"You don't mean to say so; when was that?"

"Do you remember one Sunday that I walked
him out, to keep clear of Mrs. Dodd? Have you
not observed that I have not repeated the
experiment?"

"Yes. But I really don't know why."

"Will you promise me faithfully not to take
any notice if I tell you?"

The doctor promised.

Then she owned to him with manifest                                                                 reluctance that Alfred had taken advantage of her
kindness, her indiscretion, in walking alone with
him, and made passionate love to her. "He
offered me not a thousand pounds," said she,
"but his whole fortune, and his heart, if I would
fly with him from these odious walls; that was
his expression."

Then seeing out of a corner of her eye that the
doctor was turning almost green with jealousy,
this artist proceeded to describe the love-scene
between her and Alfred, with feigned hesitation,
yet minute detail; only she inverted the parts;
Alfred in her glowing page made the hot love;
she listened abashed, confused, and tried all she
could think of to bring him to better sentiments.
She concluded this chapter of history inverted
with a sigh, and said, "So now he hates me, I
believe, poor fellow."

"Do you regret your refusal?" asked Dr.
Wolf uneasily.

"Oh no, my dear friend. Of course my
judgment says that few women at my age and in my
position would have refused. But we poor
women seldom go by our judgments." And she
cast a tender look down at the doctor's feet.

In short, she worked on him so, that he left
Alfred at her disposition, and was no sooner
gone to his other asylum six miles off, than the
calumniated was conducted by Hayes and Rooke
through passage after passage, and door after
door, to a wing of the building connected with
the main part only by a covered way. As they
neared it, strange noises became audible. Faint
at first, they got louder and louder. Singing,
roaring, howling like wolves. Alfred's flesh
began to creep. He stopped at the covered
way: he would have fought to his last gasp
sooner than go further; but he was handcuffed.
He appealed to the keepers: but he had used
them both too roughly; they snarled and forced
him on, and shut him into a common flagged cell,
with a filthy truckle-bed in it, and all the vessels
of gutta-percha. Here he was surrounded by
the desperate order of maniacs he at present
scarcely knew but by report. Throughout that
awful night he could never close his eyes for the
horrible unearthly sounds that assailed him.
Singing, swearing, howling like wild beasts!
His right-hand neighbour reasoned high of faith
and works, ending each pious argument with a
sudden rhapsody of oaths, and never slept a
wink. His left-hand neighbour alternately sang;
and shouted, " Cain was a murderer, Cain was a
murderer;" and howled like a wolf, making
night hideous. His opposite neighbour had an
audience, and every now and then delivered in a
high nasal key, "Let us curse and pray;" varying
it sometimes thus: "Brethren, let us work
double tides." And then he would deliver a long
fervent prayer, and follow it up immediately with
a torrent of blasphemies so terrific that coming
in such a contrast they made Alfred's body wet
with perspiration to hear a poor creature so defy
his Creator. No rest, no peace. When it was
still, the place was like the grave; and ever and
anon loud sharp tremendous burst a thunderclap
of curses, and set those poor demented
creatures all yelling again for half an hour,
making the tombs ring. And at clock-like
intervals a harmless but dirty idiot, who was
allowed to roam the ward, came and chanted
through the keyhole, "Everything is nothing,
and nothing is everything."

This was the only observation he had made for
many years.

His ears assailed with horrors, of which you
have literally no conception, or shadow of a
conception, his nose poisoned with ammoniacal
vapours, and the peculiar wild-beast smell that
marks the true maniac, Alfred ran wildly about
his cell trying to stop his ears, and trembling for
his own reason. When the fearful night rolled
away, and morning broke, and he could stand on
his truckle-bed and see God's hoar-frost on a
square yard of grass level with his prison bars,
it refreshed his very soul, and affected him
almost to tears. He was then, to his surprise,
taken out, and allowed to have a warm bath and
to breakfast with David and the rest; but I
suspect it was done to watch the effect of the trial
he had been submitted to. After breakfast,
having now no place to go, he lay on a bench,
and there exhausted nature overpowered him,
and he fell fast asleep.

Mrs. Archbold came by on purpose, and saw
him. He looked very pale and peaceful. There
was a cut on his forehead due to Rooke's
knuckles. Mrs. Archbold looked down, and the
young figure and haughty face seemed so
unresisting and peaceful sad, she half relented. That
did not, however, prevent her setting her female
spies to watch him more closely than ever.

He awoke cold but refreshed, and found little
Beverley standing by him with wet eyes. Alfred
smiled and held out his hand like a captive
monarch to his faithful vassal. "They shan't
put you in the noisy ward again," sobbed Frank.
"This is your last night here."

"Hy, Frank, you rascal, my boots!" roared
Rooke from an open window.

"Coming, sir—coming!"

Alfred's next visitor was the Robin. He came
whispering, "It is all right with Garrett, sir,
and he has got a key of the back gate: but you
must get back to your old room, or we can't
work."

"Would to Heaven I could, Robin; another
night or two in the noisy ward will drive me
mad, I think."

"Well, sir, I'll tell you what you do: which