Unlike all others, however, he, my poor father, believed implicitly my
assertions of entire innocence of the crime for which I had been
transported. But he felt bitterly for the degrading situation in which I
stood, and from which neither my own conscious innocence nor his
convictions, he was but too sensible, could rescue me in so far as
regarded the opinion of the world.
Having told my father my story, he told me his. It was simply this--the
story of hundreds, thousands. Tempted by the favourable accounts he had
heard and read of Australia, he had come to the resolution of
emigrating; had, with this view, sold off at home; and here he was. He
added that he had obtained a grant of land, of about 500 acres, in the
neighbourhood of Liverpool, on very favourable terms; that although he
had not found everything quite so suitable or so well-ordered as he had
expected, he had no doubt of being able to do very well when once he
should have got matters put in proper train. He said he had already got
a very good house erected on the farm, and that although their situation
for the first two or three months was bad enough, they were now pretty
comfortable; and he hoped that, with my assistance--seeing, as he
interpolated with a faint smile, I had just cast up in the nick of
time--they would soon make things still better.
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