A sight of a yet different character met the eyes of the travellers near the close of the second day, when they were drawing near their future abode in the province called Norfolk Plains, in the centre of which lay the Dairy Plains, where Ellen was expecting them. They had for some time quitted the broad road, and were following a track along which their waggon proceeded with tolerable convenience. At last they came to a point beyond which it had not been carried, and where a gang of labourers was at work roadmaking;—not as in England, each man intent upon his own heap of stones, free in limb and thoughtful in countenance;—not as in Ireland, where some are lounging and all are joking;—but charged with the fetters of felons, and superintended by an armed taskmaster. As Frank looked upon these wretches, with their hardened or woful countenances, he felt indeed that he was not in England, but in one of her penal settlements,—breathing the air of one of the places where her vice and misery are deposited. His very soul became sick when, as the labourers turned to stare at the somewhat uncommon sight of a waggon full of travellers, he met the eyes of his convict brothers. He hoped that his companions would not perceive them; but he soon found that his father did, by his testy complaints of the jolting of the cart, of cold and heat, and what not. The unhappy mother looked on her outcast children with as much curiosity as compassion. Bob turned away, and stooped to his work, never looking up till they were out of sight; but Jerry waved his cap and shouted, and dared Frank to a wager which of them would first be free to work for themselves: whether it would take longest to work out his sentence, or to pay for Frank’s passage and settlement. This supplied a new theme of complaint to Castle, who wrought himself up into a passion about his being a slave, with all his family. Frank, who hated bondage as much as any man, thought it could hardly be called slavery to contract to work for one person for a certain time, in return for advantages which could not otherwise be obtained. If disappointed of these advantages,—of sufficient food, clothing, shelter, and money wages,—the contract was void, and no harm done; if not disappointed, the object was gained. The evil lay, not in their case as labourers; but as honest men. Felons ought not to be let off so easily, (because their labour happened to be more valuable than at home,) as to make disgrace, for which many of them did not care, their only punishment; their worldly circumstances being actually bettered by their removal to a new colony. It was not that labourers need be better off than their family would probably be, four or five years hence; but that felons ought not to be placed in as good circumstances as the honest emigrant at the end of the same period.