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“‘I am,’ says the Major.

“‘Of course,’ he answers. ‘Where would be your fame and reputation as one of the leadin’ prison reformers of the day if you had kep’ on in that riming nonsense?’

“‘Have you come for my thanks?’ says the Governor.

“‘I’ve come,’ says the grey-faced man, ‘to examine and report upon your system.’

“‘For your paper?’

“‘Possibly; but to satisfy myself of its efficacy, in the first instance.’

“‘You aren’t commissioned, then?’

“‘No; I come on my own responsibility.’

“‘Without consultation with any one?’

“‘Absolutely without. I haven’t even a wife to advise me,’ he says, with a yellow grin. What once passed for cholera had set the bile on his skin like paint, and he had caught a manner of coughing behind his hand like a toast-master.

“‘I know,’ says the Major, looking him steady in the face, ‘that what you say about me and my affairs is sure to be actuated by conscientious motives.’

“‘Ah,’ he answers. ‘You’re sore about that review still, I see.’

“‘Not at all,’ says the Major; ‘and, in proof, I invite you to be my guest for the night, and to-morrow I’ll show you over the prison and explain my system.’

“The creature cried, ‘Done!’ and they set to and discussed jail matters in great earnestness. I couldn’t guess the Governor’s intentions, but, somehow, his manner troubled me. And yet I can remember only one point of his talk. He were always dead against making public show of his birds. ‘They’re there for reformation, not ignimony,’ he’d say. Prisons in the old days were often, with the asylum and the work’us, made the holiday show-places of towns. I’ve heard of one Justice of the Peace, up North, who, to save himself trouble, used to sign a lot of blank orders for leave to view, so that applicants needn’t bother him when they wanted to go over. They’ve changed all that, and the Governor were instrumental in the change.

“‘It’s against my rule,’ he said that night, ‘to exhibit to a stranger without a Government permit; but, seein’ the place is empty, and for old remembrance’ sake, I’ll make an exception in your favour, and you shall learn all I can show you of the inside of a prison.’

“Now this was natural enough; but I was uneasy.

“He treated his guest royally; so much that when we assembled the next mornin’ for the inspection, the grey-faced man were shaky as a wet dog. But the Major were all set prim and dry, like the soldier he was.

“We went straight away down corridor B, and at cell 47 we stopped.

“‘We will begin our inspection here,’ said the Governor. ‘Johnson, open the door.’

“I had the keys of the row; fitted in the right one, and pushed open the door.

“‘After you, sir,’ said the Major; and the creature walked in, and he shut the door on him.

“I think he smelt a rat at once, for he began beating on the wood and calling out to us. But the Major only turned round to me with his face like a stone.

“‘Take that key from the bunch,’ he said, ‘and give it to me.’

“I obeyed, all in a tremble, and he took and put it in his pocket.

“‘My God, Major!’ I whispered, ‘what are you going to do with him?’

“‘Silence, sir!’ he said. ‘How dare you question your superior officer!’

“And the noise inside grew louder.

“The Governor, he listened to it a moment like music; then he unbolted and flung open the trap, and the creature’s face came at it like a wild beast’s.

“‘Sir,’ said the Major to it, ‘you can’t better understand my system than by experiencing it. What an article for your paper you could write already–almost as pungint a one as that in which you ruined the hopes and prospects of a young cockney poet.’

“The man mouthed at the bars. He was half-mad, I think, in that one minute.

“‘Let me out!’ he screamed. ‘This is a hideous joke! Let me out!’