“There are some crimes which God designs man to punish,” answered Smith, desisting from his occupation of gathering up his traps.  “I think that the scoundrels who robbed my team deserve hanging, and I don’t want to wait until they are dead to know that they are receiving punishment in the next world.”

“The world to come is one of darkness to us mortals, and who can pierce its blackness.  But God has promised light, and behold the angel of the Lord will reveal all things, for so sayeth the Book of all books.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” replied Smith, who had listened attentively to the wild, rambling speech of the convict without comprehending its import; “but this I do know, that I would mash the heads of the bushrangers who robbed my cart, if they were within the reach of my axe.”

“Trust in God for vengeance, for to him does it belong,” exclaimed the convict, drawing a dirty looking and well-thumbed Testament from his pocket, and turning over leaf after leaf as though seeking for a particular chapter.

“We must get him to put up his book, or he’ll read from now till sundown,” cried Smith, with visible alarm at the idea of being compelled to listen.

“Here is an unfortunate woman that needs your assistance,” said Smith, laying a hand upon the old man’s arm, and calling his attention to his child.

“Does she need spiritual assistance, or only food for the body?  Her looks are like those of a person who has been suffering.”

“She has suffered much within twenty-four hours, and her only friend now is that dog that keeps so close to her.”

“Let her be comforted,” the convict cried, approaching her; “if her sorrow is ever so deep, it can be healed.”

He closed his book as he spoke and approached his child, who sat with downcast eyes, and apparently unconscious of his presence.

“Daughter,” he began; but at the sound of his voice so near, she raised her eyes hastily, and on her face could be seen the emotions and struggles to recollect where she had before heard his tones.  She pressed her hand to her forehead as though forcing memory to reveal its secret, but suddenly the truth was revealed to her.

“Father,” she cried, starting to her feet, and throwing her arms around that white-headed man’s neck, venerable before his time.  “Father!  O God, is it you?”

She laid her aching head upon his bosom, and, with her arms around his neck, shed tears as freely as she did the day that she was separated from him, as she thought, forever.

The convict staggered back, and would have fallen, had not Fred’s strong arm supported him.  He glanced from face to face as though trying to read the meaning of the surprise, and then he turned his looks upon his daughter.

“Mary,” he cried, after pushing the hair from her forehead, “can it, indeed, be my child—­has the little girl whom I left in England grown to be a woman!”