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 formulæ in these quiet
retreats, which naturally impose upon greenhorns
such as Alfred certainly was, and many 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
formulæ, 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 the words 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 cowhom.

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 parricide."

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: