“I say, what kind of a place is Botany Bay?” Earle started, the question was so entirely unexpected; but he understood at once now why he had been so sad and absent-minded of late. He had been thinking of his probable future. “It is supposed to be rather a desolate kind of place,” he said. “Folks who are sent there at the expense of the Crown, don’t get rich very fast, and it is somewhat inconvenient about getting away from there if one should happen to wish to visit his native land, eh?” Tom Drake said, with a ghastly attempt to be facetious. “No,” Earle replied, very gravely, and with a searching glance at his companion. “There’s some comfort in knowing a fellow hain’t got to leave many behind him to grieve over him,” he said, absently, and as if speaking more to himself than to Earle. “Where do your friends reside?” he asked. “All the friend I’ve got in the world, sir, is my old mother, and her I haven’t seen for many a long year.” Earle thought there was a suspicious huskiness in his voice as he said this, and that a tear dropped on his hand as he turned quickly to look out of the window; but he might have been mistaken, and the man was still very weak after his long illness, and tears come unbidden at such a time. “Your mother! Have you a mother living?” “Yes, sir, as good a woman as ever drew breath,” Tom said, heartily. “Who was that woman you had at the hotel in New York?” Earle asked. “That was one of—the profession. She was nothing to me, and I paid her well for that job. I—I——” “Well?” Earle said, encouragingly, as he saw Tom evidently had something on his mind, and did not know just how to get rid of it. “I ain’t usually very white-livered nor tender-hearted, sir. I never thought I was thin-skinned; but—I—I want to tell you that that rascally business about the young lady has laid heavily on my mind this many a day. She was a—particular friend o’ yours, weren’t she?” “Yes,” Earle said, with a heavy sigh. Tom Drake started at the sound, and shot an anxious glance at him, while he grew, if possible, paler than he was before. “I—I hope, sir, no harm came to her from the mesmerizing,” he said, in a sort of hushed tone. “No; she is quite well now.” Tom looked intensely relieved, and went on, speaking with a rough kind of earnestness and gratitude: “You’ve been wonderful good to me after it all; you’ve given me the best you have, and treated me as if I were a gentleman instead of a gallows-bird. That was a pesky job—that business with the girl. She was a pretty little thing, but plucky as the—I beg pardon, sir; but she was the most spirited little woman I ever set eyes on; and many a time it has given me the shivers, on waking up in the night, to think of her lying there, growing so pale and weak, dying by inches.” “It was a cruel thing to do,” Earle said, with a far-away look and a very pale face.