But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."

     "How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.

     "How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."

     "I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that I had 'em here."

     "Two one pound notes, or friends?"

     "Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had for one, and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says--?"