He received no answer while at Portsmouth, but the vessel having sailed and lying two days off Plymouth, his name was called just before she weighed again and a thick letter handed to him.  He opened it eagerly and two things fell on deck—­a sovereign and a tract.  The sovereign rolled off and made for the sea.  Robinson darted after it and saved it from the deep and the surrounding rogues.  Then he read a letter which was also in the inclosure.  It was short.  In it Mr. Eden told him he had sent him the last tract printed in the prison.  “It is called ‘The Wages of Sin are Death.’  It is not the same one you made into cards; that being out of print and the author dead I have been tempted by that good, true title to write another.  I think you will value it none the less for being written by me and printed by our brothers and sisters in this place.  I inclose one pound that you may not be tempted for want of a shilling.”

Robinson looked round for the tract; it was not to be seen; nobody had seen it.  N. B. It had been through a dozen light-fingered hands already and was now being laughed at and blasphemed over by two filthy ruffians behind a barrel on the lower deck.  Robinson was first in a fury and then, when he found it was really stolen from him, he was very much cut up.  “I wish I had lifted it and let the money roll.”  However, thought he, “if I keep quiet I shall hear of it.”

He did hear of it, but he never saw it; for one of these hardened creatures that had got hold of it had a spite against Robinson for refusing his proffered amity, and the malicious dog, after keeping it several hours, hearing Robinson threaten to inform against whoever had taken it, made himself safe and gratified his spite by flinging it into the Channel.

This, too, came in due course to Robinson’s ears.  He moralized on it.  “I made the first into the devil’s books,” said he, “and now a child of the devil has robbed me of the second.  I shan’t get a third chance.  I would give my sovereign and more to see what his reverence says about ‘The wages of sin are death.’  The very title is a sermon.  I pray Heaven the dirty hand that robbed me of it may rot off at the—­no!  I forgot.  Bless and curse not!”

And now Robinson was confined for five months in a wooden prison with the scum of our jails.  No cell to take refuge in from evil society.  And in that wretched five months this perpetual contact with criminals, many of them all but incurable, took the gloss off him.  His good resolutions were unshaken, but his repugnance to evil associates became gradually worn away.

At last they landed at Sydney.  They were employed for about a fortnight in some government works, a mile from the town; and at the end of that time he was picked out by a gentleman who wanted a servant.

Robinson’s work was to call him not too early, to clean his boots, go on errands into the town, and be always in the way till five o’clock.  From that hour until about two in the morning Mr. Miles devoted to amusement, returning with his latch key, and often rousing the night owl and his servant with a bacchanalian or Anacreontic melody.  In short, Mr. Miles was a loose fish; a bachelor who had recently inherited the fortune of an old screw his uncle, and was spending thrift in all the traditional modes.  Horses, dogs, women, cards, etc.