all that time. But, though the room rustle with phantoms and
menace stalk in the retrospect, I shall acquit my conscience of its
burden, refusing to be bullied by the counsel of a destiny that
subpoena'd me entirely against my will.

PART II

OF POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE

CONTINUED AND FINISHED AFTER A LAPSE OF FORTY YEARS

With my unexpected appointment as doctor to D---- gaol, I seemed to
have put on the seven-league boots of success. No doubt it was an
extraordinary degree of good fortune, even to one who had looked forward
with a broad view of confidence; yet, I think, perhaps on account of the
very casual nature of my promotion, I never took the post entirely
seriously.

At the same time I was fully bent on justifying my little cockney
patron's choice by a resolute subscription to his theories of prison
management.

Major James Shrike inspired me with a curious conceit of impertinent
respect. In person the very embodiment of that insignificant vulgarity,
without extenuating circumstances, which is the type in caricature of the
ultimate cockney, he possessed a force of mind and an earnestness of
purpose that absolutely redeemed him on close acquaintanceship. I found
him all he had stated himself to be, and something more.

He had a noble object always in view--the employment of sane and
humanitarian methods in the treatment of redeemable criminals, and he
strove towards it with completely untiring devotion. He was of those who
never insist beyond the limits of their own understanding, clear-sighted
in discipline, frank in relaxation, an altruist in the larger sense.

His undaunted persistence, as I learned, received ample illustration some
few years prior to my acquaintance with him, when--his system being
experimental rather than mature--a devastating endemic of typhoid in the
prison had for the time stultified his efforts. He stuck to his post; but
so virulent was the outbreak that the prison commissioners judged a
complete evacuation of the building and overhauling of the drainage to
be necessary. As a consequence, for some eighteen months--during thirteen
of which the Governor and his household remained sole inmates of the
solitary pile (so sluggishly do we redeem our condemned social
bog-lands)--the "system" stood still for lack of material to mould. At
the end of over a year of stagnation, a contract was accepted and
workmen put in, and another five months saw the prison reordered for
practical