ld be in a place like this."

"Then, how the devil are we to get out?" cried Turnbull, losing his
manners for the first time.

"It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment," said the
doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. "I do not regard either of
your cases as incurable."

And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.

MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: "We
can't stop here, we're not mad people!"

"We don't use the crude phrase," said the doctor, smiling at his
patent-leather boots.

"But you _can't_ think us mad," thundered MacIan. "You never saw us
before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us."

The doctor threw back his head and beard. "Oh, yes," he said, "very
thoroughly."

"But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents
or certificates or anything?"

The doctor got languidly to his feet. "Quite so," he said. "You
certainly ought to see the documents."

He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of
the flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his
watch-chain, and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered
with close but quite clear writing. The first three words were in such
large copy-book hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They
were: "MacIan, Evan Stuart."

Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and
he could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
"Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in
return of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she
touched children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age----"

Evan fell back and fought for his speech. "Oh!" he burst out at last.
"Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother
was."

Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
dipped and washed it in some holy well.

"Very well," he cried; "I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only
because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then--MacIan is a mystic;
MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom