MAJOR JAMES SHRIKE,
H.M.  PRISON, D——.

All astonishment, Polyhistor bade his visitor up.

He entered briskly, fur-collared, hat in hand, and bowed as he stood on the threshold.  He was a very short man—­snub-nosed; rusty-whiskered; indubitably and unimpressively a cockney in appearance.  He might have walked out of a Cruikshank etching.

Polyhistor was beginning, “May I inquire—­” when the other took him up with a vehement frankness that he found engaging at once.

“This is a great intrusion.  Will you pardon me?  I heard some remarks of yours last night that deeply interested me.  I obtained your name and address of our hostess, and took the liberty of—­”

“Oh! pray be seated.  Say no more.  My kinswoman’s introduction is all-sufficient.  I am happy in having caught your attention in so motley a crowd.”

“She doesn’t—­forgive the impertinence—­take herself seriously enough.”

“Lady Barbara?  Then you’ve found her out?”

“Ah!—­you’re not offended?”

“Not in the least.”

“Good.  It was a motley assemblage, as you say.  Yet I’m inclined to think
I found my pearl in the oyster.  I’m afraid I interrupted—­eh?”

“No, no, not at all.  Only some idle scribbling.  I’d finished.”

“You are a poet?”

“Only a lunatic.  I haven’t taken my degree.”

“Ah! it’s a noble gift—­the gift of song; precious through its rarity.”

Polyhistor caught a note of emotion in his visitor’s voice, and glanced at him curiously.

“Surely,” he thought, “that vulgar, ruddy little face is transfigured.”

“But,” said the stranger, coming to earth, “I am lingering beside the mark.  I must try to justify my solecism in manners by a straight reference to the object of my visit.  That is, in the first instance, a matter of business.”

“Business!”

“I am a man with a purpose, seeking the hopefullest means to an end.  Plainly:  if I could procure you the post of resident doctor at D——­ gaol, would you be disposed to accept it?”

Polyhistor looked his utter astonishment.

“I can affect no surprise at yours,” said the visitor, attentively regarding Polyhistor.  “It is perfectly natural.  Let me forestall some unnecessary expression of it.  My offer seems unaccountable to you, seeing that we never met until last night.  But I don’t move entirely in the dark.  I have ventured in the interval to inform myself as to the details of your career.  I was entirely one with much of your expression of opinion as to the treatment of criminals, in which you controverted the crude and unpleasant scepticism of the lady you talked with.” (Poor New Charlie!) “Combining the two, I come to the immediate conclusion that you are the man for my purpose.”

“You have dumbfounded me.  I don’t know what to answer.  You have views, I know, as to prison treatment.  Will you sketch them?  Will you talk on, while I try to bring my scattered wits to a focus?”