Truly the hand of the Lord had been heavy upon them all. Matthew dying in starvation and misery. Mr. Probus, lying in prison, a pauper and blind: Merridew stoned to death: the other two escaped with life, but that was all. But the innocent were suffering with the guilty: the old man Alderman languishing in a debtors' prison with no hope of release: and Jenny a convict to be transported across the seas. They did well to call it a voyage: a short exile in a pleasant climate: she was a convict: she was under sentence. And I was rich. So I kept saying to myself as I walked home that evening. So I kept saying to Alice when I told her what had happened while we sat till late at night talking over these acts of Providence. We were to see her go far away across the ocean--a convict, never perhaps to return: to see her go alone, save for her little maid: in danger of wicked men of whom there are plenty over every part of the world: perhaps, in spite of what was said, a servant even, at her master's beck and call: the woman to whom I owed more than life: far more than life: honour: and the respect of the world: and the happiness of my children and grandchildren: yea, even unto the third and fourth generation. What was wealth? Where was its happiness when we had to think of Jenny? It was this woman, I say, who by her ready wit, her generosity, her fearlessness in the presence of risks certain and dangers inevitable, made my innocence as clear as the noonday's sun. For this service shall her name be blessed among those who come after me and bear my name and are stimulated to deeds of honour by the thought that they come of an honourable stock. Think of the burden upon their lives had they been doomed to remember that their father or their grandfather before them had suffered a shameful death for highway robbery! Jenny saved me--but at what a price! She braved the worst that the rogues, her former friends, could do to her. She compelled her own people: their own associates to betray them in order to prove my innocence. She paid for the betrayal by prison, trial and ruin. She poured out her money like water in order that no doubt whatever should exist in the mind of the Court or the Jury as to the real character of the witnesses. In return she endured the foul air and the foul companionship of Newgate and a shameful transportation to Virginia, there to be set up, if her sentence was carried out, and sold as a slave for five years. It was no common gratitude--we repeated over and over again--that we owed her for this service. We owed her all--all--all--that we possessed or ever could possess. But money cannot effect everything: it could not, in this case, give Jenny the full pardon and the immediate release we desired. In the dead of night, as I lay sleepless, tortured in my mind because I could think of nothing that we could do for Jenny, who had done so much for us, Alice spoke to me, sitting up in bed.