I looked on the countenance of the sufferer again.  It was slightly distorted with pain, and all trace of the resemblance I had fancied was gone.  An interval of ease succeeded.  The real or imagined resemblance returned.  Again I lost sight of it, and again I caught it; for it was only in some points of view I could detect it at all.  At length, after marking for some time longer, with intense interest, the features of the sufferer, my conviction becoming every moment stronger and stronger, and my agitation in consequence extreme, I bent my head close to the dying man, and, taking his cold and clammy hand in mine, asked him, in a whisper, if his name was not Digby.  His eyes were closed at the moment, but I saw he was not sleeping.  On my putting the question, he opened them wide, and stared wildly upon me, but without saying a word.  He seemed to be endeavouring to recognise me, but apparently in vain.  I repeated the question.  This time he answered.  Still gazing earnestly at me, he said, and it was all he did say, “It is.”

“Don’t you know me?” I inquired.

He shook his head.

“My name is Lorimer,” said I.

“Thank God,” he exclaimed solemnly.  “For one, at least, of my crimes it is permitted me to make some reparation.  Haste, haste, get witnesses and hear my dying declaration.  There’s no time to lose, for I feel I am fast going!”

Without a moment’s delay—–­ for I felt the importance of obtaining the declaration, which I had no doubt would establish my innocence—­I ran for my father and Sergeant Lindsay, and, to make assurance doubly sure, brought two of the privates also along with me.  It was a striking scene of retributive justice,

On our entering the apartment where Digby lay, the wretched man raised himself upon his elbow.  I ran and placed two pillows beneath him to support him.  He thanked me.  Then raising his hand impressively, and directing it towards me—­

“That young man there,” he said, “David Lorimer, is, as I declare on the word of a dying man, innocent of the crime for which he was banished to this country.  I, and no other, am the guilty person.  It was I who robbed my master, Mr. Wallscourt, of the silver plate for which this young man was blamed; and it was I who put the silver spoon in his pocket, in order to substantiate the charge I subsequently brought against him, and in which I was but too successful.”

He then added, that in case his declaration should not be deemed sufficient to clear me of the guilt imputed to me, we should endeavour to find out a person of the name of Nareby—­Thomas Nareby—­who, he said, was in the colony under sentence of transportation for life for housebreaking; and that this person, who had been, at the time of the robbery for which I suffered, a receiver of stolen goods, and with whom he, Digby, had deposited Mr. Wallscourt’s plate, would acknowledge—­at least he hoped so—­this transaction, and thus add to the weight of his dying testimony to my innocence.