp, mist, and
mudbank."

They both execrated the place in very strong
language, and gradually growled themselves out
and had nothing left to say.

After overhearing this dialogue, I should
assuredly have got down and been left in the
solitude and darkness of the highway, but for
feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of
my identity. Indeed, I was not only so changed
in the course of nature, but so differently
dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it
was not at all likely he could have known me
without accidental help. Still, the coincidence
of our being together on the coach, was
sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that