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CHAPTER XII.
Return to Head Quarters after an Exile of two Years.–Renew my Vows of Rectitude, to which I strictly adhere.–Proposal made me to obtain my Liberty.–I make the Attempt.–Its Failure, and the consequent Punishment inflicted on me.–Conclusion.
On arriving at Newcastle, I was first employed in wheeling coals out of the mines, a most laborious occupation indeed; but during my continuance at that settlement, I was put to all descriptions of work, and for the last three months, performed the duty, of a constable, or watchman. Since the day on which the transaction at Colles’s took place, I never exchanged a word with the villain Edwards. He had been but a few weeks at Newcastle, before he committed a robbery, and absconded to the woods, from which he was brought back by some natives a naked and miserable object. His subsequent conduct at the coal river exhibited nothing but a succession of robberies, and every species of depravity; when detected in which, on several occasions, he betrayed his accomplices, and proved as perfidious as he was dishonest. He frequently escaped by land, amidst innumerable hard-
