bjects save their health, clothes, and books, and they are all
read by a constabulary officer, who acts as censor.

Aunt Vera's letters are long, and she tries to encourage me by a recital
of the efforts she is making in order to obtain an interview with me,
and each of her dear letters ends with "until we meet." But that "until"
is long, and lasts eight months. At last, one day, at the commencement
of summer, I hear a male voice in the corridor cry, "No. 16 for an
interview." My heart throbs as though it would burst, and as soon as my
door is opened I rush into the corridor, and then into the antechamber.
I push the door pointed out by the warder, who enters with me, and
instead of finding myself in Aunt Vera's arms, rush against a wire
screen, light but strong, and closely woven. This network is high, and
stretched entirely across the room. A few steps beyond is a similar
screen, and between, as in a cage, is a constabulary officer with red,
bloated face, who, with hands behind his back, walks slowly up and down.

This officer, these nets, this drunkard's face, blot out at intervals
the gentle form of Aunt Vera, who, on the other side of the cage, is
doing her utmost to smile at me through her tears. Later on I get
accustomed to all this, but at this first interview, so much desired, so
long waited for, I feel choking with rage and despair. I do not know how
to reply to Aunt Vera's enquiries, and, when I do, my voice is so
strange that it causes her to murmur in despair--"My God, how you are
changed, my little one!"

Changed! It is possible! The prison so crushes its victims that it is no
wonder they change, especially when they are young and stay there a long
time. Of the changes in myself I am aware only much later. In waiting,
my slow, dull life is passed in a cloud, which covers and presses upon
the prisoner until the day when the lightning flash and the tempest
rends the clouds and brings down showers of tears and blood.

(_To be continued._)

_The Legs of Sister Ursula._

BY RUDYARD KIPLING.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY HAL HURST.

-----

The one man of all men who could have told this tale and lived has long
since gone to his place; and there is no apology for those that would
follow in the footsteps of Lawrence Sterne.

In a nameless city of a land that shall be nameless, a rich man lived
alone. His wealth had bought him a luxurious flat on the fifth floor of
a red-brick mansion, whose gril