It seemed to Luke as he sat there thinking of Sage’s sufferings that Nature was cruel, and as if she was rejoicing over Cyril Mallow’s death, for the scene now looked so bright and fair. He wished that the heavens would weep, to be in unison with the unhappy woman’s feelings, and that all around should wear a mourning aspect in place of looking so bright and gay. Upon his right the deep blue sea danced in the brilliant sunshine. Far behind the grey fog was scudding over the high lands, looking like a veil of silver ever changing in its hues. Here and there the glass of some conservatory flashed in the sun-rays and darted pencils of glittering light. The tints upon the hills, too, seemed brighter than when they came, and he gazed at them with a dull, chilling feeling of despair.
It seemed to him an insult to the suffering woman within the fly, and with his heart throbbing painfully in sympathy with her sorrow, he thought how strangely these matters had come about.
For the past three months this idea had been in his head: to obtain the order for Sage to see her husband; but he had had great difficulty in obtaining that he sought, and now that he had achieved his end, what had it brought? Sorrow and despair—a horror such as must cling even to her dying day.
The driver respected his companion’s silence for a time, but finding at last that there was no prospect of Luke speaking, he ventured upon a remark—
“Very horrid, zir, warn’t it?”
“Terrible, my man, terrible,” said Luke, starting from his reverie.
“I shall be called at the inquest, I s’pose. This makes the third as I’ve been had up to, and all for convicts zhot when trying to escape, I don’t think it ought to be ’lowed.”
Luke was silent, and the man made no further attempts at conversation on their way to the hotel.
The inquest followed in due course, and in accordance with the previous examinations of the kind. The convict who attempted to escape did it at his own risk, his life being, so to say, forfeit to the laws, and after the stereotyped examinations of witnesses, the regular verdict in such cases was returned, the chaplain improving his discourse on the following Sunday by an allusion to the escaped man’s awful fate, and the necessity for all present bearing their punishment with patience and meekness to the end.
The warning had such a terrible effect upon the men that not a single attempt to escape occurred afterwards for forty-eight hours, that is to say, until the next sea-fog came over the land, when three men from as many working parties darted off, and of these only one was recaptured, so that the lesson taught by Cyril Mallow’s death was without effect.