“Take care she be not too deep for you, Bob. If ever you want a wife with no more sense than a monkey, and not half as many tricks, ask me, and I will show you how to get one.” So much for the reformation of the offender. The other kind of security on which the judge expatiated was that afforded by the criminal being made a warning. A waggon load of new convict-labourers arrived at the Dairy Plains one day, when the accustomed gang was at work on the road which was not yet completed. The masters who happened to be present were too much taken up with observing the new-comers to pay any attention to the looks of their labourers. They did not see the winks, and the side-long smiles, they did not hear the snapping of fingers behind their backs; they had no suspicion that some in the waggon were old acquaintances of those on the road. On the first opportunity after the fresh men were left with the others, and only one or two over-lookers near, there was a prodigious hand-shaking and congratulation, and questioning. “How did you get over?” “How did you manage to get sent _here_?” “How do you like transportation?” “You’ll soon learn to know your own luck.” “This is a fine country, is it not?” &c. &c. “I was so cursedly dull after you all went away,” observed one of the new-comers, “there was nothing to stay for: but I very near got sent to Sidney.” “Well; you could soon have got away, either home or here. But how do you find yourself off?” “With a bed to myself and a blanket, and rare good living to what I had when I was an honest man. The thing I don’t like is the work; but they say we are to have plenty of spirits.” “To be sure; and as to the work,—what do the poor wretches at home do but work as hard as you, and for less than you can get in spare hours. But where’s Sam? Why did not he come too?” “He got baulked, as he deserved for being a fool. What did he do but send his sister to the justice to know how much he must steal to be transported, and no more? The justice set the parson at him; and between the two, they have cowed him, poor fellow, and he will never better his condition.” “Perhaps he is afraid. Perhaps he believes what the judge said about our being a warning. And yet he tipped me the wink when that was said, and when some of the pretty ones in the gallery began to cry.” “He knows better than you think. If you were as moped as a linnet in a cage, he would know nothing of it; because you are too far off for him to see what became of you, in that case; but, being as you are, a merry, rollicking set, he would like to be among you; and that sort of news travels fast.” Another of the party did not like his lot so well. He said nothing of the disgrace, though he felt it; but he complained of the toil, of the tyranny of the masters, of the spite and bickerings of his companions.