There is one feature in the story which the most skilful narrator might easily fail to present as probable--the separation of these twin sisters throughout a long lifetime, a separation contrary to nature; so much so, indeed, that tales are told of twins living apart, the death or illness of one of whom has brought about the death or similar illness of the other. One would at least say that neither could die without knowledge of the other; might even infer that either would go on thinking the other living, without some direct evidence of death, some seeming communication from the departed. But the separation of Phoebe from Maisie did not come under these conditions; each was the victim of a wicked fraud, carried out with a subtlety that might have deceived Scotland Yard. There can be no doubt that it would have had the force to obscure any phenomenon of a so-called telepathic nature, however vivid, as proof that either twin was still alive; as the percipient, in the belief that her sister's death was established beyond a doubt, would unhesitatingly conclude that the departed had revisited earth, or had made her presence felt by some process hard to understand from our side. To see the story in its right light we must always keep in view the extraordinary isolation of the penal settlement. All convict life is cut off from the world, but in Van Diemen's Land even the freest of men out on ticket-of-leave--free sometimes so long that the renewal of their licence at its expiration became the merest form--was separated from the land of his birth, even from the mainland of Australia, by a barrier for him almost as impassable as the atmosphere that lies between us and the visible land of the moon. Keep in mind the hundred-and-odd miles of sea--are you sure you thought of it as so much?--that parts Tasmania from the nearest point of New South Wales, and picture to yourself the few slow sailing-ships upon their voyages from Sydney, five times as distant. To go and come on such a journey was little else to the stay-at-home in those days, than that he should venture beyond the grave and return. No!--the wonder to my mind is not that the two sisters should have been parted so utterly, and each been so completely duped about the other's death, but that Maisie should have returned less than five-and-twenty years later, and that, so returning, she should not have come to the knowledge that her sister was still living. CHAPTER VIII MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S SLIDE, AND THE MILK. CONCERNING DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT, WHICH HAD SHRUNK IN HIS ABSENCE. OF THE PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF A WIDOW'S GRANDMOTHER. DAVE'S TALE OF THE WATER-MILL. SISTER NORA'S EXACTING FATHER. HOW DAVE WENT TO SCHOOL, AND UNCLE MO SOUGHT CONSOLATION IN SOCIETY, WHILE DOLLY TOOK STRUVVEL PETER TO VISIT MRS. PRICHARD. HOW THAT OLD LADY KNITTED A COMFORTER, AND TOLD AUNT M'RIAR OF HER CONVICT LOVER'S DEPARTURE