kept up for ever. By degrees it was relaxed. The warders and
gaolers ceased to patrol the island roads by night, and it was
agreed that Aaron Trow was gone, or that he would be starved to
death, or that he would in time be driven to leave such traces of
his whereabouts as must lead to his discovery; and this at last did
turn out to be the fact.

There is a sort of prettiness about these islands which, though it
never rises to the loveliness of romantic scenery, is nevertheless
attractive in its way. The land breaks itself into little knolls,
and the sea runs up, hither and thither, in a thousand creeks and
inlets; and then, too, when the oleanders are in bloom, they give a
wonderfully bright colour to the landscape. Oleanders seem to be
the roses of Bermuda, and are cultivated round all the villages of
the better class through the islands. There are two towns, St.
George and Hamilton, and one main high-road, which connects them;
but even this high-road is broken by a ferry, over which every
vehicle going from St. George to Hamilton must be conveyed. Most of
the locomotion in these parts is done by boats, and the residents
look to the sea, with its narrow creeks, as their best highway from
their farms to their best market. In those days--and those days
were not very long since--the building of small ships was their
chief trade, and they valued their land mostly for the small scrubby
cedar-trees with which this trade was carried on.

As one goes from St. George to Hamilton the road runs between two
seas; that to the right is the ocean; that on the left is an inland
creek, which runs up through a large portion of the islands, so that
the land on the other side of it is near to the traveller. For a
considerable portion of the way there are no houses lying near the