a door
opened, a peal of wild laughter might be heard--sometimes groaning--and
occasionally the most awful blasphemies. Ambition contributed a large
number to its dreary cells. In fact, one would imagine that the house
had been converted into a temple of justice, and contained within its
walls most of the crowned heads and generals of Europe, both living and
dead, together with a fair sample of the saints. The Emperor of Russia
was strapped down to a chair that had been screwed into the floor, with
the additional security of a strait-waistcoat to keep his majesty quiet.
The Pope challenged Henry the Eighth to box, and St. Peter, as the
cell door opened, asked Anthony Corbet for a glass of whiskey. Napoleon
Bonaparte, in the person of a heroic tailor, was singing "Bob and
Joan;" and the Archbishop of Dublin said he would pledge his mitre for a
good cigar and a pot of porter. Sometimes a frightful yell would-reach
their ears; then a furious set of howlings, followed again by peals
of maniac laughter, as before. Altogether, the stranger was glad to
withdraw, which he did, in order to prosecute his searches for Fenton.

"Well, sir," said the doctor, whom he found again in the parlor, "you
have seen that melancholy sight?"

"I have, sir, and a melancholy one indeed it is; but as I came on a
matter of business, doctor, I think we had better come to the point at
once. You have a young man named Fenton in your establishment?"

"No, sir, we have no person of that name here."

"A wrong name may have been purposely given you, sir; but the person
I speak of is here. And you had better understand me at once," he
continued. "I am furnished with such authority as will force you to
produce him."

"If he is not here, sir, no authority on earth can force me to produce
him."

"We shall see that presently. Corbet, bring in the officers. Here, sir,
is a warrant, by which I am empowered to search for his body; and,
when found, to secure him, in order that he may be restored to his just
rights, from which he has been debarred by a course of villany worthy of
being concocted in hell itself."

"Family reasons, sir, frequently render it necessary that patients
should enter this establishment under fictitious names. But these are
matters with which I have nothing to do. My object is to comply with the
wishes of their relatives."

"Your object, sir, should be to cure, rather than to keep them; to
conduct your establishment as a house of