The dangerous maniac obeyed, and went and sat beside Alfred with a basin of thick gruel and a great wooden spoon. He shovelled the gruel down his charge's throat mighty superciliously from the very first; and presently, falling into some favourite and absorbing train of thought, he fixed his eye on vacancy, and handed the spoonfuls over his left shoulder with such rapidity and recklessness that it was more like sowing than feeding. Alfred cried out "Quarter! I can't eat so fast as that, old fellow."

Something in his tone struck the maniac; he looked at Alfred full, Alfred looked at him in return, and smiled kindly but sadly.

"Hallo!" cried the maniac.

"What's up now?" said a keeper fiercely.

"Why this man is sane. As sane as I am."

At this there was a horse laugh.

"Saner," persisted the maniac; "for I am a little queer at times, you know."

"And no mistake, Jemmy. Now what makes you think he is sane?"

"Looked me full in the face, and smiled at me."

"Oh, that is your test, is it?"

"Yes, it is. You try it on any of those mad beggars there and see if they can stand it."

"Who invented gunpowder?" said one of the insulted persons, looking as sly and malicious as a magpie going to steal.

Jemmy exploded directly: "I did, ye rascal, ye liar, ye rogue, ye Baconian!" and going higher, and higher in this strain, was very soon handcuffed with Alfred's handcuffs, and seated on Alfred's bench and tied to two rings in the wall. On this his martial ardour went down to zero: "Here is treatment, sir," said he piteously to Alfred. "I see you are a gentleman; now look at this. All spite and jealousy because I invented that invaluable substance, which has done so much to prolong human life and alleviate human misery."

Alfred was now ordered to feed Jemmy; which he did: so quickly were their parts inverted.

Directly after breakfast Alfred demanded to see the proprietor of the asylum.

Answer: Doesn't live here.

The Doctor then.

Oh, he has not come.

This monstrosity irritated Alfred: "Well, then," said he, "whoever it is that rules this den of thieves, when those two are out of it."

"I rule in Mr. Baker's absence," said the head keeper, "and I'll teach you manners, you young blackguard. Handcuff him."

In five minutes Alfred was handcuffed and flung into a padded room.

"Stay there till you know how to speak to your betters," said the head keeper.

Alfred walked up and down grinding his teeth with rage for five long hours.

Just before dinner Brown came and took him into a parlour, where Mrs. Archbold was seated writing. Brown retired. The lady finished what she was doing, and kept Alfred standing like a schoolboy going to be lectured. At last she said, "I have sent for you to give you a piece of advice: it is to try and make friends with the attendants."

"Me make friends with the scoundrels! I thirst for their lives. Oh, madam, I fear I shall kill somebody here."

"Foolish boy; they are too strong for you. Your worst enemies could wish nothing worse for you than that you should provoke them." In saying these words she was so much more kind and womanly that Alfred conceived hopes, and burst out, "Oh, madam, you are human then; you seem to pity me; pray give me pen and paper, and let me write to my friends to get me out of this terrible place; do not refuse me."

Mrs. Archbold resumed her distant manner without apparent effort: she said nothing, but she placed writing materials before him. She then left the room, and locked him in.

He wrote a few hasty ardent words to Julia, telling her how he had been entrapped, but not a word about his sufferings—he was too generous to give her needless pain—and a line to Edward, imploring him to come at once with a lawyer and an honest physician, and liberate him.

Mrs. Archbold returned soon after, and he asked her if she would lend him sealing-wax: "I dare not trust to an envelope in such a place as this," said he. She lent him sealing-wax.

"But how am I to post it?" said he.

"Easily: there is a box in the house; I will show you."

She took him and showed him the box: he put his letters into it, and in the ardour of his gratitude kissed her hand. She winced a little and said, "Mind, this is not by my advice; I would never tell my friends I had been in a madhouse; oh, never. I would be calm, make friends with the servants— they are the real masters—and never let a creature know where I had been."

"Oh, you don't know my Julia," said Alfred; "she will never desert me, never think the worse of me because I have been entrapped illegally into a madhouse."

"Illegally, Mr. Hardie! you deceive yourself; Mr. Baker told me the order was signed by a relation, and the certificates by first-rate lunacy doctors."

"What on earth has that to do with it, madam, when I am as sane as you are?"

"It has everything to do with it. Mr. Baker could be punished for confining a madman in this house without an order and two certificates; but he couldn't for confining a sane person under an order and two certificates."

Alfred could not believe this, but she convinced him that it was so.

Then he began to fear he should be imprisoned for years: he turned pale, and looked at her so piteously, that to soothe him she told him sane people were never kept in asylums now; they only used to be.

"How can they?" said she. "The London asylums are visited four times a year by the commissioners, and the country asylums six times, twice by the commissioners, and four times by the justices. We shall be inspected this week or next; and then you can speak to the justices: mind and be calm; say it is a mistake; offer testimony; and ask either to be discharged at once or to have a commission of lunacy sit on you. Ten to one your friends will not face public proceedings: but you must begin at the foundation, by making the servants friendly—and by—being calm." She then fixed her large grey eyes on him and said, "Now if I let you dine with me and the first-class patients, will you pledge me your honour to 'be calm,' and not attempt to escape?" Alfred hesitated at that. Her eye dissected his character all the time. "I promise," said he at last with a deep sigh. "May I sit by you? There is something so repugnant in the very idea of mad people."

"Try and remember it is their misfortune, not their crime," said Mrs. Archbold, just like a matronly sister admonishing a brother from school.

She then whistled in a whisper for Brown, who was lurking about unseen all the time. He emerged and walked about with Alfred, and by-and-bye, looking down from a corridor, they saw Mrs. Archbold driving the second-class women before her to dinner like a flock of animals. Whenever one stopped to look at anything, or try and gossip, the philanthropic Archbold went at her just like a shepherd's dog at a refractory sheep, caught her by the shoulders, and drove her squeaking headlong.

At dinner Alfred was so fortunate as to sit opposite a gentleman, who nodded and grinned at him all dinner with a horrible leer. He could not, however, enjoy this to the full for a little distraction at his elbow: his right hand neighbour kept forking pieces out of his plate and substituting others from his own. There was even a tendency to gristle in the latter. Alfred remonstrated gently at first; the gentleman forbore a minute, then recommenced. Alfred laid a hand very quietly on his wrist and put it back. Mrs. Archbold's quick eye surprised this gesture: "What is the matter there?" said she.

"Oh, nothing serious, madam," replied Alfred; "only this gentleman does me the honour to prefer the contents of my plate to his own."

"Mr. Cooper!" said the Archbold sternly.

Cooper, the head keeper, pounced on the offender, seized him roughly by the collar, dragged him from the table, knocking his chair down, and bundled him out of the room with ignominy and fracas, in spite of a remonstrance from Alfred, "Oh, don't be so rough with the poor man.

Then the novice laid down his knife and fork, and ate no more. "I am grieved at my own ill-nature in complaining of such a trifle," said he when all was quiet

The company stared considerably at this remark: it seemed to them a most morbid perversion of sensibility; for the deranged, thin-skinned beyond conception in their own persons, and alive to the shadow of the shade of a wrong, are stoically indifferent to the woes of others.

Though Alfred was quiet as a lamb all day, the attendants returned him to the padded room at night, because he had been there last night. But they only fastened one ankle to the bed-post: so he encountered his Lilliputians on tolerably fair terms—numbers excepted: they swarmed. Unable to sleep, he put out his hand and groped for his clothes. But they were outside the door, according to rule.

Day broke at last: and he took his breakfast quietly with the first-class patients. It consisted of cool tea in small basins instead of cups, and table-spoons instead of tea-spoons; and thick slices of stale bread thinly buttered. A few patients had gruel or porridge instead of tea. After breakfast Alfred sat in the first-class patients' room and counted the minutes and the hours till Edward should come. After dinner he counted the hours till tea-time. Nobody came; and he went to bed in such grief and disappointment as some men live to eighty without ever knowing.

But when two o'clock came next day, and no Edward, and no reply, then the distress of his soul deepened. He implored Mrs. Archbold to tell him what was the cause. She shook her head and said gravely, it was but too common; a man's nearest and dearest were very apt to hold aloof from him the moment he was put into an asylum.

Here an old lady put in her word. "Ah, sir, you must not hope to hear from anybody in this place. Why, I have been two years writing and writing, and can't get a line from my own daughter. To be sure she is a fine lady now: but it was her poor neglected mother that pinched and pinched to give her a good education, and that is how she caught a good husband. But it's my belief the post in our hall isn't a real post: but only a box; and I think it is contrived so as the letters fall down a pipe into that Baker's hands, and so then when the postman comes——" The Archbold bent her bushy brows on this chatty personage. "Be quiet, Mrs. Dent; you are talking nonsense, and exciting yourself: you know you are not to speak on that topic. Take care."

The poor old woman was shut up like a knife; for the Archbold had a way of addressing her own sex that crushed them. The change was almost comically sudden to the mellow tones in which she addressed Alfred the very next moment, on the very same subject: "Mr. Baker, I believe, sees the letters: and, where our poor patients (with a glance at Dent) write in such a way as to wound and perhaps terrify those who are in reality their best friends, they are not always sent. But I conclude your letters have gone. If you feel you can be calm, why not ask Mr. Baker? He is in the house now; for a wonder."

Alfred promised to be calm; and she got him an interview with Mr. Baker.

He was a full-blown pawnbroker of Silverton town, whom the legislature, with that keen knowledge of human nature which marks the British senate, permitted, and still permits, to speculate in Insanity, stipulating, however, that the upper servant of all in his asylum should be a doctor; but omitting to provide against the instant dismissal of the said doctor should he go and rob his employer of a lodger—by curing a patient.

As you are not the British legislature, I need not tell you that to this pawnbroker insanity mattered nothing, nor sanity: his trade lay in catching, and keeping, and stinting, as many lodgers, sane or insane, as he could hold.

There are certain formulae in these quiet retreats, which naturally impose upon greenhorns such as Alfred certainly was, and some visiting justices and lunacy commissioners would seem to be. Baker had been a lodging-house keeper for certified people many years, and knew all the formulae: some call them dodges: but these must surely be vulgar minds. Baker worked "the see-saw formula."

"Letters, young gentleman?" said he: "they are not in my department They go into the surgery, and are passed by the doctor, except those he examines and orders to be detained."

Alfred demanded the doctor.

"He is gone," was the reply. (Formula.)

Alfred found it as hard to be calm as some people find it easy to say that word over the wrongs of others.

The next day, but not till the afternoon, he caught the doctor: "My letters! Surely, sir, you have not been so cruel as to intercept them?"

"I intercept no letters," said the doctor, as if scandalised at the very idea. "I see who writes them, and hand them to Mr. Baker, with now and then a remark. If any are detained, the responsibility rests with him."

"He says it rests with you."

"You must have misunderstood him."

"Not at all, sir. One thing is clear; my letters have been stolen either by him or you; and I will know which."

The doctor parried with a formula.

"You are excited, Mr. Hardie. Be calm, sir, be calm: or you will be here all the longer."

All Alfred obtained by this interview was a powerful opiate. The head-keeper brought it him in bed. He declined to take it. The man whistled, and the room filled with keepers.

"Now," said Cooper, "down with it, or you'll have to be drenched with this cowhorn."

"You had better take it, sir," said Brown; "the doctor has ordered it you."

"The doctor? Well, let me see the doctor about it."

"He is gone."

"He never ordered it me," said Alfred. Then fixing his eyes sternly on Cooper, "You miscreants, you want to poison me. No, I will not take it. Murder! murder!"

Then ensued a struggle, on which I draw a veil: but numbers won the day, with the help of handcuffs and a cowhorn.

Brown went and told Mrs. Archbold, and what Alfred had said.

"Don't be alarmed," said that strong-minded lady: "it is only one of the old fool's composing draughts. It will spoil the poor boy's sleep for one night, that is all. Go to him the first thing in the morning."

About midnight Alfred was seized with a violent headache and fever: towards morning he was light-headed, and Brown found him loud and incoherent: only he returned often to an expression Mr. Brown had never heard before—

"Justifiable parricide. Justifiable parricide. Justifiable patricide."

Most people dislike new phrases. Brown ran to consult Mrs. Archbold about this one. After the delay inseparable from her sex, she came in a morning wrapper; and they found Alfred leaning over the bed and bleeding violently at the nose. They were a good deal alarmed, and tried to stop it: but Alfred was quite sensible now, and told them it was doing him good.

"I can manage to see now," he said; "a little while ago I was blind with the poison."

They unstrapped his ankle and made him comfortable, and Mrs. Archbold sent Brown for a cup of strong coffee and a glass of brandy. He tossed them off; and soon after fell into a deep sleep that lasted till tea-time. This sleep the poor doctor ascribed to the sedative effect of his opiate. It was the natural exhaustion consequent on the morbid excitement caused by his cursed opiate.

"Brown," said Mrs. Archbold, "if Dr. Bailey prescribes again, let me know. He shan't square this patient with his certificates, whilst I am here."

This was a shrewd, but uncharitable, speech of hers. Dr. Bailey was not such a villain as that.

He was a less depraved, and more dangerous animal: he was a fool.

The farrago he had administered would have done an excited maniac no good, of course, but no great harm. It was dangerous to a sane man: and Alfred to the naked eye was a sane man. But then Bailey had no naked eye left: he had been twenty years an M. D. The certificates of Wycherley and Speers were the green spectacles he wore—very green ones—whenever he looked at Alfred Hardie.

Perhaps in time he will forget those certificates, and, on his spectacles dropping off, he will see Alfred is sane. If he does, he will publish him as one of his most remarkable cures.

Meanwhile the whole treatment of this ill-starred young gentleman gravitated towards insanity. The inner mind was exasperated by barefaced injustice and oppression; above all, by his letters being stopped; for that convinced him both Baker and Bailey, with their see-saw evasions, knew he was sane, and dreaded a visit from honest, understanding men: and the mind's external organ, the brain, which an asylum professes to soothe, was steadily undermined by artificial sleeplessness. A man can't sleep in irons till he is used to them and, when Alfred was relieved of these, his sleep was still driven away by biting insects and barking dogs, two opiates provided in many of these placid Retreats, with a view to the permanence rather than the comfort of the lodgers.

On the eighth day Alfred succeeded at last in an object he had steadily pursued for some time: he caught the two see-saw humbugs together.

"Now," said he, "you say he intercepts my letters; and he says it is you who do it. Which is the truth?"

They were staggered, and he followed up his advantage: "Look me in the face, gentlemen," said he. "Can you pretend you do not know I am sane? Ah, you turn your heads away. You can only tell this bare-faced lie behind my back. Do you believe in God, and in a judgment to come? Then, if you cannot release me, at least don't be such scoundrels as to stop my letters, and so swindle me out of a fair trial, an open, public trial."

The doctor parried with a formula. "Publicity would be the greatest misfortune could befall you. Pray be calm."

Now, an asylum is a place not entirely exempt from prejudices: and one of them is, that any sort of appeal to God Almighty is a sign or else forerunner of maniacal excitement.

These philosophers forget that by stopping letters, evading public trials, and, in a word, cutting off all appeals to human justice, they compel the patient to turn his despairing eyes, and lift his despairing voice to Him, whose eye alone can ever really penetrate these dark abodes.

However, the patient who appealed to God above a whisper in Silverton Grove House used to get soothed directly. And the tranquillising influences employed were morphia, croton oil, or a blister.

The keeper came to Alfred in his room. "Doctor has ordered a blister."

"What for? Send for him directly."

"He is gone."

This way of ordering torture, and then coolly going, irritated Alfred beyond endurance. Though he knew he should soon be powerless, he showed fight; made his mark as usual on a couple of his zealous attendants; but not having room to work in was soon overpowered, hobbled, and handcuffed: then they cut off his hair, and put a large blister on the top of his head.

The obstinate brute declined to go mad. They began to respect him for this tenacity of purpose: a decent bedroom was allotted him; his portmanteau and bag were brought him, and he was let walk every day on the lawn with a keeper; only there were no ladders left about, and the trap-door was locked, i.e. the iron gate.

On one of these occasions he heard the gatekeeper whistle three times consecutively; his attendant followed suit, and hurried Alfred into the house, which soon rang with treble signals.

"What is it?" inquired Alfred.

"The visiting justices are in sight: go into your room, please."

"Yes, I'll go," said Alfred, affecting cheerful compliance, and the man ran off.

The whole house was in a furious bustle. All the hobbles, and chains, and instruments of restraint were hastily collected and bundled out of sight, and clean sheets were being put on many a filthy bed whose occupant had never slept in sheets since he came there, when two justices arrived and were shown into the drawing-room.

During the few minutes they were detained there by Mrs. Archbold, who was mistress of her whole business, quite a new face was put on everything and everybody; ancient cobwebs fell; soap and water explored unwonted territories: the harshest attendants began practising pleasant looks and kind words on the patients, to get into the way of it, so that it might not come too abrupt and startle the patients visibly under the visitors' eyes: something like actors working up a factitious sentiment at the wing for the public display, or like a racehorse's preliminary canter. Alfred's heart beat with joy inexpressible. He had only to keep calm, and this was his last day at Silverton Grove. The first thing he did was to make a careful toilet.

The stinginess of relations, and the greed of madhouse proprietors, make many a patient look ten times madder than he is, by means of dress. Clothes wear out in an asylum, and are not always taken off, though Agriculture has long and justly claimed them for her own. And when it is no longer possible to refuse the Reverend Mad Tom or Mrs. Crazy Jane some new raiment, then consanguineous munificence does not go to Pool or Elise, but oftener to paternal or maternal wardrobes, and even to the ancestral chest, the old oak one, singing:

"Poor things, they are out of the world: what need for them to be in the fashion!" (Formula.)

This arrangement keeps the bump of self-esteem down, especially in women, and so co-operates with many other little arrangements to perpetuate the lodger.

Silverton Grove in particular was supplied with the grotesque in dress from an inexhaustible source. Whenever money was sent Baker to buy a patient a suit, he went from his lunacy shop to his pawnbroker's, dived headlong into unredeemed pledges, dressed his patient as gentlemen are dressed to reside in cherry-trees; and pocketed five hundred per cent. on the double transaction. Now Alfred had already observed that many of the patients looked madder than they were—thanks to short trousers and petticoats, holey gloves, ear-cutting shirt-collars, frilled bosoms, shoes made for and declined by the very infantry: coats short in the waist and long in the sleeves, coalscuttle bonnets, and grand-maternal caps. So he made his toilet with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came: a portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey; the latter had arrived post haste, and Baker had been sent for. Alfred came out, touched his hat respectfully, and begged a private interview with the magistrate. The old gentleman bowed politely, for Alfred's dress, address, and countenance, left no suspicion of insanity possible in an unprejudiced mind.

But the doctor whispered in his ear, "Take care, sir. Dangerous!"

Now this is one of the most effective of the formulae in a private asylum. How can an inexperienced stranger know for certain that such a statement is a falsehood? And even the just do not love justice—to others—quite so well as they love their own skins. So Squire Tollett very naturally declined a private interview with Alfred; and even drew back a step, and felt uneasy at being so near him. Alfred implored him not to be imposed upon. "An honest man does not whisper," said he. "Do not let him poison your mind against me; on my honour, I am as sane as you are, and he knows it. Pray, pray use your own eyes and ears, sir, and give yourself a chance of discovering the truth in this stronghold of lies."

"Don't excite yourself, Mr. Hardie," put in the doctor parentally. (Formula.)

"Don't you interrupt me, doctor; I am as calm as you are. Calmer; for, see, you are pale at this moment; that is with fear that your wickedness in detaining a sane man here is going to be exposed. Oh, sir," said he, turning to the justice, "fear no violence from me, not even angry words; my misery is too deep for irritation, or excitement. I am an Oxford man, sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. But, unfortunately for me, my mother left me ten thousand pounds, and a heart. I love a lady whose name I will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. My father is the well-known banker, bankrupt, and cheat, of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now covets his neighbour's and his son's. He had me entrapped here on my wedding-day, to get hold of my money, and rob me of her I love. I appeal to you, sir, to discharge me, or, if you have not so much confidence in your own judgment as to do that, then I demand a commission of lunacy, and a public inquiry."

Dr. Bailey said, "That would be a most undesirable exposure, both to yourself and your friends." (Formula.)

"It is only the guilty who fear the light, sir," was the prompt reply.

Mr. Tollett said he thought the patient had a legal right to a commission of lunacy if there was property, and he took note of the application. He then asked Alfred if he had any complaint to make of the food, the beds, or the attendants.

"Sir," said Alfred, "I leave those complaints to the insane ones: with me the gigantic wrong drives out the petty worries. I cannot feel my stings for my deep wound."

"Oh, then, you admit you are not treated unkindly here?"

I admit nothing of the kind, sir. I merely decline to encumber your memory with petty injuries, when you are good enough to inquire into a monstrous one."

"Now that is very sensible and considerate," said Mr. Tollett. " I will see you, sir, again before we leave."

With this promise Alfred was obliged to be content. He retired respectfully, and the justice said, "He seems as sane as I am." The doctor smiled. The justice observed it, and not aware that this smile was a formula, as much so as a prizefighter's or a ballet-dancer's, began to doubt a little: He reflected a moment, then asked who had signed the certificates.

"Dr. Wycherley for one."

"Dr. Wycherley? that is a great authority."

"One of the greatest in the country, sir."

"Oh, then one would think he must be more or less deranged."

"Dangerously so at times. But in his lucid intervals you never saw a more quiet gentlemanly creature." (Formula.)

"How sad!"

"Very. He is my most interesting patient (formula), though terribly violent at times. Would you like to see the medical journal about him?"

"Yes; by-and-bye."

The inspection then continued: the inspector admired the clean sheets that covered the beds, all of them dirty, some filthy: and asked the more reasonable patients to speak freely and say if they had any complaint to make. This question being, with the usual sagacity of public inspectors, put in the presence of Cooper and the doctor, who stuck to Tollett like wax, the mad people all declared they were very kindly treated. The reason they were so unanimous was this: they knew by experience that, if they told the truth, the justices could not at once remedy their discomforts, whereas the keepers, the very moment the justices left the house, would knock them down, beat them, shake them, strait-jacket them, and starve them: and the doctor, less merciful, would doctor them. So they shook in their shoes, and vowed they were very comfortable in Silverton Grove.

Thus, in later days, certain Commissioners of Lunacy inspecting Accomb House, extracted nothing from Mrs. Turner, but that she was happy and comfortable under the benignant sway of Metcalf the mild—there present. It was only by a miracle the public learned the truth, and miracles are rare.

Meantime, Alfred had a misgiving. The plausible doctor had now Squire Tollett's ear, and Tollett was old, and something about him reminded the Oxonian of a trait his friend Horace had detected in old age:

"Vel quod res omnes timide gelide que ministrat. Dilator, spe longus, iners," &c.

He knew there was another justice in the house, but he knew also he should not be allowed to get speech with him, if by cunning or force it could be prevented. He kept his door ajar. Presently Nurse Hannah came bustling along with an apronful of things, and let herself into a vacant room hard by. This Hannah was a young woman with a pretty and rather babyish face, diversified by a thick biceps muscle in her arm that a blacksmith need not have blushed for. And I suspect it was this masculine charm, and not her feminine features, that had won her the confidence of Baker and Co., and the respect of his female patients: big or little, excited or not excited, there was not one of them this bicipital baby-face could not pin by the wrists, and twist her helpless into a strong-room, or handcuff her unaided in a moment; and she did it, too, on slight provocation. Nurse Hannah seldom came into Alfred's part of the house; but when she did meet him, she generally gave him a kind look in passing; and he had resolved to speak to her, and try if he could touch her conscience, or move her pity. He saw what she was at, but was too politic to detect her openly and irritate her. He drew back a step, and said softly, "Nurse Hannah! Are you there?"

"Yes, I am here," said she sharply, and came out of the room hastily, and shut it. "What do you want, sir?"

Alfred clasped his hands together. "If you are a woman, have pity on me."

She was taken by surprise. "What can I do?" said she in some agitation. "I am only a servant."

"At least tell me where I can find the Visiting Justice, before the keepers stop me."

"Hush! Speak lower," said Hannah. "You have complained to one, haven't you?"

"Yes, but he seems a feeble old fogy. Where is the other? Oh, pray tell me?"

"I mustn't: I mustn't In the noisy ward. There, run."

And run he did.

Alfred was lucky enough to get safe into the noisy ward without being intercepted. And then he encountered a sunburnt gentleman, under thirty, in a riding-coat, with a hunting-whip in his hand: it was Mr. Vane, a Tory squire and large landholder in the county.

Now, as Alfred entered at one door, Baker himself came in at the other, and they nearly met at Vane. But Alfred saluted him first, and begged respectfully for an interview.

"Certainly, sir," said Mr. Vane.

"Take care, sir; he is dangerous," whispered Baker. Instantly Mr. Vane's countenance changed. But this time Alfred overheard the formula, and said quietly: "Don't believe him, sir. I am not dangerous; I am as sane as any man in England. Pray examine me, and judge for yourself."

"Ah, that is his delusion," said Baker. "Come, Mr. Hardie, I allow you great liberties, but you abuse them. You really must not monopolise his Worship with your fancies. Consider, sir, you are not the only patient he has to examine."

Alfred's heart sank: he turned a look of silent agony on Mr. Vane.

Mr. Vane, either touched by that look, or irritated by Baker's pragmatical interference, or perhaps both, looked that person coolly in the face, and said sternly: "Be silent, sir; and let the gentleman speak to me."

CHAPTER XXXIII

ALFRED thus encouraged told his story with forced calmness, and without a word too much. Indeed, so clear and telling was the narrative, and the logic so close, that incoherent patients one or two stole up and listened with wonder and a certain dreamy complacency; the bulk, however, held aloof apathetic: inextricably wrapped in fictitious Autobiography.

His story told, Alfred offered the Dodds in evidence that the fourteen thousand pounds was no illusion, and referred to his sister and several friends as witnesses to his sanity, and said the letters he wrote were all stopped in the asylum: and why? That no honest man or woman might know where he was.

He ended by convincing Mr. Vane he was a sane and injured man, and his father a dark designing person.

Mr. Vane asked him whether he had any other revelations to make. Alfred replied, "Not on my own account, but for the sake of those afflicted persons who are here for life. Well, the beds want repaving; the vermin thinning; the instruments of torture want abolishing, instead of hiding for an hour or two when you happen to come: what do the patients gain by that? The madmen dare not complain to you, sir, because the last time one did complain to the justices (it was Mr. Petworth), they had no sooner passed through the iron gate, than Cooper made an example of him; felled him with his fist, and walked up and down him on his knees, crying, 'I'll teach you to complain to the justices.' But one or two gentlemanly madmen, who soon found out that I am not one of them, have complained to me that the attendants wash them too much like Hansom cabs, strip them naked, and mop them on the flag-stones, then fling on their clothes without drying them. They say, too, that the meat is tough and often putrid, the bread stale, the butter rancid, the vegetables stinted, since they can't be adulterated. And as for sleep, it is hardly known; for the beds are so short your feet stick out; insects, without a name to ears polite, but highly odoriferous and profoundly carnivorous, bite you all night; and dogs howl eternally outside; and, when exhausted nature defies even these enemies of rest, then the doctor, who seems to be in the pay of Insanity, claps you on a blister by brute force, and so drives away sleep, Insanity's cure, or hocuses you by brute force as he did me, and so steals your sleep, and tries to steal your reason, with his opium, henbane, morphia, and other tremendous brain-stealers. With such a potion, sir, administered by violence, he gave me in one night a bursting fever, headache, loss of sight, and bleeding at the nose; as Mrs. Archbold will tell you. Oh, look into these things, sir, in pity to those whom Heaven has afflicted: to me they are but strokes with a feather. I am a sane man torn from love and happiness, and confined among the mad; discomfort is nothing to me; comfort is nothing; you can do nothing for me but restore me to my dignity as a man, my liberty as a Briton, and the rights as a citizen I have been swindled out of by a fraudulent bankrupt and his tools, two venal doctors, who never saw me but for one five minutes, but came to me ready bribed at a guinea apiece, and so signed away my wits behind my back."

"Now, Mr. Baker," said Vane, "what do you say to all this?"

Baker smiled with admirable composure, and replied with crafty moderation, "He is a gentleman, and believes every word he says; but it is all his delusions. Why, to begin, sir, his father has nothing to do with putting him in here; nothing on earth. (Alfred started; then smiled incredulous.) And, in the next place, there are no instruments of restraint here, but two pair of handcuffs and two strait jackets, and these never hardly used; we trust to the padded rooms, you know. And, sir," said he, getting warm, which instantly affected his pronunciations "if there's a hinsect in the ouse, I'll heat im."

Delusion is a big word, especially in a mad-house; it overpowers a visitor's understanding. Mr. Vane was staggered. Alfred, whose eager eyes were never off his face, saw this with dismay, and feeling that, if he failed in the simpler matter, he should be sure to fail in establishing his sanity, he said with inward anxiety, though with outward calmness, "Suppose we test these delusions?"

"With all my heart," said Vane.

Baker's countenance fell.

"Begin with the instruments of restraint. Find me them."

Baker's countenance brightened up; he had no fear of their being found.

"I will," said Alfred: "please to follow me."

Baker grinned with anticipated triumph.

Alfred led the way to a bedroom near his own; and asked Mr. Baker to unlock it. Baker had not the key; no more had Cooper. The latter was sent for it; he returned, saying the key was mislaid.

"That I expected," said Alfred. "Send for the kitchen poker, sir: I'll soon unlock it."

"Fetch the kitchen poker," said Vane.

"Good gracious! sir," said Cooper; "he only wants that to knock all our brains out. You have no idea of his strength and ferocity."

"Well lied, Cooper," said Alfred ironically.

"Fetch me the poker," said Vane.

Cooper went for it, and came back with the key instead.

The door was opened, and they all entered. Alfred looked under the bed. The rest stood round it.

There was nothing to be seen but a year's dust

Alfred was dumb-foundered, and a cold perspiration began to gather on his brow. He saw at once a false move would be fatal to him.

"Well, sir," said Vane grimly. "Where are they?"

Alfred caught sight of a small cupboard; he searched it; it was empty. Baker and Cooper grinned at his delusion quietly, but so that Vane might see that formula. Alfred returned to the bed and shook it. Cooper and Baker left off grinning; Alfred's quick eye caught this, and he shook the bed violently, furiously.

"Ah!" said Mr. Vane, "I hear a chink."

"It is an iron bedstead and old," suggested Baker.

Alfred tore off the bed-clothes, and then the mattress. Below the latter was a framework, and below the framework a receptacle about six inches deep, five feet long, and three broad, filled with chains, iron belts, wrist-locks, muffles, and screw-locked hobbles, &c.; a regular Inquisition.

If Baker had descended from the Kemble family, instead of rising from nothing, he could not have acted better. "Good Heavens!" cried he, "where do these come from? They must have been left here by the last proprietor."

Vane replied only by a look of contempt, and ordered Cooper to go and ask Mr. Tollett to come to him.

Alfred improved the interval. "Sir," said he, "all my delusions, fairly tested, will turn out like this."

"They shall be tested, sir; I give you my word."

Mr. Tollett came, and the two justices commenced a genuine scrutiny—their first. They went now upon the true method, in which all these dark places ought to be inspected. They did not believe a word; they suspected everything; they examined patients apart, detected cruelty, filth and vermin under philanthropic phrases and clean linen; and the upshot was they reprimanded Baker and the attendants severely, and told him his licence should never be renewed, unless at their next visit the whole asylum was reformed. They ordered all the iron body-belts, chains, leg-locks, wrist-locks, and muffs, to be put into Mr. Tollett's carriage, and concluded a long inspection by inquiring into Alfred's sanity: at this inquiry they did not allow Baker to be even present, but only Dr. Bailey.

First they read the order; and found it really was not Alfred's father who had put him into the asylum. Then they read the certificates, especially Wycherley's. It accused Alfred of headache, insomnia, nightly visions, a rooted delusion (pecuniary), a sudden aversion to an affectionate father; and at the doctor's last visit, a wild look (formula), great excitement, and threats of violence without any provocation to justify them. This overpowered the worthy squires' understandings to begin. But they proceeded to examine the three books an asylum has to keep by law: the visitor's book, the case book, and the medical journal. All these were kept with the utmost looseness in Silverton House as indeed they are in the very best of these places. However, by combining the scanty notices in the several books, they arrived at this total:

"Admitted April 11. Had a very wild look, and was much excited. Attempted suicide by throwing himself into a tank. Attacked the keepers for rescuing him, with prodigious strength and violence. Refused food."

And some days after came an entry with his initials instead of his name, which was contrary to law. "A. H. Much excited. Threats. Ordered composing draught."

And a day or two after: "A. H. Excited. Blasphemous. Ordered blister."

The first entry, however, was enough. The doctor had but seen real facts through his green spectacles, and lo! "suicide," "homicide," and "refusal of food," three cardinal points of true mania.

Mr. Vane asked Dr. Bailey whether he was better since he came.

"Oh, infinitely better," said Dr. Bailey. "We hope to cure him in a month or two."

They then sent for Mrs. Archbold, and had a long talk with her, recommending Alfred to her especial care: and, having acted on his judgment and information in the teeth of those who called him insane, turned tail at a doctor's certificate; distrusted their eyesight at an unsworn affidavit.

Alfred was packing up his things to go away; bright as a lark. Mrs. Archbold came to him, and told him she had orders to give him every comfort; and the justices hoped to liberate him at their next visit.

The poor wretch turned pale. "At their next visit!" he cried, "What, not to-day? When is their next visit?"

Mrs. Archbold hesitated: but at last she said, "Why you know; I told you; they come four times every year."

The disappointment was too bitter. The contemptible result of all his patience, self-command, and success, was too heart-breaking. He groaned aloud. "And you can come with a smile and tell me that; you cruel woman." Then he broke down altogether and burst out crying. "You were born without a heart," he sobbed.

Mrs. Archbold quivered at that. "I wish I had been," said she, in a strange, soft, moving voice; then, casting an eloquent look of reproach on him, she went away in visible agitation, and left him sobbing. Once out of his sight she rushed into another room, and there, taking no more notice of a gentle madwoman, its occupant, than of the bed or the table, she sank into a chair, and, throwing her head back with womanly abandon, hid her hand upon her bosom that heaved tempestuously.

And soon the tears trickled out of her imperious eyes, and ran unrestrained.

The mind of Edith Archbold corresponded with her powerful frame, and bushy brows. Inside this woman all was vigour: strong passions, strong good sense to check or hide them; strong will to carry them out. And between these mental forces a powerful struggle was raging. She was almost impenetrable to mere personal beauty, and inclined to despise early youth in the other sex; and six months spent with Alfred in a quiet country house would probably have left her reasonably indifferent to him. But the first day she saw him in Silverton House he broke through her guard, and pierced at once to her depths; first he terrified her by darting through the window to escape: and terror is a passion. So is pity; and never in her life had she overflowed with it as when she saw him drawn out of the tank and laid on the grass. If, after all, he was as sane as he looked, that brave high-spirited young creature, who preferred death to the touch of coarse confining hands!

No sooner had he filled her with dismay and pity, than he bounded from the ground before her eyes and fled. She screamed, and hoped he would escape; she could not help it. Next she saw him fighting alone against seven or eight, and with unheard-of prowess almost beating them. She sat at the window panting, with clenched teeth and hands, and wished him to beat, and admired him, wondered at him. He yielded, but not to them: to her. All the compliments she had ever received were tame compared with this one. It thrilled her vanity. He was like the men she had read of, and never seen: the young knights of chivalry. She glowed all over at him, and detecting herself in time was frightened. Her strong good sense warned her to beware of this youth, who was nine years her junior, yet had stirred her to all her depths in an hour; and not to see him nor think of him too much. Accordingly she kept clear of him altogether at first. Pity soon put an end to that; and she protected and advised him, but with a cold and lofty demeanour put on express. What with her kind acts and her cold manner he did not know what to make of her; and often turned puzzled earnest eyes upon her, as much as to say, Are you really my friend or not? Once she forgot herself and smiled so tenderly in answer to these imploring eyes, that his hopes rose very high indeed. He flattered himself she would let him out of the asylum before long. That was all Julia's true lover thought of.

A feeling hidden, and not suppressed, often grows fast in a vigorous nature. Mrs. Archbold's fancy for Alfred was subjected to this dangerous treatment; and it smouldered, and smouldered, till from a penchant it warmed to a fancy, from a fancy to a passion. But penchant, fancy, or passion, she hid it with such cunning and resolution, that neither Alfred nor even those of her own sex saw it; nor did a creature even suspect it, except Nurse Hannah; but her eyes were sharpened by jealousy, for that muscular young virgin was beginning to sigh for him herself, with a gentle timidity that contrasted prettily with her biceps muscle and prowess against her own sex.

Mrs. Archbold had more passion than tenderness, but what woman is not to be surprised and softened? When her young favourite, the greatest fighter she had ever seen, broke down at the end of his gallant effort and began to cry like a girl, her bowels of compassion yearned within her, and she longed to cry with him. She only saved herself from some imprudence by flight, and had her cry alone. After a flow of tears, such a woman is invincible; she treated Alfred at tea-time with remarkable coldness and reserve. This piece of acting led to unlooked-for consequences: it emboldened Cooper, who was raging against Alfred for telling the justices, but had forborne from violence for fear of getting the house into a fresh scrape. He now went to the doctor, and asked for a powerful drastic. Bailey gave him two pills, or rather boluses, containing croton oil—inter alia; for Bailey was one of the farraginous fools of the unscientific science. Armed with this weapon of destruction, Cooper entered Alfred's bedroom at night, and ordered him to take them: he refused. Cooper whistled, and four attendants came. Alfred knew he should soon be powerless. He lost no time, sprang at Cooper, and with his long arm landed a blow that knocked him against the wall, and in this position, where his body could not give, struck him again with his whole soul, and cut his cheek right open. The next minute he was pinned, handcuffed, and in a straitjacket, after crippling one assailant with a kick on the knee.

Cooper, half stunned, and bleeding like a pig, recovered himself now, and burned for revenge. He uttered a frightful oath, and jumped on Alfred as he lay bound and powerless, and gave him a lesson he never forgot.

Every art has its secrets: the attendants in such madhouses as this have been for years possessed of one they are too modest to reveal to justices, commissioners, or the public; the art of breaking a man's ribs, or breast-bone, or both, without bruising him externally. The convicts at Toulon arrive at a similar result by another branch of the art: they stuff the skin of a conger eel with powdered stone; then give the obnoxious person a sly crack with it; and a rib backbone is broken with no contusion to mark the external violence used. But Mr. Cooper and his fellows do their work with the knee-joint: it is round, and leaves no bruise. They subdue the patient by walking up and down him on their knees. If they don't jump on him, as well as promenade him, the man's spirit is often the only thing broken; if they do, the man is apt to be broken bodily as well as mentally. Thus died Mr. Sizer in 1854, and two others quite recently. And how many more God only knows: we can't count the stones at the bottom of a dark well.

Cooper then sprang furiously on Alfred, and went kneeling up and down him. Cooper was a heavy man, and his weight crushed and hurt the victim's legs; but that was a trifle: as often as he kneeled on Alfred's chest, the crushed one's whole framework seemed giving way, and he could scarcely breathe. But Brown drew Cooper back by the collar, saying, "D'ye want to kill him?" And at this moment Mrs. Archbold, who was on the watch, came in with Hannah and another nurse, and the three women at a word from their leader pinned Cooper simultaneously, and, taking him at a disadvantage, handcuffed him in a moment with a strength, sharpness, skill, and determination not to be found in women out of a madhouse—luckily for the newspaper husbands.

The other keepers looked astounded at this masterstroke; but, as no servant had ever affronted Mrs. Archbold without being dismissed directly, they took their cue and said, "We advised him, ma'am, but he would not listen to us."

"Cooper," said Mrs. Archbold as soon as she recovered her breath, "you are not fit for your place. To-morrow you go, or I go."

Cooper, cowed in a moment by the handcuffs, began to whine and say that it was all Alfred's fault.

But Mrs. Archbold was now carried away by two passions instead of one, and they were together too much for prudence. She took a handful of glossy locks out of her bosom and shook them in Cooper's face.

"You monster!" said she; "you should go, for that, if you were my own brother."

The two young nurses assented loudly, and turned and cackled at Cooper for cutting off such lovely hair.

He shrugged his shoulders at them, and said sulkily to Mrs. Archbold, "Oh, I didn't know. Of course, if you have fallen in love with him, my cake is burnt. 'Tisn't the first lunatic you have taken a fancy to."

At this brutal speech, all the more intolerable for not being quite false, Mrs. Archbold turned ashy pale, and looked round for a weapon to strike him dead; but found none so handy and so deadly as her tongue.

"It's not the first you have tried to MURDER," said she. "I know all about that death in Calton Retreat: you kept it dark before the coroner; but it is not too late, I'll open the world's eyes. I was only going to dismiss you, sir: but you have insulted me. I'll hang you in reply."

Cooper turned very pale and was silent; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

But a feeble, unexpected voice issued from the bed and murmured cheerfully, though with some difficulty, a single word—

"Justice!"

At an expression so out of place they all started with surprise.

Alfred went on: "You are putting the saddle on the wrong horse. The fault lies with those villains Baker and Bailey. Cooper is only a servant, you know, and obeys orders."

"What business had the wretch to cut your hair off?" said Mrs. Archbold, turning on Alfred with flashing eyes. Her blood once up, she was ready to quarrel even with him for taking part against himself.

"Because he was ordered to put on a blister, and hair must come off before a blister can go on," replied Alfred soberly.

"That is no excuse for him beating you and trying to break your front teeth."

She didn't mind so much about his side ribs.

"No," replied Alfred. "But I hit him first: look at the bloke's face. Dear Mrs. Archbold, you are my best friend in this horrid place, and you have beautiful eyes; and, talk of teeth, look at yours! But you haven't much sense of justice, forgive me for saying so. Put the proposition into signs; there is nothing like that for clearing away prejudice. B. and C. have a scrimmage: B begins it, C. gets the worst of it; in comes A. and turns away—C. Is that justice? It is me you ought to turn away; and I wish to Heaven you would: dear Mrs. Archbold, do pray turn me away, and keep the other blackguard."

At this extraordinary and, if I may be allowed the expression, Alfredian speech, the men first stared, and then laughed; the women smiled, and then were nearer crying than laughing.

And so it was, that justice handcuffed, straitjacketed, blistered, and impartial, sent from its bed of torture a beam through Cooper's tough hide to his inner heart. He hung his head and stepped towards Alfred: "You're what I call a man," he said. "I don't care a curse whether I stay or go, after what she has said to me. But, come what may, you're a gentleman, and one as can put hisself in a poor man's place. Why, sir, I wasn't always so rough; but I have been twenty years at it; and mad folk they'd wear the patience out of Jove, and the milk of human kindness out of saints and opossums. However, if I was to stay here all my life, instead of going to-morrow, I'd never lift hand to trouble you again, for you taking my part again yourself like that."

"I'll put that to the test," said Mrs. Archbold sharply. "Stay—on your probation. Hannah!"

And Baby-face biceps at a look took off his handcuffs; which she had been prominent in putting on.

This extraordinary scene ended in the men being dismissed, and the women remaining and going to work after their kind.

"The bed is too short for one thing," said Hannah. "Look at his poor feet sticking out and cold as a stone: just feel of them, Jane."

"No, no; murder!" cried Alfred; "that tickles."

Hannah ran for a chair, Jane for another pillow. Mrs. Archbold took off his handcuffs, and, passing her hand softly and caressingly over his head, lamented the loss of his poor hair. Amongst them they relieved him of his straitjacket, set up his head, covered his feet, and he slept like a top for want of drastics and opiates, and in spite of some brilliant charges by the Lilliputian cavalry.

After this the attendants never molested Alfred again; nor did the doctor; for Mrs. Archbold got his boluses, and sent them up to a famous analysing chemist in London, and told him she had; and said, "I'll thank you not to prescribe at random for that patient any more." He took the lady's prescription, coming as it did in a voice quietly grim, and with a momentary but wicked glance shot from under her black brows.

Alfred was all the more miserable at his confinement: his melancholy deepened now there was no fighting to excite him. A handsome bright young face clouded with sadness is very pitiable, and I need not say that both the women who had fallen in love with him had their eyes, or at least the tails of their eyes, for ever on his face. The result varied with the characters of the watchers. That young face, ever sad, made Mrs. Archbold sigh, and long to make him happy under her wing. How it wrought on the purer and more womanly Hannah will be revealed by the incident I have to relate. Alfred was sitting on a bench in the corridor bowed down by grief, and the Archbold lurking in a room hard by, feasting her eyes on him through an aperture in the door caused by the inspection plate being under repair—when an erotic maniac was driven past. She had obtained access—with marvellous cunning—to the men's side; but was now coming back with a flea in her ear, and faster than she went; being handcuffed and propelled by Baby-face biceps. On passing the disconsolate Alfred the latter eyed him coyly, gave her stray sheep a coarse push—as one pushes a thing—and laid a timid hand, gentle as falling down, upon the rougher sex. Contrast sudden and funny.

"Don't be so sad, sir," she murmured, cooing like the gentlest of doves. "I can't bear to see you look like that."

Alfred looked up, and met her full with his mournful honest eyes. "Ah, Hannah, how can I be anything but sad, imprisoned here, sane amongst the mad?"

"Well, and so am I, sir; so is Mrs. Archbold herself."

"Ay, but you have not been entrapped, imprisoned on your wedding-day. I cannot even get a word sent to my Julia, my wife that ought to be. Only think of the affront they have made me put on her I love better, ten times better, than myself. Why, she must have been waiting for me; humiliated perhaps by my absence. What will she think of me? The rogues will tell her a thousand lies: she is very high spirited, Hannah, impetuous like myself, only so gentle and so good. Oh, my angel, my angel; I shall lose you for ever."

Hannah clasped her hands, with tears in her eyes: "No, no," she cried; "it is a burning shame to part true lovers like you and her. Hush! speak low. Brown told me you are as well as he is."

"God bless him for it, then."

"You have got money, they say; try it on with Brown."

"I will. Oh you darling. What is the matter?"

For Baby-face was beginning to whimper.

"Oh, nothing, sir; only you are so glad to go; and we shall be sorry to part with you: but you won't care for that—oh! oh! oh!"

"What, do you think I shall forget you and your kindness? Never: I'll square accounts with friends and foes; not one shall be forgotten."

"Don't offer me any of your money," sobbed Hannah, "for I wouldn't touch it. Good-bye," said she: "I shan't have as much as a kiss for it I'll be bound: good-bye," said she again, and never moved.

"Oh, won't you, though," cried Alfred gaily. "What is that? and that? and that? Now, what on earth are you crying about? Dry your tears, you dear good-hearted girl: no, I'll dry them for you."

He took out a white handkerchief and dried her cheeks gently for her, and gave her a parting kiss. But the Archbold's patience was exhausted: a door opened nearly opposite, and there she stood yellow with jealousy and sombre as night with her ebon brows. At sight of this lowering figure Hannah uttered a squawk, and fled with cheeks red as fire. Alfred, not aware of Mrs. Archbold's smouldering passion, and little dreaming that jealous anguish and rage stood incarnate before him, burst out laughing like a mischievous boy! On this she swept upon him, and took him by both shoulders, and awed him with her lowering brows close to his. "You ungrateful wretch," she said violently, and panted.

His colour rose. "Ungrateful? That I am not madam. Why do you call me so?"

"You are—you are. What have I done to you that you run from me to the very servants? However, she shall be packed off this very night, and you to thank for it."

This was the way to wound the generous youth. "Now it is you that are ungenerous," he said. "What harm has the poor girl done? She had a virtuous movement and pitied me for the heartless fraud I suffer by; that is all. Pray, do you never pity me?"

"Was it this virtuous movement set her kissing you?" said the Archbold, clenching her teeth as if the word stung her, like the sight.

"She didn't, now," said Alfred; "it was I kissed her."

"And yet you pretend to love your Julia so truly?"

"This is no place for that sacred name, madam. But be sure I have no secrets from her, and kiss nobody she would not kiss herself."

"She must be a very accommodating young lady."

At this insult Alfred rose pale with anger, and was about to defy his monitor mortally; but the quick-witted woman saw and disarmed him. In one moment, before ever he could speak, she was a transformed creature, a penitent; she put her hands together supplicatingly, and murmured—

"I didn't mean it; I respect her; and your love for her; forgive me, Alfred: I am so unhappy, oh forgive me.

And behold she held his hand between her soft, burning palms, and her proud head sank languidly on his shoulder, and the inevitable tears ran gently.

Morals apart, it was glorious love-making.

"Bother the woman," thought Alfred.

"Promise me not to do it again," she murmured, "and the girl shall stay."

"Oh, lord, yes, I promise; though I can't see what it matters to you."

"Not much, cruel boy, alas! but it matters to her; for——" She kissed Alfred's hand gently, and rose to her feet and moved away; but at the second step turned her head sudden as a bird and finished her sentence—"if you kiss her before me, I shall kill her before you."

Here was a fresh complication! The men had left off blistering, torturing, and bullying him; but his guardian angels, the women, were turning up their sleeves to pull caps over him, and plenty of the random scratches would fall on him. If anything could have made him pine more to be out of the horrid place, this voluptuous prospect would. He hunted everywhere for Brown. But he was away the day with a patient. At night he lay awake for a long time, thinking how he should open the negotiation. He shrank from it. He felt a delicacy about bribing Beelzebub's servant to betray him.

As Hannah had originated the idea, he thought he might very well ask her to do the dirty work of bribing Brown, and he would pay her for it; only in money, not kisses. With this resolution he sank to sleep, and his spirit broke prison: he stood with Julia before the altar, and the priest made them one. Then the church and the company and daylight disappeared, and her own sweet low moving voice came thrilling, "My own, own, own," she murmured. "I love you ten times more for all you have endured for me;" and with this her sweet lips settled on his like the dew.

Impartial sleep flies at the steps of the scaffold and the gate of Elysium: so Alfred awoke at the above; but doubted whether he was quite awake; for two velvet lips seemed to be still touching his. He stirred, and somebody was gone like the wind, with a rustle of flying petticoats, and his door shut in a moment. It closed with a catch-lock; this dastardly vision had opened it with her key, and left it open to make good her retreat if he should awake. Alfred sat up in bed indignant, and somewhat fluttered. "Confound her impudence," said he. But there was no help for it; he grinned and bore it, as he had the blisters, and boluses, &c., rolled the clothes round his shoulders, and off to the sleep of the just again. Not so the passionate hypocrite, who, maddened by a paroxysm of jealousy, had taken this cowardly advantage of a prisoner. She had sucked fresh poison from those honest lips, and filled her veins with molten fire. She tossed and turned the livelong night in a high fever of passion, nor were the cold chills wanting of shame and fear at what she had done.

In the morning, Alfred remembered this substantial vision, and determined to find out which of those two it was. "I shall know by her looks," said he; "she won't be able to meet my eye. Well, the first he saw was Mrs. Archbold. She met his eye full with a mild and pensive dignity. "Come, it is not you," thought Alfred. Presently he fell in with Hannah. She wore a serene, infantine face, the picture of unobtrusive modesty. Alfred was dumbfoundered. "It's not this one, either," said he. "But then, it must. Confound her impudence for looking so modest." However, he did not speak to her; he was looking out for a face that interested him far more: the weather-beaten countenance of Giles Brown. He saw him once or twice, but could not get him alone till the afternoon. He invited him into his room: and when he got him there, lost no time. "Just look me in the face, Brown," said he quietly. Brown looked him in the face.

"Now, sir, am I mad or sane?"

Brown turned his head away. Alfred laughed. "No, no, none of your tricks, old fellow: look me in the face while you answer."

The man coloured. "I can't look a gentleman like you in the face, and tell him he is mad."

"I should think not. Well, now; what shall I give you to help me escape?"

"Hush! don't mention that, sir; it's as much as my place is worth even to listen to you."

"Well! then I must give you as much as your place is worth. Please to calculate that, and name the figure."

"My place! I wouldn't lose it for a hundred pounds."

"Exactly. Then I'll give you a hundred guineas."

"And how am I to get my money, sir?"

"The first time you are out, come to Albion Villa, in Barkington, and I'll have it all ready for you."

"And suppose you were to say, 'No: you didn't ought ever to have been confined'?"

"I must trouble you to look in my face again, Mr. Brown. Now, do you see treason, bad faith, avarice, ingratitude, rascality in it?"

"Not a grain of 'em," said Brown, with an accent of conviction. "Well, now, I'll tell you the truth; I can read a gent by this time: and I'm no more afeared for the money than if I had it in my hand. But ye see, my stomach won't let me do it."

This was a sad disappointment; so sudden, too. " Your stomach?" said Alfred ruefully. "'What do you mean?"

"Ay, my stomach. Wouldn't yourstomach rise against serving a man that had done you the worst turn one man can do another—been and robbed you of your sweetheart?"

Alfred stared with amazement.

Brown continued, and now with some emotion: "Hannah Blake and I were very good friends till you came, and I was thinking of asking her to name the day; but now she won't look at me. 'Don't come teasing me,' says she, 'I am meat for your master.' It's you that have turned the girl's head, sir."

"Bother the women!" said Alfred cordially. "Oh, what plagues they are! And how unjust you are, to spite me for the fault of another. Can I help the fools from spooning upon me?" He reflected a moment then burst out: "Brown, you are a duffer, a regular duffer. What, don't you see your game is to get me out of the place? If you do, in forty-eight hours I shall be married to my Julia, and that dumpling-faced girl will be cured. But if you keep me here, by Gee, sir, I'll make hot love to your Hannah, boiling hot, hotter than ever was—out of the isles of Greece. Oh do help me out, and I'll give you the hundred pounds, and I'll give Hannah another hundred pounds, on condition she marries you: and, if she won't marry you, she shan't have a farthing, only a good hiding."

Brown was overpowered by his maniac's logic. "You have a head," said he; "there's my hand; I'll go in, if I die for it."

They now put their heads together over the means. Brown's plan was to wait, and wait, for an opportunity. Alfred's was to make one this very night.

"But how can I?" said Brown. "I shan't have the key of your room. I am not on watch in your part to-night."

"Borrow Hannah's."

"Hannah's? She has got no key of the male patients rooms."

"Oh yes, she has; of mine, at all events."

"What makes you think that, sir?" said Brown suspiciously.

Alfred didn't know what to say: he could not tell him why he felt sure she had a key.

"Just go quietly and ask her for it" said he: "don't tell her I sent you, now."

Brown obeyed, and returned in half-an-hour with the key of the vacant bedroom, where the hobbles and chains were hidden on the arrival of the justices.

She tells me this is the only key she has of any room in this corridor. But dear heart," said Brown, "how quicksighted the women are. She said, says she, 'If it is to bring sorrowful true lovers together again, Giles, or the like of that I'll try and get the key you want off Mrs. Archbold's bunch, though I get the sack for it,' says she. 'I know she heaves them in the parlour at night' says Hannah. She is a trump, you must allow."

Alfred coloured up. He suspected he had been unjust.

"She is a good, kind, single-hearted girl," said he; "and neither of you shall find me ungrateful."

It was evident by the alacrity Brown now showed, that he had got his orders from Hannah.

It was agreed that Alfred should be down at night in his clothes, ready to seize the right moment; that Hannah should get the key, and watch the coast clear, and let him out into the corridor; and Brown get him down by a back stairs, and out on the lawn, There he would find a ladder close by the wall, and his own arms and legs must do the rest.

And now Alfred was a changed creature: his eye sparkled; he walked on air, and already sniffed the air of liberty.

After tea Brown brought in some newspapers, and made Alfred a signal, previously agreed on, that the ladder was under the east wall. He went to bed early, put on his tweed shooting-jacket and trousers, and lay listening to the clock with beating heart.

At first, feet passed to and fro from time to time. These became less frequent as the night wore on.

Presently a light foot passed, stopped at the door, and made a sharp scratch on it with some metal instrument.

It was the key. The time was not ripe to use it, but good Hannah had taken this way to let him know she had got it.

This little scratch outside his door, oh it made his heart leap and thrill. One great difficulty was overcome. He waited, and waited, but with glowing, hopeful heart; and at last a foot came swiftly, the key turned, and Hannah opened the door. She had a bull's-eye lantern.

"Take your shoes in your hand," she whispered, "and follow me."

He followed her. She led him in and out, to the door of the public room belonging to the second-class patients. Then she drew her whistle, and breathed very softly. Brown answered as softly from the other end. He was waiting at the opposite door.

"All right," said she; "the dangerous part is over." She put a key into the door, and said very softly, "Good-bye."

"God bless you, Hannah," said Alfred, with deep emotion. "God in heaven bless you for this!"

"He will, He does," said the single-hearted girl, and put her other hand to her breast with a great gulp. She opened the door slowly. "Good-bye, dear. I shall never see you again."

And so these two parted; for Hannah could not bear the sight of Giles at that moment. He was welcome to Alfred, though, most welcome, and conducted him by devious ways to the kitchen, lantern in hand.

He opened the kitchen door softly, and saw two burly strangers seated at the table, eating with all their souls, and Mrs. Archbold standing before the fire, but looking towards him: for she had heard his footsteps ever so far off.

The men looked up, and saw Alfred. They rose to their feet, and said, "This will be the gentleman, madam?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Archbold.

"Your servant, sir," said the man very civilly. "If you are ready we are."



CHAPTER XXXIV

SAMPSON'S placard was on Barkington walls, and inside the asylum Alfred was softening hearts and buying consciences, as related; so, in fact, he had two strings to his bow.

But mark how strangely things turn; these two strings got entangled. His father, alarmed by the placard, had called at the pawnbroker's shop, and told him he must move Alfred directly to a London asylum. Baker raised objections; Mr. Hardie crushed them with his purse, i.e., with his son's and victim's sweetheart's father's money. So then, as Baker after all could not resist the project, but only postpone it for a day or two, he preferred to take a handsome present, and cooperate. He even connived at Mr. Hardie's signing the requisite name to the new order. This the giddy world calls forgery; but, in these calm retreats, far from the public's inquisitive eye, it goes for nothing. Why, Mrs. Archbold had signed Baker's name and Dr. Bailey's more than a hundred several times to orders, statements, and certificates; depriving Englishmen of their liberty and their property with a gesture of her taper fingers; and venting the conventional terms, "Aberration," "Exaltation," "Depression," "Debility," "Paralysis," "Excitable," "Abnormal," as boldly and blindly as any male starling in the flock.

On the very night, then, of Alfred's projected escape, two keepers came down from Dr. Wycherley's asylum to Silverton station: Baker met them and drove them to Silverton House in his dog-cart. They were to take Alfred up by the night train; and, when he came into the kitchen with Brown, they suspected nothing, nor did Baker or Cooper, who presently emerged from the back kitchen. Brown saw, and recovered his wits partially. "Shall I go for his portmanteau, sir?" stammered he, making a shrewd and fortunate guess at what was up. Baker assented; and soon after went out to get the horse harnessed. On this Mrs. Archbold, pale, sorrowful, and silent hitherto, beckoned Alfred into the back kitchen, and there gave him his watch and his loose money. "I took care of them for you," said she; "for the like have often been stolen in this place. Put the money in your shoes; it may be useful to you."

He thanked her somewhat sullenly; for his disappointment was so deep and bitter that small kindnesses almost irritated him.

She sighed. "It is cruel to be angry with me," she said: "I am not the cause of this; it is a heavier blow to me than to you. Sooner or later you will be free—and then you will not waste a thought on me, I fear—but I must remain in this odious prison without your eyes and your smile to lighten me, yet unable to forget you. Oh, Alfred, for mercy's sake, whisper me one kind word at parting; give me one kind look to remember and dote upon."

She put out both hands as eloquently as she spoke, and overpowered his prudence so far that he took her offered hands—they were as cold now as they were burning hot the last time—and pressed them, and said—

"I shall be grateful to you while I live."

The passionate woman snatched her hands away. "Gratitude is too cold for me," she cried; "I scorn even yours. Love me or hate me."

He made no reply. And so they parted.

"Will you pledge your honour to make no attempt at escape on the road?" asked the pawnbroker on his return.

"I'll see you d——d first," replied the prisoner.

On this he was handcuffed, and helped into the dog-cart.

They went up to town by the midnight train; but, to Alfred's astonishment and delight did not take a carriage to themselves.

However, station after station was passed, and nobody came into their carriage. At last they stopped at a larger station, and a good many people were on the platform: Alfred took this opportunity and appealed in gentle but moving terms to the first good and intelligent face he saw. "Sir," said he, "I implore your assistance."

The gentleman turned courteously to him. The keepers, to Alfred's surprise, did not interrupt.

"I am the victim of a conspiracy, sir; they pretend I am mad: and are taking me by force to a madhouse, a living tomb."

"You certainly don't appear to be mad," said the gentleman.

The head keeper instantly showed him the order and a copy of the certificates.

"Don't look at them, sir," cried Alfred; "they are signed by men who were bribed to sign them. For pity's sake, sir, judge for yourself. Test my memory, my judgment, by any question you please. Use your own good sense; don't let those venal rogues judge for you."

The gentleman turned cold directly.

"I could not take on me to interfere," said he. The unsworn affidavits had overpowered his senses. He retired with a frigid inclination. Alfred wrung his handcuffed hands, and the connecting chain rattled.

The men never complained: his conduct was natural; and they knew their strength. At the next station he tested a snob's humanity instead of a gentleman's. He had heard they were more tender-hearted. The answer was a broad grin, repeated at intervals.

Being called mad was pretty much the same thing as being mad to a mind of this class: and Alfred had admitted he was called mad.

At the next station he implored a silvery-haired old gentleman. Old age, he had heard, has known griefs, and learned pity.

The keeper showed the certificates.

"Ah!" said Senex; "poor young man. Now don't agitate yourself. It is all for your good. Pray go quietly. Very painful, very painful." And he hobbled away as fast as he could. It is by shirking the painful some live to be silvery old."

Next he tried a policeman. Bobby listened to him erect as a dart.

The certificates were shown him.

He eyed them and said sharply, "All right." Nor could Alfred's entreaties and appeals to common sense attract a word or even a look from him. Alfred cried "Help! murder! If you are Englishmen, if you are Christians, help me."

This soon drew a crowd round him, listening to his fiery tale of wrong, and crying "Shame, shame! Let him go." The keepers touched their heads, winked, and got out and showed the certificates; the crowd melted away like wax before those two suns of evidence (unsworn). The train moved on.

It was appalling. How could he ever get free? Between his mind and that of his fellows there lay a spiritual barrier more impassible than the walls of fortified cities.

Yet, at the very next station, with characteristic tenacity of purpose, he tried again; for he saw a woman standing near, a buxom country woman of forty. Then he remembered that the Naked Eye was not yet an extinct institution among her sex. He told her his tale, and implored her to use her own eyes. She seemed struck, and did eye him far more closely than the men had: and told the keepers they ought to be ashamed of themselves; he was no madman, for she had seen madmen. They showed her the certificates.

"Oh, I am no scholar!" said she contemptuously; "ye can't write my two eyes out of my head."

The keeper whipped off Alfred's cap and showed his shaven crown.

"La! so he is," said she, lowering her tone; "dear heart, what a pity. And such a pretty young gentleman." And after that all he could say only drew the dew of patient pity to her eyes.

The train went on, and left her standing there, a statue of negative clemency. Alfred lost heart. He felt how impotent he was. "I shall die in a madhouse," he said. He shivered in a corner, hating man, and doubting God.

They reached Dr. Wycherley's early in the morning. Alfred was shown into a nice clean bedroom, and asked whether he would like to bathe or sleep. "Oh, a bath," he said; and was allowed to bathe himself. He had not been long in the water when Dr. Wycherley's medical assistant tapped at the door, and then entered without further ceremony—a young gentleman with a longish down on his chin, which, initiated early in the secrets of physiology, he was too knowing to shave off and so go to meet his trouble. He came in looking like a machine, with a note-book in his hand, and stood by the bath side dictating notes to himself and jotting them down.

"Six contusions: two on the thorax, one on the abdomen, two on the thighs, one near the patella; turn, please." Alfred turned in the water. "A slight dorsal abrasion; also of the wrists; a severe excoriation of the ankle. Leg-lock, eh?"

"Yes."

"Iron leg-lock. Head shaved. Large blister. Good! Any other injuries external or internal under old system?"

"Yes, sir, confined as a madman though sane, as you, I am sure, have the sense to see."

"Oh, never mind that; we are all sane here—except the governor and I."

He whipped out, and entered the condition of the new patient's body with jealous minuteness in the case-book. As for his mind, he made no inquiry into that: indeed he was little qualified for researches of the kind.

At breakfast Alfred sat with a number of mad ladies and gentlemen, who by firmness, kindness, and routine, had been led into excellent habits: the linen was clean and the food good. He made an excellent meal, and set about escaping: with this view he explored the place. Nobody interfered with him; but plenty of eyes watched him. The house was on the non-restraint system. He soon found this system was as bad for him as it was good for the insane. Non-restraint implied a great many attendants, and constant vigilance. Moreover, the doors were strong, the windows opened only eight inches, and that from the top: their framework was iron, painted like wood, &c. It was next to impossible to get into the yard at night: and then it looked quite impossible to get any further, for the house was encompassed by high walls.

He resigned all hope of escape without connivance. He sounded a keeper; the man fired at the first word. "Come, none of that, sir; you should know better than tempt a poor man."

Alfred coloured to the eyes and sighed deeply. To have honour thrown in his face, and made the reason for not aiding him to baffle a dishonourable conspiracy! But he took the reproof so sweetly, the man was touched, and by-and-bye, seeing him deeply dejected, said good-naturedly, "Don't be down on your luck, sir. If you are really better, which you don't look to have much the matter now, why not write to the Commissioners and ask to be let out?"

"Because my letters will be intercepted."

"Ay, to your friends; but not to the Commissioners of Lunacy. Not in this house, any way."

"God bless you!" cried Alfred impetuously. "You are my benefactor; you are an honest fellow; give me your hand."

"Well, why not? Only you mustn't excite yourself. Take it easy." (Formula.)

"Oh, no cant among friends!" said Alfred: "wouldn't you be excited at the hope of getting out of prison?"

"Well, I don't know but I might. Bound I am as sick of it as you are."

Alfred got paper and sketched the letter on which so much depended. It took him six hours. He tore up two; he cooled down the third, and condensed it severely: by this means, after much thought, he produced a close and telling composition. He also weeded it of every trait and every term he had observed in mad people's talk, or the letters they had shown him. So there was no incoherency, no heat, no prolixity, no "spies," no "conspiracy," no italics. A simple, honest, earnest story, with bitter truth stamped on every line; a sober, strong appeal from a sore heart but hard head to the arbiters of his fate.

To the best of my belief no madman, however slightly touched, or however cunning, ever wrote a letter so gentle yet strong, so earnest yet calm, so short yet full, and withal so lucid and cleanly jointed as this was. And I am no contemptible judge; for I have accumulated during the last few years a large collection of letters from persons deranged in various degrees, and studied them minutely, more minutely than most Psychologicals study anything but Pounds, Shillings, and Verbiage.

The letter went, and he hoped but scarcely expected an answer by return of post. It did not come. He said to his heart, "Be still;" and waited. Another day went by; and another: he gnawed his heart and waited: he pined, and waited on. The Secret Tribunal, which was all a shallow legislature had left him, "took it easy." Secret Tribunals always do.

But, while the victim-suitor longed and pined and languished for one sound from the voice of Justice and Humanity, and while the Secret Tribunal, not being in prison itself all this time, "took it easy," events occurred at Barkington that bade fair to throw open the prison doors and bring father and son, bride and bridegroom, together again under one roof.

But at what a price.



CHAPTER XXXV

AT sight of Sampson's placard Mr. Hardie was seized with a tremor that suspended the razor in mid air: he opened the window, and glared at the doctor's notice.

At this moment he himself was a picture: not unlike those half cleaned portraits the picture restorers hang out as specimens of their art.

"Insolent interfering fool," he muttered, and began to walk the room in agitation. After a while he made a strong effort, shaved the other half, and dressed slowly, thinking hard all the time. The result was, he went out before breakfast (which he had not done for years), and visited Mr. Baker—for what purpose has been already shown.

On his return, Jane was waiting breakfast. The first word to him was: "Papa, have you seen?"

"What, the Reward!" said he indifferently. "Yes, I noticed it at our door as I came home."

Jane said it was a very improper and most indelicate interference in their affairs, and went on to say with heightened colour: "I have just told Peggy to take it down.

"Not for the world!" cried Mr. Hardie, losing all his calmness real or feigned; and he rang the bell hastily. On Peggy's appearing, he said anxiously, "I do not wish that Notice interfered with."