The captain of the guards pointed them out to encourage his exhausted moles, but the spectacle produced the opposite effect; for the tangled locks of the man, who had scarcely passed his thirtieth year, were grey, his tall figure was bowed and emaciated, and his naked back was covered with scars and bleeding wales; the wife, who had shared his misery, was blind.

She sat cowering on an ass, in the dull torpor of insanity, and though the passing of the convicts made a startling interruption to the silence of the wilderness, and her hearing had remained keen, she paid no heed, but continued to stare indifferently into vacancy.
The sight of the hapless pair placed Hosea's own terrible future before him as if in a mirror, and for the first time he groaned aloud and covered his face with his hands.
The captain of the guards perceived this and, touched by the horror of the man whose resolution had hitherto seemed peerless, called to him: "They don't all come home like that, no indeed!" "Because they are even worse off," he thought.

"But the poor wights needn't know it beforehand.

The next time I come this way I'll ask for Hosea; I shall want to know what has become of this bull of a man.

The strongest and the most resolute succumb the most quickly." Then, like a driver urging an unharnessed team forward, he swung the lash over the prisoners, but without touching them, and pointing to a column of smoke which rose behind a cliff at the right of the road, he exclaimed: "There are the smelting furnaces! We shall reach our destination at noon.