and— hold your tongue; I don't take my orders
from you; then more humbly to the doctor, "I
am a district visitor: I nurse all manner of
strangers, and he says I must leave his poor suffering
leg to the servants."

"Unnatural young monster," said the doctor,
affecting horror. " G'im a good nip."

Julia followed this advice by handling Alfred's
swollen ankle with a tenderness so exquisite, and
pressing it with the full sponge so softly, that
her divine touch soothed him as much or more
than the water. After nursing him into the
skies a minute or two, she looked up blushing in
his face, and said coaxingly, " Are you mad, dear
Alfred? Don't be afraid to tell us the truth!
The madder you are, the more you need me to
take care of you, you know."

Alfred smiled at this sapient discourse, and
said he was not the least mad, and hoped to take
care of her as soon as his ankle was well enough.
This closed that sweet mouth of hers exceeding
tight, and her face was seen no more for a while,
but hid by bending earnestly over her work; only
as her creamy poll turned pink, the colour of that
hidden face was not hard to divine.

Then Edward asked Alfred how in the world
he had escaped, and got into that waggon. The
thing was incredible, " Mirawculous," said Dr.
Sampson in assent.

"No," said Alfred, " it looks stranger to you
than it is. The moment I found my pistol was
gone I determined to run. I looked down and
saw a spout with a great ornamental mouth,
almost big enough to sit on; and, while I was
looking greedily at it, three horses came into the
yard drawing a load of hay. The waggoner was
busy clearing the pavement with his wheel, and
the waggon almost stopped a moment right
under me. There was a lot of loose hay on the
top. I let myself down, and hung by the spout
a moment, and then leaped on to the loose hay.
Unfortunately there were the hard trusses
beneath it, and so I got my sprain. Oh, I say,
didn't it hurt? However, I crept under the hay
and hid myself, and saw Wolfs men come into
the yard. By-and-by a few drops of rain fell,
and some fellows chucked down a tarpaulin from
the loft, and nearly smothered me: so I cut a
few air-holes with my penknife. And there I lay,
Heaven knows how long: it seemed two days.
At last I saw an angel at a window; I called her
by the name she bears on earth: to my joy she
answered, and here I am, as happy as a prince
among you all, and devilish hungry."

"What a muff I was not to think of that," said
Edward, and made for the larder.

"Dear doctor," said Julia, lifting a Madonna-like
face with swimming eyes, "I see no change
in him: he is very brave, and daring, and saucy.
But so he always was. To be sure he says extravagant
things, and stares one out of countenance
with his eyes: well and so he always did
— ever since I knew him."

"Mayn't I even look my gratitude?" whined
Alfred.

"Yes, but you need not stare it."

"It's your own fault, Miss Julee," said Sampson.
" While ye're fomenting his sprain the creature's
fomenting his own insensate passion.
Break every bone in a puppy's body, and it's a
puppy still; and it doesn't do to spoil puppies:
as ye're spoiling this one. Nlist me, ye vagabin.
Take your eyes off the lady; and look me in the
face— if ye can; and tell me how you came to
leave us all in the lurch on your wedding
morn."

Julia fired up. " It was not his fault, poor
thing: he was decoyed away after that miserable
money. Ah, you may laugh at me for hating
money; but have I not good reason to hate it?"

"Whist, whist, y' impetuous cracter; and let
him tell his own tale."

Alfred thus invited, delivered one of his calm,
luminous statements; which had hitherto been
listened to so coldly by one official after another.
But the effect was mighty different, falling now on
folk not paid to pity. As for Dr. Sampson, he
bounced up very early in the narrative, and went
striding up and down the room; he was pale
with indignation; and his voice trembled with
emotion, and every now and then he broke in on
the well- governed narrative with oaths and
curses, and observations of this kind:  "Why
dinnt ye kill um? I'd have killed um. I'd just
have taken the first knife and killed um. Man,
our Liberty is our Life. Dith to whoever attacks
it!"

And so Edward, coming in with Alfred's dinner
on a tray, found the soi-disant maniac delivering
his wrongs with the lofty serenity of an ancient
philosopher discussing the wrongs of another,
Julia crying furtively into the tub, and the good
physician trampling and raving about the room,
like what the stoical narrator was accused of
being. Edward stopped and looked at them all
over the tray. " Well," said he, " if there's a
madman in the room, it is not Hardie. Ahem."

"Madman? ye young ijjit," roared the doctor,
"he is no madder than I am."

"Heaven forbid," said Alfred drily.

"No madder than you are, ye young Pump."
This to Edward. " That's an ungenerous skit on
his profession," said the maniac.

"Be quite now, chattering," said the excited
doctor; "I tell ye ye niver were mad, and niver
will be. It's just the most heartless imposture,
the most rascally fraud I've ever caught the Mad
Ox out in. I'll expose it. Gimme pninkpapr.
Man, they'll take y' again if we don't mind. But
I'll stop that: these ineequities can only be done
in the dark. I'll shed the light of day on 'em.
Eat your dinner, and hold your tongue a minute
— if ye can." The doctor had always a high
sense of Alfred's volubility.

He went to work, and soon produced a letter
headed "PRIVATE MADHOUSES." In this he
related pithily Alfred's incarceration, and the
present attempt to recapture him, with the
particulars of his escape. " That will interest
th' enemy," said he drily. He vouched for