my dear young gentleman; don't agitate yourself.
You have been sent here for your good; and
that you may be cured, and so restored to
society, and to your anxious and affectionate
friends."

"What are you talking about? what do you
mean?" cried Alfred; "are you mad?"

"No, we are not," said the short snob, with a
coarse laugh.

"Have done with this fooling, then," said
Alfred, sharply; "the person I came to see is
not here; good morning."

The short man instantly stepped to the door,
and put his back to it. The other said, calmly,
"No, Mr. Hardie, you cannot leave the house at
present."

"Can't I? Why not, pray?" said Alfred,
drawing his breath hard: and his eyes began to
glitter dangerously.

"We are responsible for your safety; we have
force at hand if necessary; pray do not compel
us to summon it."

"Why where, in God's name, am I?" said
Alfred, panting now; "is this a prison?"

"No, no," said Mrs. Archbold, soothingly;
"it is a place where you will be cured of
your headaches and your delusions, and subjected
to no unnecessary pain nor restraint."

"Oh, bother," said the short snob, brutally.
"Why make two bites of a cherry? You are in
my asylum, young gentleman, and a devilish
lucky thing for you."

At this fatal word, "asylum," Alfred uttered
a cry of horror and despair, and his eyes roved
wildly round the room in search of escape. But
the windows of the room, though outside the
house they seemed to come as low as those of the
drawing-room, were partly bricked up within,
and made just too high to be reached without a
chair. And his captors read that wild glance
directly, and the doctor whipped one chair away,
while Mrs. Archbold, with more tact, sat quietly
down on the other. They all three blew their
whistles shrilly.

Alfred uttered an oath and rushed at the door:
but heard heavy feet running on stone passages
towards the whistles, and felt he had no chance
out that way: his dilating eye fell upon the
handle of the old defunct door: he made a high
leap, came down with his left foot on its knob
of brass, and, though of course he could not
stand on it, contrived to spring from it slap at
the window—Mrs. Archbold screamed—he broke
the glass with his shoulder, and tore and kicked
the woodwork, and squeezed through on to a
stone ledge outside, and stood there bleeding
and panting, just as half a dozen keepers burst
into the room at his back. He was more than
twenty feet from the ground: to leap down was
death or mutilation; he saw the flyman driving
away. He yelled to him, "Hy! hy! stop!
stop!" The flyman stopped and looked round.
But soon as he saw who it was, he just grinned:
Alfred could see his hideous grin; and there was
the rattle of chairs, being brought to the window,
and men were mounting softly to secure him; a
coarse hand stole towards his ankle; he took a
swift step and sprang desperately on to the next
ledge:—it was an old manor-house, and these
ledges were nearly a foot broad:—from this one
he bounded to the next, and then to a third, the
last but one on this side the building; the corner
ledge was but half the size, and offered no safe
footing: but close to it he saw the outside leaves
of a tree. That tree then must grow close to
the corner; could he but get round to it he
might yet reach the ground whole. Urged by
that terror of a madhouse, which is natural to a
sane man, and in England is fed by occasional
disclosures, and the general suspicion they
excite, he leaped on to a piece of stone no bigger
than one's hat, and then whirled himself round
into the tree, all eyes to see and claws to
grasp.

It was a weeping ash: he could get hold of
nothing but soft yielding slivers, that went
through his fingers, and so down with him like a
bulrush, and souse he went with his hands full
of green leaves over head and ears into the
water of an enormous iron tank that fed the
baths.

The heavy plunge, the sudden cold water, the
instant darkness, were appalling: yet, like the
fox among the hounds, the gallant young
gentleman did not lose heart nor give tongue. He
came up gurgling and gasping, and swimming
for his life in manly silence: he swam round and
round the edge of the huge tank trying in vain
to get a hold upon its cold rusty walls. He
heard whistles and voices about; they came
faint to him where he was, but he knew they
could not be very far off.

Life is sweet. It flashed across him how, a
few years before, an university man of great
promise had perished miserably in a tank on
some Swiss mountain, a tank placed for the
comfort of travellers. He lifted his eyes to
Heaven in despair, and gave one great sob.

Then he turned upon his back and floated: but
he was obliged to paddle with his hands a little
to keep up.

A window opened a few feet above him, and a
face peered out between the bars.

Then he gave all up for lost, and looked to hear
a voice denounce him: but no, the livid face and
staring eyes at the window took no notice of him;
it was a maniac, whose eyes, bereft of reason,
conveyed no images to the sentient brain: only by
some half vegetable instinct this darkened man
was turning towards the morning sun, and staring
it full in the face; Alfred saw the rays strike and
sparkle on those glassy orbs, and fire them; yet
they never so much as winked. He was appalled
yet fascinated by this weird sight; could not
take his eyes off it, and shuddered at it in the
very water. With such creatures as that he
must be confined, or die miserably like a mouse
in a basin of water.

He hesitated between two horrors.

Presently his foot struck something, and he