Rufus Dawes hearing, when “on the chain” the next day, of the wanton torture of his friend, uttered no threat of vengeance, but groaned only. “I am not so strong as I was,” said he, as if in apology for his lack of spirit. “They have unnerved me.” And he looked sadly down at his gaunt frame and trembling hands.

“I can’t stand it no longer,” said Mooney, grimly. “I’ve spoken to Bland, and he’s of my mind. You know what we resolved to do. Let’s do it.”

Rufus Dawes stared at the sightless orbs turned inquiringly to his own. The fingers of his hand, thrust into his bosom, felt a token which lay there. A shudder thrilled him. “No, no. Not now,” he said.

“You’re not afeard, man?” asked Mooney, stretching out his hand in the direction of the voice. “You’re not going to shirk?” The other avoided the touch, and shrank away, still staring. “You ain’t going to back out after you swored it, Dawes? You’re not that sort. Dawes, speak, man!”

“Is Bland willing?” asked Dawes, looking round, as if to seek some method of escape from the glare of those unspeculative eyes.

“Ay, and ready. They flogged him again yesterday.”

“Leave it till to-morrow,” said Dawes, at length.

“No; let’s have it over,” urged the old man, with a strange eagerness. “I’m tired o’ this.”

Rufus Dawes cast a wistful glance towards the wall behind which lay the house of the Commandant. “Leave it till to-morrow,” he repeated, with his hand still in his breast.

They had been so occupied in their conversation that neither had observed the approach of their common enemy. “What are you hiding there?” cried Frere, seizing Dawes by the wrist. “More tobacco, you dog?” The hand of the convict, thus suddenly plucked from his bosom, opened involuntarily, and a withered rose fell to the earth. Frere at once, indignant and astonished, picked it up. “Hallo! What the devil’s this? You’ve not been robbing my garden for a nosegay, Jack?” The Commandant was wont to call all convicts “Jack” in his moments of facetiousness. It was a little humorous way he had.

Rufus Dawes uttered one dismal cry, and then stood trembling and cowed. His companions, hearing the exclamation of rage and grief that burst from him, looked to see him snatch back the flower or perform some act of violence. Perhaps such was his intention, but he did not execute it. One would have thought that there was some charm about this rose so strangely cherished, for he stood gazing at it, as it twirled between Captain Frere’s strong fingers, as though it fascinated him. “You’re a pretty man to want a rose for your buttonhole! Are you going out with your sweetheart next Sunday, Mr. Dawes?” The gang laughed. “How did you get this?” Dawes was silent. “You’d better tell me.” No answer. “Troke, let us see if we can’t find Mr. Dawes’s tongue. Pull off your shirt, my man. I expect that’s the way to your heart — eh, boys?”

At this elegant allusion to the lash, the gang laughed again, and looked at each other astonished. It seemed possible that the leader of the “Ring” was going to turn milksop. Such, indeed, appeared to be the case, for Dawes, trembling and pale, cried, “Don’t flog me again, sir! I picked it up in the yard. It fell out of your coat one day.” Frere smiled with an inward satisfaction at the result of his spirit-breaking. The explanation was probably the correct one. He was in the habit of wearing flowers in his coat and it was impossible that the convict should have obtained one by any other means. Had it been a fig of tobacco now, the astute Commandant knew plenty of men who would have brought it into the prison. But who would risk a flogging for so useless a thing as a flower? “You’d better not pick up any more, Jack,” he said. “We don’t grow flowers for your amusement.” And contemptuously flinging the rose over the wall, he strode away.

The gang, left to itself for a moment, bestowed their attention upon Dawes. Large tears were silently rolling down his face, and he stood staring at the wall as one in a dream. The gang curled their lips. One fellow, more charitable than the rest, tapped his forehead and winked. “He’s going cranky,” said this good-natured man, who could not understand what a sane prisoner had to do with flowers. Dawes recovered himself, and the contemptuous glances of his companions seemed to bring back the colour to his cheeks.

“We’ll do it to-night,” whispered he to Mooney, and Mooney smiled with pleasure.

Since the “tobacco trick”, Mooney and Dawes had been placed in the new prison, together with a man named Bland, who had already twice failed to kill himself. When old Mooney, fresh from the torture of the gag-and-bridle, lamented his hard case, Bland proposed that the three should put in practice a scheme in which two at least must succeed. The scheme was a desperate one, and attempted only in the last extremity. It was the custom of the Ring, however, to swear each of its members to carry out to the best of his ability this last invention of the convict-disciplined mind should two other members crave his assistance.

The scheme — like all great ideas — was............