Digby having concluded, I immediately committed what he had just said to writing, and having read it over to him, obtained his approval of it.  He then, of his own accord, offered to subscribe the declaration, and with some difficulty accomplished the task.  The signature was hardly legible, but it was quite sufficient when attested, as it was, by the signatures of all present excepting myself.  Exhausted with the effort he had made, Digby now sank back on his pillow, and in less than three minutes after expired.

We now learned from the unhappy man’s two wounded companions, who, the reader will recollect, were our prisoners, that, soon after my trial and condemnation, he, Digby, had left Mr. Wallscourt’s service, not under any suspicion of the robbery of the plate, but with no very good general character; that he had the betaken himself entirely to live with the abandoned characters whose acquaintance he had formed, and to subsist by swindling and robbery; that he had proceeded from crime to crime, until he at length fell into the hands of justice; and his banishment to the colony where he had arrived about six months before, was the result; that he had not been more than a month in the country when he and several other convicts ran away from the master to whom they had been assigned, and took to the bush.  Such was the brief but dismal history of this wretched man.

On the following day we buried his remains in a lonely spot in the forest, at the distance of about half a mile from the house, and thereafter proceeded with our prisoners to Liverpool.  On arriving there, I accompanied my father to the magistrate on whom he had waited on a former occasion, and having stated to this gentleman the extraordinary circumstance which had taken place—­meaning Digby’s declaration—­he advised an immediate application to the governor, setting forth the circumstances of the case.  This I lost no time in doing, enclosing within my memorial Digby’s attested declaration, and pointing out Nareby as a person likely to confirm its tenor.  The singularity and apparent hardship of the case, combined with the favourable knowledge of me previously existing, attracted the attention of the governor in a special manner, and excited in him so lively an interest, that he instantly had Nareby subjected to a judicial examination, the result of which was a full admission on the part of that person of the transaction to which Digby alluded.

Satisfied now of my innocence, and of the injustice which had been unwittingly done me, the governor not only immediately transmitted me a full and free pardon but offered me, by way of compensation, a lucrative government appointment.  This appointment I accepted, and held for thirty years, I trust with credit to myself, and satisfaction to my superiors.  At the end of this period, feeling my health giving way, my father and mother having both, in the meantime, died, and having all that time scraped together a competency, I returned to my native land, and have written these little memoirs in one of the pleasantest little retirements on the banks of the Tweed.