‘Let us change the subject,’ said my aunt; ‘really all this talk of convicts and transportation makes me feel as if one was just out of jail oneself. I wish they would give Will another vessel. I do not at all like the idea of a convict ship.’ ‘Pshaw!’ exclaimed my uncle, and left the room. Next day I called upon Mr. Woolfe and requested him carefully to ascertain what or how many ships had been accepted by tender for the transport of criminals between this and a date I named to him. I promised him a handsome fee if he could accurately find this out for me. I don’t know how he went to work; probably he obtained his information direct from the Admiralty; I did not inquire. But in a few days he managed to learn all I desired to know, and without my having told him that I was aware the _Childe Harold’s_ tender had been accepted, he informed me that the only transport taken up, the only ship, indeed, whose services were required down to the end of the year, was the _Childe Harold_, and that Government would not call for further tenders till the following spring. I came down one morning to breakfast, and the first thing I saw lying upon my table was a peculiar-looking letter. I snatched it up, and instantly saw that the handwriting was Tom’s. It was not three months since I had visited him, and therefore I instinctively guessed that he was about to be removed, and that leave had been granted him to communicate with his friends. It was a supreme moment; it was a crisis in my life. My hand shook; I could scarcely open the letter. It was a prison sheet, with certain jail-rules of which I forget the nature printed in a corner. The letter ran thus: ‘MY DEAR MARIAN: I am permitted to write that I may inform you I have been told by the governor I am to make one of a batch of convicts to be removed from this hulk for transportation to Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, by a ship sailing on or about November 12. I hope you are quite well. I am tolerably so. I have nothing to complain of, but I shall be glad when the time comes for our departure. The rules will permit you to pay me a visit to bid me farewell. ‘Yours affectionately, ‘THOMAS BUTLER.’ I easily understood the meaning of the cold, formal style of this letter. A single injudicious sentence might have caused the governor, through whose hands it passed, to withhold or destroy it. Tom was right; he could not deliver himself too briefly and dispassionately.