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“How did this get–” he began; then in a moment came to himself, and apologized for his ill manners.

“I thought every scrap of the stuff had been destroyed”, he said, and tore the page into fragments. “It is an ancient effusion, doctor–perhaps the greatest folly of my life; but it’s something of a sore subject with me, and I shall be obliged if you’ll not refer to it again.”

He courted my forgiveness so frankly that the matter passed without embarrassment; and we had our game and spent a genial evening together. But memory of the queer little scene stuck in my mind, and I could not forbear pondering it fitfully.

Surely here was a new side-light that played upon my friend and superior a little fantastically.

* * * * *

Conscious of a certain vague wonder in my mind, I was traversing the prison, lost in thought, after my sociable evening with the Governor, when the fact that dim light was issuing from the open door of cell number 49 brought me to myself and to a pause in the corridor outside.

Then I saw that something was wrong with the cell’s inmate, and that my services were required.

The medium was struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epileptic fit, and Johnson and another warder were holding him from doing an injury to himself.

The younger man welcomed my appearance with relief.

“Heerd him guggling,” he said, “and thought as something were up. You come timely, sir.”

More assistance was procured, and I ordered the prisoner’s removal to the infirmary. For a minute, before following him, I was left alone with Johnson.

“It came to a climax, then?” I said, looking the man steadily in the face.

“He may be subject to ’em, sir”, he replied, evasively.

I walked deliberately up to the closed door of the adjoining cell, which was the last on that side of the corridor. Huddled against the massive end wall, and half imbedded in it, as it seemed, it lay in a certain shadow, and bore every sign of dust and disuse. Looking closely, I saw that the trap in the door was not only firmly bolted, but screwed into its socket.

I turned and said to the warder quietly,–

“Is it long since this cell was in use?”

“You’re very fond of asking questions”, he answered doggedly.

It was evident he would baffle me by impertinence rather than yield a confidence. A queer insistence had seized me–a strange desire to know more about this mysterious chamber. But, for all my curiosity, I flushed at the man’s tone.

“You have your orders”, I said sternly, “and do well to hold by them. I doubt, nevertheless, if they include impertinence to your superiors.”

“I look straight on my duty, sir,” he said, a little abashed. “I don’t wish to give offence.”

He did not, I feel sure. He followed his instinct to throw me off the scent, that was all.

I strode off in a fume, and after attending F—- in the infirmary, went promptly to my own quarters.

I was in an odd frame of mind, and for long tramped my sitting-room to and fro, too restless to go to bed, or, as an alternative, to settle down to a book. There was a welling up in my heart of some emotion that I could neither trace nor define. It seemed neighbour to terror, neighbour to an intense fainting pity, yet was not distinctly either of these. Indeed, where was cause for one, or the subject of the other? F—- might have endured mental sufferings which it was only human to help to end, yet F—- was a swindling rogue, who, once relieved, merited no further consideration.

It was not on him my sentiments were wasted. Who, then, was responsible for them?

There is a very plain line of demarcation between the legitimate spirit of inquiry and mere apish curiosity. I could recognise it, I have no doubt, as a rule, yet in my then mood, under the influence of a kind of morbid seizure, inquisitiveness took me by the throat. I could not whistle my mind from the chase of a certain graveyard will-o’-the-wisp; and on it went stumbling and floundering through bog and mire, until it fell into a state of collapse, and was useful for nothing else.