It Is Never Too Late to Mend

GOVERNOR HAWES had qualities good in themselves, but ill-directed, and therefore not good in their results--determination for one. He was not a man to yield a step to opposition...

MR. HAWES went about the prison next day morose and melancholy. He spoke to no one, and snapped those who spoke to him. He punished no prisoner all day, but he looked at them as...

BLACK WILL no sooner found himself inside the tent than he took out a dark lantern and opened the slide cautiously. There lay in one corner the two men fast asleep side by side....

THE old attachment was revived. Robinson had always a great regard for George, and after nursing and bringing him through a dangerous illness this feeling doubled. And as for Ge...

MR. MEADOWS lived in a house that he had conquered three years ago by lending money on it at fair interest in his own name. Mr. David Hall, the proprietor, paid neither principa...

THE justices went through their business in the usual routine. They had Mr. Hawes's book up--examined the entries--received them with implicit confidence looked for no other sou...

This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of t...

JOHN MEADOWS had always been an active man, but now he was indefatigable. He was up at five every morning, and seemed ubiquitous; added a gray gelding to his black mare, and rod...

GEORGE heard of a farmer who was selling off his sheep about fifty miles off near the coast. George put money in his purse, rose at three, and walked the fifty miles with Carlo...

THOMAS ROBINSON rose from his sleepless bed an altered man; altered above all in this that his self-confidence was clean gone. “How little I knew myself,” said he, “and how well...

MR. MEADOWS did not visit Grassmere for some days; the cruel one distrusted his own firmness. When he did come he came with a distinct purpose. He found Merton alone.

HAWES and Fry sat in council. A copy of the prison rules was before them, and the more they looked at them after Mr. Eden's interpretation, the less they liked them: they were s...

MR. EDEN had taken Mr. Lacy to the dark cells. Evans, who had no key of them, was sent to fetch Fry to open them. “We will kill two birds with one stone--disinter a patient for...

“I KNOW it, Tom. When I was sailing to this country we came to a part where the north star went down and down to the water's edge, and this was all we got in exchange for it.”

In ten minutes they were in one of those dingy, narrow alleys in the city of London, that look the abode of decent poverty, and they could afford to buy Grosvenor Square for the...

Mr. Williams' mutton consisted of first a little strong gravy soup lubricated and gelatinized with a little tapioca; vis-a-vis the soup a little piece of salmon cut out of the f...

“I know,” said Meadows, “I should cripple you. Well, I am not going to, nor let any one else--it would not suit my book. Just hand me the securities and let me make over that su...

“Marry you, George?” replied Susan, opening her eyes; “why, never! I shall never marry any one after--you must be well aware of that.” Susan proceeded to inform George, that, th...

As they were about to rise, William observed two men in the farmyard who were strangers to him--the men seemed to be inspecting the hogs. It struck him as rather cool; but appar...

They compared notes, and agreed that no system but the separate and silent had a leg to stand on; and as they returned together from visiting the ground-floor cells, Mr. Lepel h...

AND now passed over “The Grove” the heaviest hours it had ever known; hours as weary as they were bitter to George Fielding. “The Grove” was nothing to him now--in mind he was a...

GEORGE FIELDING found Farmer Dodd waiting to drive him to the town where he was to meet Mr. Winchester. The farmer's wife would press a glass of wine upon George. She was an old...

The prisoners no longer crouch and cower past the officers, nor the officers look at them and speak to them as if they were dogs, as they do in most of these places, and used to...

MR. EDEN, when he reappeared in the prison, was sallow and his limbs feeble, but his fatal disease was baffled, and a few words are due to explain how this happened. The Malvern...

THE jailer had been outwitted by the priest. Hawes had sneaked after Fry to beg him for Heaven's sake--that was the phrase he used--not to produce his journal. Fry thought this...

“Never mind! he was saucy to me in the market yesterday--I was angry and--but anger is a snare. What shall I gain by locking him up just now? let him go.”

“Of course she won't,” cried another, “she wouldn't be such a flat. Here, missus,” cried he, “I'll give you that for him;” and he extended a brown hand with at least thirty new...

THE inexperienced in jails would take for granted that the death of Josephs gave Mr. Hawes's system a fatal check. No such thing. He was staggered. So was Pharaoh staggered seve...

“He is well of the fever, but a fever leaves the patient in a state of debility for some days. I have ordered him meat twice a day--that is, meat once and soup once.”

IT was a bright morning. The world awoke. The working Englishman, dead drunk at the public-house overnight, had got rid of two-thirds of his burning poison by the help of man's...

“HELP! help! murder! help! murder!” Such were the cries that invaded the sleepers' ears in the middle of the night, to which horrible sounds was added the furious barking of Carlo.

“Two ladies to see you,” grunted the red-haired servant, throwing open the door without ceremony; and she actually bounced out again without seeing anything more than that her m...

ABOUT a fortnight after Robinson's return to the diggings two men were seated in a small room at Bevan's store. There was little risk of their being interrupted by any honest di...

ROBINSON started for Bathurst. Just before he got clear of the town he passed the poor man's cottage who had lent him the board. “Bless me, how came I to forget him?” said he. A...

MEADOWS rode to Grassmere, to try and prevail with Susan to be married on Thursday next, instead of Monday. As he rode he revolved every argument he could think of to gain her c...

“And we never shall till you take my advice, and trace the gold to its home in the high rocks. Here we are plodding for dust, and one good nugget would make us.”

SUSAN MERTON had two unfavored lovers; it is well to observe how differently these two behaved. William Fielding stayed at home, threw his whole soul into his farm, and seldom w...

WE left Thomas Robinson writing his life. He has written it. It has been printed by prisoners and circulated among prisoners. One copy lay in Robinson's cell till he left the pr...

“DON'T keep staring at it so, farmer, it is an ugly sight. You will see him in your sleep if you do that. Here is something better to look at--a letter. And there I carried it a...

THREE days the gold-finders worked alone upon the pre-Adamite river's bed. At evening on the third day they looked up and saw a figure perched watching them with a pipe in its m...

“You going to leave us, Mr. Eden, and going to live in a jail? Oh! Mr. Eden, I can't bear to think of it. You to be cooped up there among thieves and rogues, and perhaps murdere...

HE who a few months ago was so lighthearted and bright with hope now rose at daybreak for a work of Herculean toil as usual, but no longer with the spirit that makes labor light...

ISAAC LEVI, rescued by George Fielding, reached his tent smarting with pain and bitter insult; he sat on the floor pale and dusty, and anathematized his adversaries in the Hebre...

“Jem, what frightens me is the villains getting off so; there they are to try again, and next time the luck will be theirs--it can't be always ours--why should it? Jem, there wa...

WHILE the two burglars were near the scullery-window watching the light in the upper story a third man stood sentinel on the opposite side of the house; he was but a few yards f...

One strong passion after another swept across his troubled mind. He burned with love, he was sick with jealousy, cold with despondency, and for the first time smarted with remor...

IT was a gusty night. The moon had gone down. The tents gleamed indistinct in form, but white as snow. Robinson's tent stood a little apart, among a number of deserted claims, s...

Joyous as the first burst of summer were the months Susan passed after the receipt of George's happy letter. Many warm feelings combined in one stream of happiness in Susan's he...

AT seven o'clock in the morning Crawley was at Meadows' house by appointment. To his great surprise the servant told him master had not slept at home. While he was talking to he...

“Leave it this one day with Mr. Levi; he has got two young men always armed in his tent, and a little peevish dog, and gutta-percha pipes running into all the Jews' tents that a...

THE next Saturday Susan was busy preparing two rooms for Mr. Eden--a homely but bright bedroom looking eastward, and a snug room where he could be quiet downstairs. Snowy sheets...

A TREMENDOUS snow-storm fell upon the mine and drove Jem into his tent, where he was soon after joined by Jacky, a circumstance in itself sufficient to prove the violence of the...

THE ship was to sail in a week, and meantime Robinson was in the hulks at Portsmouth. Now the hulks are a disgrace to Europe, and a most incongruous appendage to a system that p...

ON a certain evening some days later, the two men whose faces were definitions sat on a bench outside that little public in the suburbs--one at the end of a clay-pipe, the other...

SOLITUDE is no barrier whatever to sin. Such prayers as Robinson's are a disgrace to those who provoke them, but a calamity to him who utters them. Robinson was now a far worse...

CRAWLEY, who, what with the habit of cerebral hallucination due to brandy and the present flutter of his spirits and his conscience, had for a moment or two lost all the landmar...

“Liberal as running water, sir. I sometimes say how long will this last before such a great man breaks Peter Crawley and flings him away and takes another?” and Crawley sighed.

MR. MEADOWS dispatched his work in Shropshire twice as fast as he had calculated, and returned home with two forces battling inside him--love and prudence. The battle was decide...

THE life of George Fielding and Thomas Robinson for months could be composed in a few words: tremendous work from sunrise to sundown, and on Sunday welcome rest, a quiet pipe, a...

A SNOW-WHITE suburban villa standing alone with its satellites that occupied five times as much space as itself; coach-house, stable, offices, greenhouse clinging to it like dew...

His reverence in the late battle showed himself a strategist, and won without bringing up his reserves; if he had failed with Mr. Lacy he had another arrow behind in his quiver....

ROBINSON did not overrate the fatal power of the fabulous mass of gold, a glimpse of which he had incautiously given to greedy eyes. It drew brutus like a magnet after it. He ca...

ALL this time two persons in the gold mine were upon thorns of expectation and doubt--brutus and Peter Crawley. George and Robinson did not return, but no more did Black Will. W...

That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a mortal house. Job's black day, like the da...

“Take care,” cried Jefferies in a loud quaver--“Take care what you say! I'll have my action of defamation against you double quick if you dare to say such a thing of me.”

THE party, consisting of Jacky, Jem, Robinson and George, had traversed about one half the bush, when a great heavy crow came wheeling and cackling over their heads, and then jo...

The moon was up, but often obscured; clouds drifted swiftly across her face; it was a cold morning--past one o'clock. Josephs was at his window standing tiptoe on his stool. Tho...

FOR near an hour Jacky sat upon the ground, his face averted from his sick friend, and cried; then suddenly he rose, and without looking at him went out at the door, and turning...

IN a low public outside the town--in a back room--with their arms on the table and their low foreheads nearly touching, sat whispering two men--types. One had the deep-sunk, col...

MR. EDEN'S health improved so visibly that Susan Merton announced her immediate return to her father. It was a fixed idea in this young lady's mind that she and Mrs. Davies had...

A change of wind brought a fall of snow, and the fall of snow baffled both parties in five minutes. Down came the Australian flakes large as a woman's hand (I am not romancing),...

FOUR days after this, mephistopheles with a small m and brutus with a little b sat again in the filthy little cabin where men hatch burglaries--but this time the conference wore...

THIS very afternoon Mr. Levi came to inquire for George Fielding. Unable to find him, he asked of several diggers where the young man was; he could get no information till Jem s...

AT the end of six months George Fielding's stock had varied thus. Four hundred lambs, ten calves, fifteen cows, four hundred sheep. He had lost some sheep in lambing, and one co...

JOSEPHS has dropped out of our story. Mr. Hawes has got himself kicked out of our story. The other prisoners, of whom casual mention has been made, were never in our story, any...

“No more you would an earthquake--but I heard them, and got up and pointed my revolver at them; so then they cut--all the better for them. We must mind our eye, George; a good m...

FARMER MERTON received a line from Meadows telling him he had gone into Lancashire on important business, and did not expect to be back for three months, except perhaps for a da...

PETER CRAWLEY received a regular allowance during his chief's absence and remained in constant communication with him, and was as heretofore his money-bag, his tool, his invisib...

NEARLY eight months had now elapsed without a letter from George. Susan could no longer deceive herself with hopes. George was either false to her or dead. She said as much to h...

Abner, the ungratefulish one, with a bundle tied up in a handkerchief, strode stoutly away toward Mr. Meredith's grazing ground. “I am well out of that place,” was his reflectio...

MRS. MEADOWS, preparing her son's new home and defeating the little cheating tradesmen and workmen that fasten like leeches on such as carry their furniture to a new house; Hann...

WHENEVER Mr. Meadows could do Mr. Levi an ill turn he did; and vice versa. They hated one another like men who differ about baptism. Susan sprinkled dewdrops of charity on each...

THUS have I told in long and tedious strains how George Fielding went to Australia to make a thousand pounds, and how by industry, sobriety, and cattle, he did not make a thousa...

“Don't you be silly, George. The vein dips, and those that cut down on it where it is horizontalish will get a little; we, that nick it nearly verticalish, will get three times...