ing the stranger. In the twilight,
however, Dr. May, going up to the station to see his patient off, was
astonished to see Leonard emerge from a second-class carriage.

'You here! the last person I expected.'

'I have only been to W---- about my teeth.'

'What, have you been having tooth-ache?'

'At times, but I have had two out, so I hope there is an end of it.'

'And you never mentioned it, you Stoic!'

'It was only at night.'

'And how long has this been?'

'Since I had that cold; but it was no matter.'

'No matter, except that it kept you looking like Count Ugolino, and me
always wondering what was the matter with you. And'--detaining him for
a moment under the lights of the station--'this extraction must have
been a pretty business, to judge by your looks! What did the dentist
do to you?'

'It is not so much that' said Leonard, low and sadly; 'but I began to
have a hope, and I see it won't do.'

'What do you mean, my dear boy? what have you been doing?'

'I have been into my old cell again,' said he, under his breath; and
Dr. May, leaning on his arm, felt his nervous tremor.

'Prisoner of the Bastille, eh, Leonard!'

'I had long been thinking that I ought to go and call on Mr. Reeve and
thank him.'

'But he does not receive calls there.'

'No,' said Leonard, as if the old impulse to confidence had returned;
'but I have never been so happy since, as I was in that cell, and I
wanted to see it again. Not only for that reason,' he added, 'but
something that Mr. Seaford said brought back a remembrance of what Mr.
Wilmot told me when my life was granted--something about the whole
being preparation for future work--something that made me feel ready
for anything. It had all gone from me--all but the remembrance of the
sense of a blessed Presence and support in that condemned cell, and I
thought perhaps ten minutes in the same place would bring it back to
me.'

'And did they?'

'No, indeed. As soon as the door was locked, it all went back to July
1860, and worse. Things that were mercifully kept from me then, mere
abject terror of death, and of that kind of death--the disgrace--the
crowds--all came on me, and with them, the misery all in one of those
nine months; the loathing of those eternal narrow waved white walls,
the sense of their closing in, the sickening of their sameness, the
longing for a voice, the other horror of thinking myself guilty. The
warder said it was ten minutes--I though