Englisliman were confined there: knowing how
hopeless a prison must be where a beggar suffers
the same fate as a murderer, and where the
term of confinement depends on the caprice and
memory of a selfish and ignorant pasha. The
moment I had asked the question, a hearty
cheery voice called out, in a slight Irish brogue,
from the very midst of the crowd, and a bare
arm waved a signal,

"And sure I am here, your honour; only let
me come to ye."

Before the doctor could well exclaim with a
look of vexation and horror "Oh, that's Walsh!"
the voice exclaimed again:

"It's me—yes, Patrick Walsh, docthor—
unjustly detained by these thaving Turks."

"Let him out," said the doctor, with the faint
voice of a man yielding to a necessary annoyance,
and half angry with me for expressing a purposeless
and ignorant compassion.

The crowd clove asunder, and, breasting it like
an audacious swimmer, and pushing aside, in an
injured way, the sturdy black warder, stepped
Walsh out before us into the free court-yard.

His step was light and free as William Tell's
(on the stage), and his bearing innocently bold,
almost impudent. In dress, Walsh something
resembled Robinson Crusoe, for he had nothing
on his body but a tindery, ragged pair of trousers,
and a chain that he carried ingeniously, to
lighten the weight, on his right shoulder. He was
a fine-grown, athletic young man, say of five-
and-thirty, with a fresh, brown, manly, frank
face (how I dread your affectedly frank man!),
square wedge of a red beard; clear, grey, rather
staring eyes, and a cleverly put on air of a deeply
wronged being. As he loquaciously began a
history of his grievances, thrown dramatically into
the form of questions, the doctor turned away,
shrugging his shoulders: as a traveller does
when the shower sets in, fixed and pitiless.

"English subject? In course I am, and,
what is more, a Britishman born, though my
pereants is far away in the British Indies,
and one of them is in Canada in Americay.
Please the honourable gentleman (and rest his
sowl in heaven and his children's after him!), all
I want, your worship, is to know what I'm in
here for, and let me tell you there's spies,——
spies in this prison, for five of us were sent to
the galleys only last week for fighting, or some
nothing of that sort—curse them! Father in
Heaven. if—"

"Stop that villain's tongue," cried the doctor,
suddenly pushing forward to confront his
old bugbear, and disdaining all my expressions of
sympathy. "I'll tell you what you are in for,
Walsh. You have been a sailor, and you left
your vessel, as I suspect; you are also a runaway
soldier of the 93rd, from Corfu. The Turkish
authorities found you a vagabond, suspected of
thievingly loitering in the streets, and they
transported you to Malta; from Malta you ran
away, and came back here to lead the old life."

"Oh, be asy, sir! Docthor—"

"The fact is, Walsh, you gave us all up, and
determined to turn Turk, so we left you with
the Turks, and this is what they have done for
you."

"Turk! Is it me Turk? Turk is it?" screamed
Walsh, putting on such a stare of innocent surprise
and frank astonishment, that it beguiled me.
"What have I done? They've never told me.
Oh, docthor, ship me off again to join my pereants
in the British Indies, and, bedad, you'll never
set eyes on me more."

"Walsh, you are a bad fellow, and one of the
devil's own, I fear," said the doctor, as, at a
Rhadamanthus signal, the great black hustled
the runaway sailor through the portal. Talking
his loudest and impudentest, Walsh was again
lost amid the waves of scum that seethed and
tossed behind the palisading, every third man
now struggling to get to the front and present his
verbal petition. Talk of Hope never passing the
prison gate, as I foolishly said but now! Why,
Hope, I see, lives in a prison, and no winged
angel visits it half so often.

I shuddered to see in the front rank a little pale
Circassian boy about twelve years old, in for picking
pockets in the bazaars. A dreadful squinter
now calling out to us that he was a Zante man,
the doctor said to me, "That man's eye must be
punctured—he's got bad (some dog Latin
name). I will see to that. Mind, Alishan, I
do. What about that Walsh—what can be
done with him?" continued he, turning sharp
round in his kind, brusque way on Grimani.

Grimani burst out at this, worse than the
doctor, who had only pretended to be truculent.

"He is one of our 'abandoned,'" he said,
foamily; "we have given him up—we wash our
hands of him. (Here typical and suitable
gestures.) He would be a Turk—let the Turks have
him. Only last week, Father O'Mally went to
him, and told him if he got once more away,
never to return. 'Won't I, bedad?' says he;
'there are more ways than one here of getting a
livelihood.' I say, let him rot in prison, doctor."

A little, weak man's cry of "Inglis subjek!" at
this moment caught our ears, and broke off the
conversation.

"Let him out, Ali!" cried Grimani, sternly,
after his official manner.

He tripped out: a little Greek cobbler: perhaps
from Zante, or the currant-fields of melancholy
Cephalonia. He stuck himself oratorically
before us, and exclaimed, in a loud injured
voice, "Inglis subjek!"

We put to that intrepid little man of the
Zaptie, many questions, to which he thus simply
but boldly replied:

"Which of the islands do you come from?"

"Inglis subjek."

"What are you in here for, my man?"

"Inglis subjek."

"How long have you been here?"

"Inglis subjek."

"Don't you know any more English than
that?"

"Inglis subjek."

"What language do you speak?"

''Inglis subjek."