Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

it again. Some men can stand anything but the rope. Prison walls don’t frighten them; but Jack Ketch does. They can’t gammon him.

“Knock off his irons quick,” says Mr. Fairleigh, the parson; “he will not want them again just yet.”

“I didn’t think you would make a joke of that sort, sir,” says I. “It’s a little hard on a man, ain’t it? But we may as well take it cheerful, too.”

“Tell him all, Mr. Strickland,” he says to the head gaoler. “I see he can bear it now.”

“Prisoner Richard Marston,” says the gaoler, standing up before me, “it becomes my duty to inform you that, owing to representations made in your favour by the Hon. Mr. Falkland, the Hon. Mr. Storefield, and other gentlemen who have interested themselves in your case, setting forth the facts that, although mixed up with criminals and known to be present when the escort and various other cases of robbery under arms have taken place, wherein life has been taken, there is no distinct evidence of your having personally taken life. On the other hand, in several instances, yourself, with the late James Marston and the deceased person known as Starlight, have aided in the protection of life and property. The Governor and the Executive Council have therefore graciously been pleased to commute your sentence of death to that of fifteen years’ imprisonment.”

When I came to I was lying on my blankets in a different cell, as I could see by the shape of it. The irons didn’t rattle when I moved. I was surprised when I looked and saw they were took off. Bit by bit it all came back to me. I was not to be hanged. My life was saved, if it was worth saving, by the two or three good things we’d done in our time, and almost, I thought, more for poor old Jim’s sake than my own.

Was I glad or sorry now it was all over? I hardly knew. For a week or two I felt as if they’d better have finished me off when I was ready and ha’ done with me, but after a while I began to feel different. Then the gaoler talked to me a bit. He never said much to prisoners, and what he said he meant.

“Prisoner Marston,” says he, “you’d better think over your situation and don’t mope. Make up your mind like a man. You may have friends that you’d like to live for. Pull yourself together and face your sentence like a man. You’re a young man now, and you won’t be an old one when you’re let out. If your conduct is uniformly good you’ll be out in twelve years. Settle yourself to serve that⁠—and you’re a lucky man to have no more⁠—and you may have some comfort in your life yet.”

Then he went out. He didn’t wait to see what effect it had on me. If I wasn’t a fool, he thought to himself, I must take it in; if I was, nothing would do me any good.

I took his advice, and settled myself down to think it over. It was a good while⁠—a weary lot of years to wait, year by year⁠—but, still, if I got out in twelve years I should not be so out and out broke down after all⁠—not much over forty, and there’s a deal of life for a man sometimes after that.

And then I knew that there would be one that would be true to me anyhow, that would wait for me when I went out, and that would not be too proud to join in her life with mine, for all that had come and gone. Well, this might give me strength. I don’t think anything else could, and from that hour I made up my mind to tackle it steady and patient, to do the best I could, and to work out my sentence, thankful for the mercy that had been showed me, and, if ever a man was in this world, resolved to keep clear of all cross ways for the future.

So I began to steady myself and tried to bear it the best way I could. Other men were in for long sentences, and they seemed to be able to keep alive, so why shouldn’t I? Just at the first I wasn’t sure whether I could. Year after year to be shut up there, with the grass growin’ and the trees wavin’ outside, and the world full of people, free to walk or ride, to work or play, people that had wives and children, and friends and relations⁠—it seemed awful. That I should be condemned to live in this shut-up tomb all those long, weary years, and there was nothing else for it. I couldn’t eat or sleep at first, and kept starting up at night, thinking they was coming for me to carry me off to the gallows. Then I’d dream that Jim and Starlight was alive, and that we’d all got out of gaol and were riding through the bush at night to the Hollow again. Then I’d wake up and know they were dead and I was here. Time after time I’ve done that, and I was that broken down and low that I burst out crying like a child.

After a bit I got better, and began to get settled into the life that was before me. The first thing I did was to take up a trade. I’d always been a decentish hand at bush carpentering, so I took up the trade in earnest and very soon learned how to do the finer bits of work that I never durst tackle when I was free. It kept me from thinking too much, and tired me so as I could sleep sound, and when the warder that was over the working prisoners praised me and said I was the best working chap of the lot I felt quite pleased. Pleased! think of that. I wouldn’t have believed it of myself.

Somehow or other