purposes.

The interval of forced inactivity must have sorely tried the patience of
the Governor. Practical theorists condemned to rust too often eat out
their own hearts. Major Shrike never referred to this period, and,
indeed, laboriously snubbed any allusion to it.

He was, I have a shrewd notion, something of an officially petted
reformer. Anyhow, to his abolition of the insensate barbarism of crank
and treadmill in favour of civilizing methods no opposition was offered.
Solitary confinement--a punishment outside all nature to a gregarious
race--found no advocate in him. "A man's own suffering mind," he argued,
"must be, of all moral food, the most poisonous for him to feed on.
Surround a scorpion with fire and he stings himself to death, they say.
Throw a diseased soul entirely upon its own resources and moral suicide
results."

To sum up: his nature embodied humanity without sentimentalism, firmness
without obstinacy, individuality without selfishness; his activity was
boundless, his devotion to his system so real as to admit no utilitarian
sophistries into his scheme of personal benevolence. Before I had been
with him a week, I respected him as I had never respected man before.

* * * * *

One evening (it was during the second month of my appointment) we were
sitting in his private study--a dark, comfortable room lined with books.
It was an occasion on which a new characteristic of the man was offered
to my inspection.

A prisoner of a somewhat unusual type had come in that day--a
spiritualistic medium, convicted of imposture. To this person I casually
referred.

"May I ask how you propose dealing with the new-comer?"

"On the familiar lines."

"But, surely--here we have a man of superior education, of imagination
even?"

"No, no, no! A hawker's opportuneness; that describes it. These fellows
would make death itself a vulgarity."

"You've no faith in their--"

"Not a tittle. Heaven forfend! A sheet and a turnip are poetry to their
manifestations. It's as crude and sour soil for us to work on as any I
know. We'll cart it wholesale."

"I take you--excuse my saying so--for a supremely sceptical man."

"As to what?"

"The supernatural."

There was no answer during a considerable interval. Presently it came,
with deliberate insistence:--

"It is a principle with me to oppose bullying. We are here for a definite
purpose--his duty plain to any man who wills to read