They seized him, shook their fists in his face,
cursed him, and pinned him; he was quite
passive: they handcuffed him, and drove him
before them, shoving him every now and then
roughly by the shoulders. He made no resistance,
spoke no word. They took him to the strong-
room, and manacled his ankles together with an
iron hobble, and then strapped them to the
bedposts, and fastened his body down by broad
bands of ticking with leathern straps at the ends;
and so left him more helpless than a swaddled
infant. The hurry and excitement of defence
were over, and a cold stupor of misery came
down and sat like lead on him. He lay mute as
death in his gloomy cell, a tomb within a living
tomb. And, as he lay, deeper horror grew and
grew in his dilating eyes; gusts of rage swept
over him, shook him, and passed; then gusts of
despairing tenderness; all came and went, but his
bonds. What would his Julia think? If he
could only let her know! At this thought he
called, he shouted, he begged for a messenger:
there was no reply. The cry of a dangerous
lunatic from the strong-room was less heeded
here than a bark from any dog-kennel in
Christendom. "This is my father's doing," he
said. "Curse him! Curse him! Curse him!"
and his brain seemed on fire, his temples
throbbed: he vowed to God to be revenged on
his father.

Then he writhed at his own meanness in coming
to visit a servant, and his folly in being caught
by so shallow an artifice. He groaned aloud.
The clock in the hall struck ten. There was just
time to get back if they would lend him a
conveyance. He shouted, he screamed, he prayed.
He offered terms humbly, piteously; he would
forgive his father, forgive them all, he would say
no more about the money, would do anything,
consent to anything, if they would only let him
keep faith with his Julia: they had better consent,
and not provoke his vengeance. "Have
mercy on me!" he cried. "Don't make me
insult her I love. They will all be waiting for me.
It is my wedding-day: you can't have known it
is my wedding-day; fiends, monsters, I tell
you it is my wedding-day. Oh pray send the lady
to me; she can't be all stone, and my misery
might melt a stone." He listened for an answer,
he prayed for an answer. There was none. Once
in a madhouse, the sanest man is mad, however
interested and barefaced the motive of the
relative who has brought two of the most venal
class upon the earth to sign away his wits behind
his back; and, once hobbled and strapped, he is
a dangerous maniac, for just so many days,
weeks, or years, as the hobbles handcuffs and
jacket happen to be left upon him by
inhumanity, economy, or simple carelessness. Poor
Alfred's cries and prayers were heard; but no
more noticed than the night howl of a wolf on
some distant mountain. All was sullen silence,
but the grating tongue of the clock, which told
the victim of a legislature's shallowness and a
father's avarice that Time, deaf to his woe, as
were the walls the men the women and the
cutting bands, was stealing away with iron
finger his last chance of meeting his beloved at
the altar.

He closed his eyes, and saw her lovelier than
ever, dressed all in white, waiting for him with
sweet concern in that peerless face. "Julia!
Julia!" he cried, with a loud heart-broken cry.
The half-hour struck. At that he struggled, he
writhed, he bounded: he made the very room
shake, and lacerated his flesh; but that was
all. No answer. No motion. No help. No
hope.

The perspiration rolled down his steaming
body. The tears burst from his young eyes and
ran down his cheeks. He sobbed, and sobbing
almost choked, so tight were his linen bands
upon his bursting bosom.

He lay still exhausted.

The clock ticked harshly on: the rest was
silence. With this miserable exception; ever
and anon the victim's jammed body shuddered so
terribly it shook and rattled the iron bedstead,
and told of the storm within, the agony of the
racked and all foreboding soul.

For then rolled over that young head hours
of mortal anguish that no tongue of man can
utter, nor pen can shadow. Chained sane
amongst the mad; on his wedding-day; expecting
with tied hands the sinister acts of the soul-
murderers who had the power to make their lie
a truth! We can paint the body writhing vainly
against its unjust bonds; but who can paint the
loathing, agonised, soul in a mental situation so
ghastly? For my part I feel it in my heart of
hearts; but am impotent to convey it to others;
impotent, impotent.

Pray think of it for yourselves, men and
women, if you have not sworn never to think over
a novel. Think of it for your own sakes; Alfred's
turn to-day, it may be yours to-morrow.

SAND GROUSE.

I'VE seen a sand grouse!

Grouse, I have somewhere read, is a Persian
word signifying moorfowl. The word grouse,
like nearly all foreign words, is unable to do its
own work of conveying a picture to the mind,
and therefore an English word is called in to
do its work. Fowls, as everybody knows, are
scraping birds, and therefore grouse are scraping
birds of the moors. Most people in the British
islands have heard of red grouse, grey grouse,
black grouse, white grouse, and even cream
grouse, but only the students of foreign birds
know anything of sand grouse; and yet sand
grouse will henceforth figure in every book
which may be published to give a complete
account of British birds.

More than a hundred and twenty of these
fowl of the plains of Arabia and steppes of
Tartary, have been shot and preserved, and more
than one hundred and eighty have been seen and
counted in England, Scotland, and Ireland,