"As a boy!" John Steele repeated the words almost mechanically. "My
parents died when I was a child; they came of good stock--New England."
He uttered the last part of the sentence involuntarily; stopped. "I was
bound out, was beaten. I fought, ran away. In lumber camps, the drunken
riffraff cursed the new scrub boy; on the Mississippi, the sailors and
stevedores kicked him because the mate kicked them. Everywhere it was
the same; the boy learned only one thing, to fight. Fight, or be beaten!
On the plains, in the mountains, before the fo'castle, it was the same.
Fight, or--" he broke off. "It was not a boyhood; it was a contention."

"I believe you." Sir Charles' accents were half-musing. "And if you will
pardon me, I'll stake a good deal that you fought straight." He paused.
"But to go back to your isle, your magic isle, if you please. You were
rescued, and then?"

"In a worldly sense, I prospered; in New Zealand, in Tasmania. Fate, as
if to atone for having delayed her favors, now lavished them freely;
work became easy; a mine or two that I was lucky enough to locate,
yielded, and continues to yield, unexpected returns. Without especially
desiring riches, I found myself more than well-to-do."

"And then having fairly, through your own efforts, won a place in the
world, having conquered fortune, why did you return to England knowing
the risk, that some one of these fellows like Gillett, the police agent,
might--"

"Why," said John Steele, "because I wished to sift, to get to the very
bottom of this crime for which I was convicted. For all real
wrong-doing--resisting officers of the law--offenses against
officialdom--I had paid the penalty, in full, I believe. But this other