He stared dry-eyed along the broad highway. Tears never dimmed his eyes now, as they had done at first.
Reaction had come long ago. He had gone through the fire and had come out hardened. For a little while his sufferings had been unbearable. He had prayed for death. Even his love for Ruby Strode had not been sufficient to give him a hold on life.
In the great convict prison day and night had been merged into one. There had been no break to the dreadful monotony and the everlasting silence. Time had not been composed of days and nights, but of hours; hours of minutes, minutes of seconds—and each second had been an eternity.
Part of his torture had been in thinking of the sufferings of those he loved. Of the woman who had tried to save him, and whose great love had brought him to this pass; of his father and sister, who, perhaps, would never hold up their heads again, ostracised by the so-called decent people.
He did not even know how they managed to live, whether they had enough money to keep body and soul together. And it was that thought that sometimes nearly drove him mad.
The old man who had sacrificed everything for his sake to make a gentleman of him; his beautiful little sister, who had been standing on the threshold of life with the dawn of love in her heart. He had robbed her, too, of life and of love.
Over and over again he had pictured Marjorie and his father sitting in the old kitchen of the little farmhouse alone, afraid even to look at one another, afraid to talk. Shunned by all their neighbours. Poverty facing them, perhaps starvation, the farm going to rot and ruin before their eyes. And yet, had they but known, a fortune waited for them in that old, disused tin-mine. No one knew anything about it but his friend, Robert Despard.
His eyes had been opened too late, and he knew what sort of a friend Despard was. He did not even dare hope that the man who had taken their hospitality would play the game and tell John Dale of the vast possibilities that were hidden in the mine on his property. He would keep the knowledge to himself and take advantage of it ... and of Marjorie!—Rupert's sister—whom he had professed to fall in love with.
The convicts were crossing a patch of moorland towards the fields in which they were to work; the soft turf was beneath Rupert's feet, the blue sky above his head, the scent of gorse, already blossoming, in his nostrils. The sweet sounds and sights and scents stirred his blood. He gazed down into the valley across the Dart. There lay Two Bridges, almost a stone's throw away. Beyond, Post Bridge. He almost fancied he could see Blackthorn Farm! Were they still there, his loved ones, ekeing out a lonely, miserable existence, or had shame driven them away, and had the home they owned been taken? With a fortune lying hidden beneath the land!
Sometimes he had wondered whether the story Despard told him about the traces of radium in the pitch-blende had been an hallucination on his part. But long ago, a month or two after his arrival at Princetown, he had made up his mind and sworn a solemn oath that he would wait for a chance of escape. He knew that no convict had ever succeeded in getting right away, but now and then some unfortunate had hidden on the moors for many days before he was captured.