ladies all believe it, and the old men; that all the young men know
exactly how much of it is false and how much true; and that the
steady, middle-aged, well-to-do islanders are quite convinced that
it is romance from beginning to end. My readers may range
themselves with the ladies, the young men, or the steady, well-to-
do, middle-aged islanders, as they please.

Some years ago, soon after the prison was first established on its
present footing, three men did escape from it, and among them a
certain notorious prisoner named Aaron Trow. Trow's antecedents in
England had not been so villanously bad as those of many of his
fellow-convicts, though the one offence for which he was punished
had been of a deep dye: he had shed man's blood. At a period of
great distress in a manufacturing town he had led men on to riot,
and with his own hand had slain the first constable who had
endeavoured to do his duty against him. There had been courage in
the doing of the deed, and probably no malice; but the deed, let its
moral blackness have been what it might, had sent him to Bermuda,
with a sentence against him of penal servitude for life. Had he
been then amenable to prison discipline,--even then, with such a
sentence against him as that,--he might have won his way back, after
the lapse of years, to the children, and perhaps, to the wife, that
he had left behind him; but he was amenable to no rules--to no
discipline. His heart was sore to death with an idea of injury, and
he lashed himself against the bars of his cage with a feeling that
it would be well if he could so lash himself till he might perish in
his fury.

And then a day came in which an attempt was made by a large body of
convicts, under his leadership, to get the better of the officers of