eyes were quite bright, blue,
and startled like those of a baby. They looked as if they had only an
instant before been fitted into his head.

Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He
said something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice
that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did
speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither
Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty
forefinger, and cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's:
"That's a hole."

He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
he cried, with a crow of laughter: "And that's a head come through it."

The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so
much cheerful decision with a body without a brain.

"Why did they put you in such a place?" he asked at last with
embarrassment.

"Good place. Yes," said the old man, nodding a great many times and
beaming like a flattered landlord. "Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
point. Like this," and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
in the air.

"But that's not the best," he added, confidentially. "Squares very
good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the
best."

"What is the best?" asked Turnbull in great distress.

"Spike is the best," said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing;
"it sticks out."

The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. "Can't we do
anything for you?" he said.

"I am very happy," said the other, alphabetically. "You are a good man.
Can I help you?"

"No, I don't think you can, sir," said Turnbull with rough pathos; "I am
glad you are contented at least."

The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with
a stare extraordinarily severe. "You are quite sure," he said, "I cannot
help you?"

"Quite sure, thank you," said Turnbull with broken brevity. "Good day."

Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
the whole of the strange dialogue.

"Curse those cru