re's face came at it like a wild
beast's.

"'Sir,' said the Major to it, 'you can't better understand my system than
by experiencing it. What an article for your paper you could write
already--almost as pungint a one as that in which you ruined the hopes
and prospects of a young cockney poet.'

"The man mouthed at the bars. He was half-mad, I think, in that one
minute.

"'Let me out!' he screamed. 'This is a hideous joke! Let me out!'

"'When you are quite quiet--deathly quiet,' said the Major, 'you shall
come out. Not before;' and he shut the trap in its face very softly.

"'Come, Johnson, march!' he said, and took the lead, and we walked out of
the prison.

"I was like to faint, but I dared not disobey, and the man's screeching
followed us all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut the
first great door on it.

"It may have gone on for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. The
creature was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart.

"And from that hour till his death, five months later, he rotted and
maddened in his dreadful tomb."

* * * * *

There was more, but I pushed the ghastly confession from me at this point
in uncontrollable loathing and terror. Was it possible--possible, that
injured vanity could so falsify its victim's every tradition of decency?

"Oh!" I muttered, "what a disease is ambition! Who takes one step towards
it puts his foot on Alsirat!"

It was minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption of the
task; but at last I took it up again, with a groan.

* * * * *

"I don't think at first I realized the full mischief the Governor
intended to do. At least, I hoped he only meant to give the man a good
fright and then let him go. I might have known better. How could he ever
release him without ruining himself?

"The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There was a strange
new look of triumph in his face, and in his hand he held a heavy
hunting-crop. I pray to God he acted in madness, but my duty and
obedience was to him.

"'There is sport toward, Johnson,' he said. 'My dervish has got to
dance.'

"I followed him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door, but the
place was silent as the grave. But from the cell, when we reached it,
came a low, whispering sound.

"The Governor slipped the trap and looked through.

"'All right,' he said, and put the key in the door and flung it open.