"Can I ask?" I repeated, "to be sure I can. We got a little out of the way last night, but the circumstance is too common to provoke remark in Australia."
"Ah, it was not that I was thinking about. I was considering how unkind the governor has treated me, in not granting me freedom after so many years of good conduct," replied Smith.
"O, is that all?" I cried, with an appearance of indifference. "I thought you were sick, or had heard some bad news."
I saw the poor fellow's face flush at my apparently unkind speech, and I saw an expression of surprise in his blue eyes which cut me to the heart. I sprang from the table, and taking from my coat pocket the two pardons, laid them before him without a word of remark.
His eyes were, the instant he read his name, blinded with tears. He laid his head upon the table, and wept long and bitterly without speaking, and his stout frame shook with the violence of his emotion. We suffered him to continue without interruption; but when he did look up, he grasped our hands, and pressed them convulsively, muttering,—
"At length, O, at length, I'm a free man, and no longer subject to a keeper's nod. I can call my soul and body my own property, and look a policeman in the face without trembling. Ah, blessed liberty, how much I have longed for thee!"
He kissed the pardon—he kissed his name, which was written in a bold hand on the document—and then pressed to his lips the signature of the governor.
"Do you now feel truly happy?" asked Fred.
"I feel so joyous that there is nothing on earth which I crave," replied Smith.