There was no dereliction of duty involved in this charity, which was heartily and unanimously endorsed by their public. Relaxation of discipline was necessarily permitted in the case of escort of prisoners from one part of the country to another. Such a task was generally looked upon in the light of a holiday by warders or police troopers. It involved change of air and scene, higher pay for a time, and with various perquisites and indulgences. All that was required of them was to deliver over their charge safely to the authorities. That being the result, they were allowed a certain latitude with regard to the means. If the prisoner thereby escaped, their punishment was exemplary. It often happened, however, that the prisoner, being a fair sort of fellow (as prisoners go), was conversed and generally associated with on terms of equality. Of course proper security was exacted. A single trooper, camping out through a stretch of thinly-inhabited pastoral country, has been compelled to handcuff himself to the prisoner nightly for his better safeguarding. But these formalities apart, much cheerful companionship has ere now been enjoyed between the (official) 'wolf and hound.' Hence, as the first warder observed in a gruff whisper, 'they had no call to bother their heads if the poor chap's girl wanted a yarn with him. It was the last one as he'd see for a spell, unless he fell across a mermaid.' Here the speaker, who had been a ship's carpenter once, growled a hoarse rumbling laugh. 'Let him have his bit o' luck for once. He'd got stiffish times to come, or else they'd heard wrong.' So Tessie, sitting on the right side of Lance--there being no one to the left of him at the coach-window--leaning her head on his shoulder, commenced to whisper in his ear. The friendly warder studiously gazed at the fast-flying landscape, as if it possessed peculiarly picturesque effects. The second man almost turned his back upon Lance in his anxiety to be out of the reach of confidential communications, while Tessie's murmuring voice, instinct with more than womanly tenderness, sounded in the ear--ay, in the heart of the captive, so lately sullenly despairing of God and man--like the voice of an angel from heaven. 'You may think me immodest, Lance,' she said--'I may call you that now, may I not?--but I don't care. There are times when a woman must follow her own heart, and this is one of them. I would tell you what I feel now if there were hundreds looking on. I cannot help it; and what does my poor life matter? When I think of what you were when I first saw you! full of health, hope, and spirits, with a smile for every one, and under compliment to no living man, I felt as if my heart would burst when I saw you--saw you--as you are!'