Martin Oldkirk was well provided for by Dudley and Edgar Adelon; and though he remained a stern and somewhat thoughtful man, and retained a feeling of wrathful grief at the remembrance that words of his, perverted by the priest, should have been used to destroy the happiness of an innocent and beloved mistress, yet his heart was softened by prosperity and opened to enjoyment.
Norries is still living in Australia. It is supposed he might have obtained a full pardon some time ago, if he had thought fit to apply for it; but such was not the case; and contented where he is, he goes on seeing a new population growing up around him, to whom, from time to time, he communicates his own transcendental notions on political subjects; but he has gained experience from the past, and whatever he may seek himself, or teach others to aim at, he always inculcates the doctrine, that moral force is the only just means by which a triumph can be obtained over injustice or wrong.
"The axe, the sword, and the pike," he says, "belonged to ages when the physical triumphed over the intellectual. The age of reason and of mental power has begun, and truth and argument are the weapons with which the bad must be conquered, and the good armed for battle. The thunder of a nation's voice is worth the roar of a thousand cannon; and knowledge, and conscience, and right, are arms which no armies can withstand."
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: This word is usually wrongly written ærie, as if derived from aer or air, but I am convinced it comes from the German word ey, an egg.
[Footnote 2]: These fish in the Murrumbidgee and other rivers sometimes reach the weight of a hundred or a hundred and twenty pounds. They are evidently genuine perch, although the colonists call them river cod.
[Footnote 3]: The little history of a life here referred to, may be given to the public at a future period, as it is neither uninteresting nor uninstructive; but, for various reasons, it must not be printed at present.