“If you please,” replied the stranger, “provided you will confine yourself to the shake.”

The other then commenced a squall, so tuneless, wild, jarring, and unmusical, that the stranger could not avoid smiling at the monomaniac, for such he at once perceived him to be.

“You seem to like that,” observed the other, apparently much gratified; “but I thought as much, sir—­you are a man of taste.”

“I am decidedly of opinion,” said the stranger, “that Catalani, in her best days, could not give such a specimen of the shake as that.”

“Thank you sir,” replied the singer, taking off his hat and bowing.  “We shall have another shake in honor of your excellent judgment, but it will be a shake of the hand.  Sir, you are a polished and most accomplished gentleman.”

As they sauntered up and down the room, other symptoms reached them besides those that were then subjected to their sight.  As a door opened, a peal of wild laughter might be heard—­sometimes groaning—­and occasionally the most awful blasphemies.  Ambition contributed a large number to its dreary cells.  In fact, one would imagine that the house had been converted into a temple of justice, and contained within its walls most of the crowned heads and generals of Europe, both living and dead, together with a fair sample of the saints.  The Emperor of Russia was strapped down to a chair that had been screwed into the floor, with the additional security of a strait-waistcoat to keep his majesty quiet.  The Pope challenged Henry the Eighth to box, and St. Peter, as the cell door opened, asked Anthony Corbet for a glass of whiskey.  Napoleon Bonaparte, in the person of a heroic tailor, was singing “Bob and Joan;” and the Archbishop of Dublin said he would pledge his mitre for a good cigar and a pot of porter.  Sometimes a frightful yell would-reach their ears; then a furious set of howlings, followed again by peals of maniac laughter, as before.  Altogether, the stranger was glad to withdraw, which he did, in order to prosecute his searches for Fenton.

“Well, sir,” said the doctor, whom he found again in the parlor, “you have seen that melancholy sight?”

“I have, sir, and a melancholy one indeed it is; but as I came on a matter of business, doctor, I think we had better come to the point at once.  You have a young man named Fenton in your establishment?”

“No, sir, we have no person of that name here.”

“A wrong name may have been purposely given you, sir; but the person I speak of is here.  And you had better understand me at once,” he continued.  “I am furnished with such authority as will force you to produce him.”

“If he is not here, sir, no authority on earth can force me to produce him.”

“We shall see that presently.  Corbet, bring in the officers.  Here, sir, is a warrant, by which I am empowered to search for his body; and, when found, to secure him, in order that he may be restored to his just rights, from which he has been debarred by a course of villany worthy of being concocted in hell itself.”