The Doctor smiled, and said with a sigh: 

“The vulgar mind does not comprehend science.”

“Now, jest tell me what science is,” said Jim.  “I hearn a great deal about science, but I live up in the woods, and I can’t read very much, and ye see I ain’t edicated, and I made up my mind if I ever found a man as knowed what science was, I’d ask him.”

“Science, sir, is the sum of organized and systematized knowledge,” replied the Doctor.

“Now, that seems reasomble,” said Jim, “but what is it like?  What do they do with it?  Can a feller get a livin’ by it?”

“Not in Sevenoaks,” replied the Doctor, with a bitter smile.

“Then, what’s the use of it?”

“Pardon me, Mr. Fenton,” replied the Doctor.  “You’ll excuse me, when I veil you that you have not arrived at that mental altitude—­that intellectual plane—­”

“No,” said Jim, “I live on a sort of a medder.”

The case being hopeless, the Doctor went on and opened the door into what he was pleased to call “the insane ward.”  As Jim put his head into the door, he uttered a “phew!” and then said: 

“This is worser nor the town meetin’.”

The moment Jim’s eyes beheld the misery that groaned out its days and nights within the stingy cells, his great heart melted with pity.  For the first moments, his disposition to jest passed away, and all his soul rose up in indignation.  If profane words came to his lips, they came from genuine commiseration, and a sense of the outrage that had been committed upon those who had been stamped with the image of the Almighty.

“This is a case of Shakspearean madness,” said Dr. Radcliffe, pausing before the barred and grated cell that held a half-nude woman.  It was a little box of a place, with a rude bedstead in one corner, filthy beyond the power of water to cleanse.  The occupant sat on a little bench in another corner, with her eyes rolled up to Jim’s in a tragic expression, which would make the fortune of an actress.  He felt of his hair, impulsively.

“How are ye now?  How do ye feel?” inquired Jim, tenderly.

She gave him no answer, but glared at him as if she would search the very depths of his heart.

“If ye’ll look t’other way, ye’ll obleege me,” said Jim.

But the woman gazed on, speechless, as if all the soul that had left her brain had taken up its residence in her large, black eyes.

“Is she tryin’ to look me out o’ countenance, Doctor?” Inquired Jim, “’cause, if she is, I’ll stand here and let ’er try it on; but if she ain’t I’ll take the next one.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know what she’s about, but it’s a very curious form of insanity, and has almost a romantic interest attached to it from the fact that it did not escape the notice of the great bard.”

“I notice, myself,” said Jim, “that she’s grated and barred.”

The Doctor looked at his visitor inquisitively, but the woodman’s face was as innocent as that of a child.  Then they passed on to the next cell, and there they found another Woman sitting quietly in the corner, among the straw.