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and imprisoned for a considerable period—an announcement which struck me dumb with astonishment.

I followed up the conversation with her as well as my imperfect knowledge of the language would allow, and caught a glimmering of her position with regard to ill-health; but I did not even then fully comprehend it, nor had I as yet any idea of the other extraordinary perversions of thought which existed among them, but with which I was soon to become familiar. I propose, therefore, to make no mention of what passed between us on this occasion, save that we were reconciled, and that she brought me surreptitiously a hot glass of spirits and water before I went to bed, also a huge pile of extra blankets, and that the next morning there were no traces of my cold left. I never remember to have lost a cold so rapidly.

This little affair explained much which had been heretofore an enigma. It seemed that the two men who were examined before the magistrates on the day of my arrival in the country, had been given in charge on account of ill health, and were both condemned to a heavy term of imprisonment, with hard labour; in fact, they were now expiating their offence in this very prison, and their exercise ground was a yard separated by my fives wall from the garden in which I walked. This accounted for the sounds of coughing and groaning which I had often noticed as coming from the other side of the wall: it was high, and I had not dared to climb it, for fear the jailor should see me, and think that I was trying to escape; but I had often wondered what sort of people they could be on the other side, and had resolved on asking the jailor;