all those years of cruel solitude you never abandoned the hope
of freedom."

"How should you know that?" he demanded, with a strange and vivid
manner. I had never known him so roused and interested, even when I bad
told him of the existence of his daughter.

"You have carefully preserved your power over language," I answered.
"You would never have cared to do that if you had not had some hope of
future freedom."

"I had no hope of freedom," he returned. "But everything else had gone
that held me from the beasts, and that I determined should not go. I am
no poet, but I have occupied myself in making verses. I have done into
verse every incident of my life, and the character and aspect of every
person I have known. I have translated every line into every language of
which I am master. I have hundreds of thousands of lines in my head--how
can I tell how many? They are poor enough, I dare say, but I could talk
every working day for weeks and not exhaust them. They are in French,
Italian, German, English, Spanish, in Greek and Latin, in the patois
of a half-dozen districts of my native country. How many hundreds of
thousands of hours have had no other occupation. But for that I had gone
mad, my friend."

He rose and began to pace the deck, and I watched him. The night was
calm, and the sea was like a mill-pond. Sometimes he forgot himself,
and prowled with bent shoulders and clasped hands in a limited space,
walking to and fro, with a sharp check at the end of such brief
promenade, as if an invisible world had put a limit to the space he
moved in; that was the jail-bird's gait, and the prison limits were
about him again to his unconscious memory. Then, at other times he would
assert himself with an effort only too visible. He would lift his head,
throw out his chest, and march the full length of the deck with an
assurance of freedom and manhood. But the slouching gait was always back
in a minute, and his unconscious fancy began to confine his footsteps
once more. On a sudden he paused in his walk and stretched out his right
hand.

"That light?" he said.

"Dover," I answered. "We shall land in half an hour."

We were fortunately alone, for I would not have had it happen in the
presence of a stranger for a thousand pounds. I had scarcely spoken when
he dropped his face into both his hands and broke into an hysteric fit
of crying. His limbs failed him; and in the passion of his emotion he
would certainly have fallen to