“That must have been the crowd I saw in the streets when I sighted the town,” said Lynde, thinking aloud.

“If you saw persons in the street,” returned the doctor, “they were not the townsfolk.  They kept very snug, I assure you.  But permit me to finish, Mr.”—­

“My name is Lynde.”

“Morton,” continued the doctor, bowing, “having secured several volunteers before reaching G—­, decided to return with what force he had, knowing that every instant was precious.  On his way back he picked up three of the poor wanderers, and, unluckily, picked up you.”

“He should not have committed such a stupid error,” said Lynde, clinging stoutly to his grievance.  “He ought to have seen that I was not an inmate of the asylum.”

“An attendant, my dear Mr. Lynde, is not necessarily familiar with all the patients; he may know only those in his special ward.  Besides, you were bare-headed and running, and seemed in a state of great cerebral excitement.”

“I was chasing a man who had stolen my property.”

“Morton and the others report that you behaved with great violence.”

“Of course I did.  I naturally resented being seized and bound.”

“Your natural violence confirmed them in their natural suspicion, you see.  Assuredly they were to blame; but the peculiar circumstances must plead for them.”

“But when I spoke to them calmly and rationally”—­

“My good sir,” interrupted the doctor, “if sane people always talked as rationally and sensibly as some of the very maddest of my poor friends sometimes do, there would be fewer foolish things said in the world.  What remark is that the great poet puts into the mouth of Polonius, speaking of Hamlet?  ’How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.’  My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good sense that convicted you!  By the way, I believe you claimed the horse which Morton found adrift on the road.”

“Yes, sir, it was mine; at least I was riding it this morning when the saddle-girth broke, and the mare got away from me.”

“Then of course that was your saddle Blaisdell was running off with.”

“Blaisdell?”

“One of our most dangerous patients, in fact, the only really dangerous patient at present in the establishment.  Yet you should hear him talk sometimes!  To-day, thank God, he happened to be in his ship-building mood.  Otherwise—­I dare not think what he might have done.  I should be in despair if he had not been immediately retaken.  Oddly enough, all the poor creatures, except three, returned to the asylum of their own will, after a brief ramble through the village.”

“And the white-haired old gentleman who looked like a clergyman, is he mad?”

“Mackenzie?  Merely idiotic,” replied the doctor, with the cool professional air.