Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/14

 which nowhere any land is lenient. Go where I would I must hide myself in secrecy and shame, or be given up, the first time I walked abroad, to my own judges. He is a man who knows the world. He must know this very well. He would take me over the sea, indeed; but on the shores whether of France, or Spain, or Greece, I should be assailed by the law and seized as soon as recognised. I am like your poor playfellows the birds; if I escaped from the nets of my own land, it would be but to fall into the traps set on a foreign coast. They have hung this crime like a millstone about my neck, and in whatever waters I may try to swim it will always drown me, like a doomed dog. He talks of saving me!—he cannot do it so long as this charge, this sentence of me as an assassin, clings to me; and the law has fastened it and locked it on me, and the world thinks the law cannot err! Except on some desert island like to Crusoe's, I can never be safe; I can never be sure that any night the hand of the law may not rouse me up from my sleep and shake me awake to my misery like the wretched hunted rat I am!'

'I do not think he knew that. Or at