y property.

"What fun," said I, pretending to laugh. "Let us try again. Now, you
take it up, and see if I can get it again."

But he had had enough of that game. Yet he appeared to be better
humoured than before the incident, and I got a few short answers to the
questions which I put to him.

And here comes in the text which started me preaching about lunacy at
the beginning of this letter. WHAT a marvellous thing it is! This man,
from all I can learn of him, has suddenly swung clean over from one
extreme of character to the other. Every plus has in an instant become a
minus. He's another man, but in the same case. I am told that he used
to be (only a few months ago, mind you) most fastidious in dress
and speech. Now he is a foul-tongued rough! He had a nice taste in
literature. Now he stares at you if you speak of Shakespeare. Queerest
of all, he used to be a very high-and-dry Tory in his opinions. He
is fond now of airing the most democratic views, and in a needlessly
offensive way. When I did get on terms with him at last, I found that
there was nothing on which he could be drawn on to talk so soon as on
politics. In substance, I am bound to say that I think his new views are
probably saner than his old ones, but the insanity lies in his sudden
reasonless change and in his violent blurts of speech.

It was some weeks, however, before I gained his confidence, so far as
to be able to hold a real conversation with him. For a long time he was
very sullen and suspicious, resenting the constant watch which I kept
upon him. This could not be relaxed, for he was full of the most apish
tricks. One day he got hold of my tobacco pouch, and stuffed two ounces
of my tobacco into the long barrel of an Eastern gun which hangs on the
wall. He jammed it all down with the ramrod, and I was never able to get
it up again. Another time he threw an earthenware spittoon through the
window, and would have sent the clock after it had I not prevented
him. Every day I took him for a two hours' constitutional, save when it
rained, and then we walked religiously for the same space up and down
the room. Heh! but it was a deadly, dreary, kind of life.

I was supposed to have my eye upon him all day, with a two-hour interval
every afternoon and an evening to myself upon Fridays. But then what was
the use of an evening to myself when there was no town near, and I had
no friends whom I could visit? I did a fair amount of reading, for Lord
Salti