"Yours trule,

"TOM BATES".

The old fellow, Hogarth saw, did not know of Fred's fate: Fred, the
last of eight. He would find it hard to answer that letter.

When "beds down" was called, his head was still full of one thought:
old Tom Bates; and he could not sleep; heard the bell ring for the
change of warders; the vast silence of the prison's night; and still
his brain revolved old Tom.

The stealthy slipper of the night-warder passed and re-passed. Anon
a click of metal on metal, and the bull's-eye searched him.

Suddenly he remembered that visit to the forge at Thring, and the
present of herrings which old Tom in his guernsey, had brought.

"Here--take 'em--they're yours", old Tom had said.

He had just then, he remembered, been on the point of going into the
cottage to examine his guns, when the old man came, and stopped him--a
fatal, appointed thing, apparently. Had he actually gone, he would have
found the guns vanished, and would never have been condemned....

And what was it that the old man had said about fish, and fishermen,
and the sea?

He bent his brow to it, and finally remembered: "The day's work of a
fisherman gives him enough fish to live on all the week, and he