Not a
word about the jewels came out at the trial, for the rajah had
been deposed and driven out of India: so no one had any
particular interest in them. The murder, however, was clearly
made out, and it was certain that we must all have been concerned
in it. The three Sikhs got penal servitude for life, and I was
condemned to death, though my sentence was afterwards commuted
into the same as the others.
"It was rather a queer position that we found ourselves in then.
There we were all four tied by the leg and with precious little
chance of ever getting out again, while we each held a secret
which might have put each of us in a palace if we could only have
made use of it. It was enough to make a man eat his heart out to
have to stand the kick and the cuff of every petty jack-in-
office, to have rice to eat and water to drink, when that
gorgeous fortune was ready for him outside, just waiting to be
picked up. It might have driven me mad; but I was always a
pretty stubborn one, so I just held on and bided my time.
"At last it seemed to me to have come. I was changed from Agra
to Madras, and from there to Blair Island in the Andamans. There
are very few white convicts at this settlement, and, as I had
behaved well from the first, I soon found myself a sort of
privileged person.
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