give the poor man no better news, but possibly the "new leaf" which such a woman would have turned over in Western Australia would have been an infinitely worse page than any that had preceded it.
On Sundays the inmates of the convict depôt were marched once a day to church, where, sitting on the benches especially appropriated to their use, and wearing their best suit of white arrow-marked jackets, they offered a painful spectacle, looking like Crown serfs, or a modern type of persons "put to open penance" before the congregation. When seen apart from his fellows a convict's face bears often no peculiarly evil characteristics, but when many such are ranged together the countenances have I know not what of indescribable and oppressive, suggesting perhaps most forcibly the idea that their owners have run away from a criminal lunatic asylum; an impression strengthened by the fact that the forehead is almost invariably low and retreating, even amongst the more intelligent of the men.
To road parties that are stationed beyond easy walking distance from a church Sunday is distinguished from week days only by a cessation from work, unless a chaplain rides out purposely to give the men a religious service. Even in the exemption from stone breaking on the Sunday the axiom holds good of there being no rule without an exception. We once pulled up our horse on a journey to ask for a draught of water at the camp of a road party beyond our own district, and, whilst supplying our want, the warder informed us that amongst his prisoners was a Jew, to whom, in consequence of his refusal to work on Saturdays, he had been instructed to
