When I’d done over eleven years—eleven years! how did I ever do it? but the time passed, and passed somehow—I got word that they that I knew of was making a try to see if I couldn’t be let out when I’d done twelve years. My regular sentence was fifteen, and little enough, too. Anyhow, they knock off a year or two from most of the long-sentence men’s time, if they’ve behaved themselves well in gaol, and can show a good conduct ticket right through.

Well, I could do that. I was too low and miserable to fight much when I went in: besides, I never could see the pull of kicking up rows and giving trouble in a place like that. They’ve got you there fast enough, and any man that won’t be at peace himself, or let others be, is pretty sure to get the worst of it. I’d seen others try it, and never seen no good come of it. It’s like a dog on the chain that growls and bites at all that comes near him. A man can take a sapling and half kill him, and the dog never gets a show unless he breaks his chain, and that don’t happen often.

Well, I’d learned carpentering and had a turn at mat-making and a whole lot of other things. They kept me from thinking, as I said before, and the neater I did ‘em and the more careful I worked the better it went with me. As for my mats, I came quite to be talked about on account of ‘em. I drew a regular good picture of Rainbow, and worked it out on a mat with different-coloured thrums, and the number of people who came to see that mat, and the notice they took of it, would surprise anyone.

When my twelve years was within a couple of months or so of being up I began to hear that there was a deal of in-and-out sort of work about my getting my freedom. Old George Storefield and Mr. Falkland—both of ‘em in the Upper House—and one or two more people that had some say with the Government, was working back and edge for me. There was a party on the other side that wasn’t willing as I should lose a day or an hour of my sentence, and that made out I ought to have been hanged “right away,” as old Arizona Bill would have said, when I was first taken. Well, I don’t blame any of ‘em for that; but if they could have known the feelings of a man that’s done a matter of twelve years, and thinks he might—yes, might—smell the fresh air and feel the grass under his feet in a week or two—well, they’d perhaps consider a bit.