or mopping up the corridors of this jail."

The Duke broke down completely as he remembered his life at Dartmoor,
and Mr. Windsor looked out of the window to conceal the smile which this
picture of his venerable old friend brought to his mind. The Duke, after
vigorously rubbing his spectacles and clearing his throat, remarked:

"Excuse my stopping, Mr. Windsor, but poor Sydney's handwriting never
was good. I remember I used to tell him, when he answered my
invitations, that I should have imagined that a fly dipped in ink had
crawled over the paper." He laughed for a moment at his former
moss-encrusted and ducal witticism, and continued reading Sydney's
letter:

"However, I have become resigned. I was born under an unlucky star,
and the uninvited bad fairy at my christening, after the others had
given me beauty, riches, and wit, hopped in malevolently upon her
crutch and shouted in a disagreeable falsetto: 'He shall have all
these, to be sure, but he shall have a poor digestion and the
gout!' and whirled away on the evening wind astride her
broomstick."

Mr. Windsor laughed out loud; the Duke seemed annoyed at this, and,
begging not to be interrupted again, continued his reading in a rather
offended tone:

"Since your escape I have been under the strictest surveillance,
and as I have recovered from my gout I have been set to work upon
the ignoble task of breaking stone into small bits with a hammer. I
am known as No. 5, and am called by no other name. Imagine me, who
found it so difficult to look out for Number One, having to care
for No. 5. Indeed, I should find it well-nigh impossible were it
not for the assistance which I have from the warders and turnkeys,
who look after me with a touching solicitude. No physician could
have kept me to a regimen so suitable for my health as strictly as
they. You remember how I used to enjoy lying abed in the morning.
What a pleasure it was to wake up, to feel that the busy world was
astir around you, and lie half awake, half asleep, stretching your
toes into cool recesses of a soft, luxurious bed. But it made me
idle, very idle. But now I must be off my hard cot, be dressed and
have my cot made up by half-past five; then I breakfast off a piece
of bread, washed down with a pint of unsweetened rye coffee
innocent of milk, drunk _au naturel_ out of a tin