“When it was finished, he bade me put down food and drink that I had brought with me, and come away with him; and we went, leaving him rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him alone in the empty prison until we should come again at the same time to-morrow.

“So day by day this went on, and the dancing three or four times a week, until at last the whip could be left behind, for the man would scream and begin to dance at the mere turning of the key in the lock.  And he danced for four months, but not the fifth.

“Nobody official came near us all this time.  The prison stood lonely as a deserted ruin where dark things have been done.

“Once, with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he would account for the inmate of 47 if he was suddenly called upon by authority to open the cell; and he answered, smiling,—­

“I should say it was my mad brother.  By his own account, he showed me a brother’s love, you know.  It would be thought a liberty; but the authorities, I think, would stretch a point for me.  But if I got sufficient notice, I should clear out the cell.’

“I asked him how, with my eyes rather than my lips, and he answered me only with a look.

“And all this time he was, outside the prison, living the life of a good man—­helping the needy, ministering to the poor.  He even entertained occasionally, and had more than one noisy party in his house.

“But the fifth month the creature danced no more.  He was a dumb, silent animal then, with matted hair and beard; and when one entered he would only look up at one pitifully, as if he said, ’My long punishment is nearly ended’.  How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him I know not, but none ever was.  Perhaps he was one of the wandering gentry that nobody ever knows where they are next.  He was unmarried, and had apparently not told of his intended journey to a soul.

“And at the last he died in the night.  We found him lying stiff and stark in the morning, and scratched with a piece of black crust on a stone of the wall these strange words:  ‘An Eddy on the Floor’.  Just that—­nothing else.

“Then the Governor came and looked down, and was silent.  Suddenly he caught me by the shoulder.

“‘Johnson’, he cried, ’if it was to do again, I would do it!  I repent of nothing.  But he has paid the penalty, and we call quits.  May he rest in peace!’

“‘Amen!’ I answered low.  Yet I knew our turn must come for this.

“We buried him in quicklime under the wall where the murderers lie, and I made the cell trim and rubbed out the writing, and the Governor locked all up and took away the key.  But he locked in more than he bargained for.

“For months the place was left to itself, and neither of us went anigh 47.  Then one day the workmen was to be put in, and the Major he took me round with him for a last examination of the place before they come.