enough to impede respiration, without the falling
water, which of necessity drives out air. In
short, a vertical box with holes all round the top.

Here the doctor ordered him a cold shower-bath
of unparalleled duration; half an hour. To
be followed by an unprecedented dose of tartar
emetic. This double-barrelled order given, the
doctor went away. (Formula.)

The water was down to forty-five degrees
Fahrenheit. Half an hour's shower-bath at that
temperature in a roomy bath would kill the
youngest and strongest man in her Majesty's
dominions.

For eight-and-twenty mortal minutes the poor
old man stood in this vertical coffin under this
cold cascade. Six hundred gallons of icy water
were in that his last hour, his last half-hour,
discharged upon his devoted head and doomed
body.

He had to be helped away from this death-
torrent he had walked into in high spirits, poor
soul.

Even this change awakened no misgivings, no
remorse; though you or I, or any man or woman
picked at hazard out of the streets, would at once
have seen that he was dying, he was duly dosed
by the fire with four spoonfuls of antimonial
tincture—to make sicker. But even the
"Destructive Art of Healing" cannot slay the slain.
The old man cheated the emetic; for, before it
could hurt him, he died of the bath; and his body
told its own sad tale; to use the words of a
medical eye-witness, it was "A PIECE OF
ALABASTER." The death-torrent had driven the
whole circulation from the surface.*
* This mode of execution is well known in the
United States. They settle refractory prisoners with
it periodically. But half an hour is not needed;
twenty minutes will do the trick. Harper's Weekly,
a year or two ago, contained an admirable woodcut
of a negro's execution by water. In this remarkable
picture you see the poor darkie seated powerless,
howling and panting his life away under the deadly
cascade : and there stands the stolid turnkey, erect,
formal, stiff as a ramrod, pulling the deadly string
with a sort of drill exercise air, and no more
compunction nor reflection, than if he himself was
a machine constructed to pull strings or triggers on his
own string being pulled by butcher or fool. A
picture well studied, and so worth study.

Mrs. Dodd was terrified, and, in spite of
Sampson's assurance that this was the asylum of all
others they would not settle another patient in
until the matter should have blown over, got
Eve Dodd to write to Dr. Wolf, and offer £300
a year if he would take David at once, and treat
him with especial consideration.

He showed this letter triumphantly to Mrs.
Archbold, and she, blinded for a moment by
feeling, dissuaded him from receiving Captain
Dodd. He stared at her. "What, turn away a
couple of thousand pounds?"

"But they will come to visit him; and perhaps
see him."

"Oh, that can be managed. You must be on
your guard: and I'll warn Rooke. I can't turn
away money—on a chance."

One day Alfred found himself locked into his
room. This was unusual: for, though they called
him a lunatic in words, they called him sane by
all their acts. He half suspected that the
Commissioners were in the house.

Had he known who really was in the house, he
would have beaten himself to pieces against the
door.

At dinner there was a new patient, very mild
and silent, with a beautiful large brown eye, like
some gentle animal's.

Alfred was very much struck with this eye,
and contrived to say a kind word to him after
dinner. Finding himself addressed by a gentleman,
the new comer handled his forelock, and
made a sea scrape, and announced himself as
William Thompson; he added with simple pride,
"Able Seaman;" then, touching his forelock
again, "Just come aboard, your honour." After
this, which came off glibly, he was anything but
communicative. However, Alfred contrived to
extract from him that he was rather glad to leave
his last ship, on account of having been
constantly impeded there in his duties by a set of
lubbers, that clung round him and kept him on
deck whenever the first lieutenant ordered him
into the top.

The very next day, pacing sadly the dull gravel
of his prison yard, Alfred heard a row; and there
was the able seaman struggling with the Robin
and two other keepers: he wanted to go to his
duties in the foretop: to wit the fork of a high
elm-tree in the court-yard. Alfred had half a
mind not to interfere. "Who cares for my
misery?" he said. But his better nature
prevailed, and he told the Robin he was sure going
up imaginary rigging would do Thompson more
good than harm.

On this the men reluctantly gave him a trial,
and he went up the tree with wonderful strength
and agility, but evident caution. Still Alfred
quaked when he crossed his thighs tight over a
limb of the tree forty feet from earth, and went
carefully and minutely through the whole process
of furling imaginary sails. However, he came
down manifestly soothed by the performance,
and, singular phenomenon, he was quite cool;
and it was the spectators on deck who
perspired.

"And what a pleasant voice he has," said
Alfred; "it quite charms my ear: it is not like
a mad voice. It is like—I'm mad myself."

"And he has got a fiddle, and plays it like a
hangel, by all accounts," said the Robin; "only
he won't touch it but when he has a mind."

At night Alfred dreamed he heard Julia's
sweet, mellow voice speaking to him; and he
looked, and lo! it was the able seaman. He could
sleep no more, but lay sighing.

Ere the able seaman had been there three days,
Mrs. Dodd came unexpectedly to see him: and
it was with the utmost difficulty Alfred was
smuggled out of the way. Mrs. Archbold saw