he had undergone at this time. He had
been invalided home from the convict establishment at Bermuda, was
shipwrecked off the Isle of Wight on the return voyage, and had been
some months in the hospital previous to my arrival. He was in the habit
of being carried up and down stairs to exercise on the backs of the
nurses, and was getting full diet and porter. About four months after
my arrival, he one morning suddenly started out of bed, shouted
"Attention," at the top of his voice, in defiance of the prison rules,
and ran about the room like a lamplighter, to the utter amazement of
all present. This man was what the prisoners term a "schemer," and he
was certainly the very best actor of his class I ever met with. It will
be acknowledged that he played his part well, when even during the
shipwreck he had never made the slightest attempt to move, and kept up
the deception for many months in a prison hospital, where the majority
of the patients are put down as "schemers" unless they have an outward
sore, or some natural malady with palpable external symptoms. When the
doctor came his rounds, he could do nothing but stare at the fellow,
who started up and told him with a laughing countenance that he had had
a dream in the night, about being miraculously cured, and in the
morning he found he could walk as well as ever he did. The doctor never
opened his lips; the patient was discharged, and although the other
patients cried aloud that he ought to be punished, no further notice
was taken of the matter.

This "schemer," I learned, had been a great sufferer from pleurisy at
Bermuda, and was very weak when he was put on board ship, where he
commenced his scheme; and had it not been for new regulations which
were then put in force, there is no doubt he would have accomplished
his object, which was "Liberation on medical grounds." He had
petitioned the Home Secretary shortly before he threw his crutches
aside, declaring that he had met with an accident at Bermuda from a
stone falling on his back, and so injuring the spine that both his legs
were paralysed. He had received a reply to the effect that his petition
would be answered so soon as the authorities heard from Bermuda the
particulars of the accident, and it was a few days after this that the
miraculous visitation took place.

I asked him why he did not wait for the final answer to his petition
before exposing his scheme? "Oh," he replied, "I knew very well if they
wrote to