The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans by William Gosse Hay

On December 2nd, 1842, a sad feeling was caused in Hobarton by the news that the prisoner Heans had either escaped or been lost in the forests about Port Arthur. [Note 33. Second-sentence prison.] The news was semaphored from mountain to mountain over that extraordinary sea of trees in the way of particular tidings from and to the prison, whether you were to be informed of a death, or, being a guest of the Commandant, summoned the tramway. A feeling almost of shock hung over many who remembered his mounted figure or in whose minds the death at his hands and the comparative clemency which had been accorded him were still a matter of interest. "Shock"--because the words "lost in the forests" indicated that the search had been abandoned, leaving awash the poor word "escaped" with too heavy a cargo of grey chance for it to float upon the fingers even of romantic hope. Nay, it was there but to stigmatise the poor attempt. There was something infinitely pathetic in a man of his station and gallant bearing, his once elevated position in society, his refined care of his person to the last, lost, wandering, exposed, caught, dead, in that scarce penetrable ring of mighty and extraordinary growths.

We believe there are still to be read some moving regrets and decent moralizing in and out of print upon his "melancholy fate."