lonely cell of the doings of the great world outside, from which-so difficult is it for the mind to measure accurately the duration of time past-I seemed to have been separated for long years. Had I not been born in a dungeon and bred in a dungeon, and did I not know it for the first time; and did my memory hold any recollection of real events, or of nothing more than a wild jumble of lunatic dreams? Ah me! how many long, bitter, and melancholy hours I passed lying on my pallet when the day was dying, and the gray shades of evening filled alike the dungeon and my mind with grim unrealities and ugly phantoms-when brain and body were wearied out-when existence itself seemed stale, weary, and unprofitable, and the grave no more than a pleasant refuge!

with short intervals till the first streak of dawn broke the charm, and brought with it peace and slumber unbroken. Was the dread shadow of madness beginning in reality to brood over me? In fear and trembling, I asked myself the question. If such were some of the effects produced by solitude and imprisonment on a strong man like me, what must be their effects upon the far more delicate organisation of Catherine! I trembled to think.

Rudyard had not visited me for some days, when late one afternoon I heard him speaking above; and presently he came down the steps leading to my dungeon, attended by Ann Starke with the keys. Ann having unlocked the door, Rudyard entered; she followed him and closed the door behind her, stationing herself close to it and holding the bunch of keys in her hand. Her face was paler than I had ever seen it before, and there was a cold, stern, revengeful glitter in her green eyes which boded no good to somebody. I was sitting in my chair near the window, and neither spoke nor stirred when Rudyard entered. He came forward with an insolent smile on his lips, and was evidently half drunk; he was smoking a cigar, and carried in one hand a formidable life-preserver, while from the folds of his waistcoat there protruded the butt-end of a pistol.

A

As I lay thus one evening watching the shadows darken in the opposite corners of my dungeon, I seemed to feel the bed move under me, and next moment there waddled forth from beneath it the figure of a veritable Chinese mandarin about two feet high, attired en grande tenue, with a pigtail which reached nearly to the floor. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, just in time to see this singular creature take a sudden spring and alight on the middle of the table, where, crossing its legs and squatting down after the eastern fashion, it turned upon me a pair of stony eyes, and began slowly to wag its 'Well, Master Gallowsbird, and how are you head at me, as I had sometimes seen the Chinese by this time?' he asked in thick husky tones. images do in the windows of the teashops. It Not dead yet; but as mad as ever, I see. was a slow, grave, measured nod, always timing dangerous lunatic, that's what you are-danitself accurately between each repetition. I, of gerous to the community, and that's why I keep course, set the figure down as what it really was you shut up here, out of pure charity to my -an optical delusion, and at once proceeded to fellow-creatures. Ah, this old tower is a nice fling my boot at it, but without producing the spot to keep lunatics in-snug and quiet. No slightest derangement of its centre of gravity. fear of any country-folk prowling about it: the Fixing my eyes steadily on it, I then slowly fools all believe it's haunted, and wouldn't set approached it. As I advanced, it lost by degrees foot near it for a bag of sovereigns. There's its clearness of outline and roundness of form, you here, and that white-faced cat up-stairsand slowly merged itself into the shadows of I know not which is the madder of the two!' the advancing night, so that when I reached the Before he could utter another word, I had table, nothing of it remained visible; but as I sprung from my seat and gripped him savagely receded from the table, so did it seem to project by the throat. It was a momentary impulse, itself out of the dusk, till by the time I reached acted on without premeditation or forethought. the opposite end of my prison it was there again, I was weakened by my long confinement; but gravely wagging its head at me as before, and apparently as much alive and as much a thing of substance as myself. Night after night it came, always at the gloaming hour, so that after a time I became so accustomed to its presence as to take but little notice of it, although for the first few evenings that interminable nodding of its head annoyed me greatly, inducing in me an intense desire to count the number of nods, which it required all my strength of mind to resist.

But this apparition of the mandarin was not the only mental hallucination to which I became subject during my incarceration. Waking suddenly sometimes in the dull, dead middle of the night, I heard strange, wild bursts of laughter coming now from one corner of my dungeon and now from another; sometimes fiendish and discordant in character, at others low, silvery, and gracious as the laughter of ladies and young children. Then there would be strange whisperings and mutterings around my bed in some language unknown to me; and then the unearthly chorus of laughter would recommence, lasting

I seemed to have been suddenly endowed with a strength not my own, and though Rudyard was a big, powerful man, he quivered like a plaything in my grasp. Perhaps he saw in my eyes the madness which burned in my heart, for he quailed, and turned yellow with fear beneath the grip of my fingers. 'Liar and scoundrel!' I exclaimed; and holding him firmly with my left hand, with my right I rained on his head and face such a shower of blows as he would bear the traces of for many a day to come. He was paralysed by the suddenness of my attack; and before he could make use of his life-preserver, it was wrested from his hand and he himself flung back, a bruised and bleeding mass, to the other end of the dungeon, where Ann Starke, as cool and impassive as a statue, was still standing. Rudyard slowly gathered himself up, like a man who can hardly believe the evidence of his senses; but suddenly his face lighted up with a diabolical smile; he remembered the pistol which he carried. It was out of his vest and pointed full at me before I was aware of his intention; but Ann's quick eye had noted the

Chambers's Journal,

Sept. 26, 1885.]

DUNLEAP TOWER.

action, and at the moment he pulled the trigger,
she struck up his arm, and the bullet passing
over my head, flattened itself against the wall,
and fell harmlessly to the ground. He turned
on her like a baffled wild beast, and made as
though he would have struck her with the
pistol
a dead man!' I
'Touch her, and you are
exclaimed, and coward as he was, he shrank
back into a corner of the dungeon.

'This madman will murder me,' he whined.
'Run, Ann-quick, quick, and fetch your uncle
or anybody you can find to help me.'

She turned on him, a white Fury, with green
flaming eyes and clenched hands. Dog!" she
exclaimed, grinding out the word from between
her sharp white teeth, 'ask no help from me.
Do you
I utterly hate and loathe you. I would not lift
a finger to save you from the gallows.
remember the words you said to me three days
ago? If you have forgotten them, I have not; |
and you thought by such foul lies to deceive me,
But beware!
as you have deceived others!
Your career of vice and crime is nearly at an
end.' Then turning to me, she said: 'Here
are the keys of your prison; do with them as
you will.' She handed me the keys, then turned
and went out without another word.

After a few words of warning to Rudyard,
who glared at me feebly in reply, but did not
speak, I followed her, locking the door behind
me, and found her waiting for me at the top
of the stairs. 'Take these keys,' I said to her,
'and go up to Mrs Rudyard, and tell her that
Philip Burton is waiting here to conduct her to
a place of safety.'

While she was gone, I waited at the door of the
tower. Can I ever forget the delicious sensations
of those few minutes, as I stood gazing on the
I was once more a
fast darkening landscape!
free man, and in those words everything is
said.

Presently, Ann Starke came down-stairs, fol-
lowed by Mrs Rudyard, a thin, frail figure of a
woman, with a white sunken face, looking pre-
maturely aged. But for the rare sweet expression
in her eyes, I should scarcely have known her
again. We each took a hand of the other in
silence. 'You are come to take me away from
this terrible place, are you not, Philip? I ask
no questions-I desire nothing but to quit this
spot and die elsewhere in peace!'

How my heart ached as I gazed upon her! Two young lives had been shattered-two loving hearts had been torn asunder, and all to what purpose? The answer was before me.

She took hold of my arm, Ann supported her
on the other side; and walking slowly, we came
after a time to the door in the boundary wall,
of which Ann possessed the key; and so, after
crossing a field or two on the other side, we found
ourselves on the high-road.

The question was, what ought our next step
There
A sudden thought struck me.
to be?
was nothing to fear from Mr Rudyard for a little
while; there might be much to fear from Aaron
Starke. Turning to the girl, I said: 'Where is
your uncle?'

He's gone with Mr Tyson to Berryfield Fair,
and he won't be back till late,' was the answer;
and it eased my mind wonderfully.

'Now, Ann,' I said, 'you must devise some
means by which Mrs Rudyard can be got away
at once to the nearest railway station.'

'Oh! there's no difficulty about that,' she
'There's Dapple in the stable, and
replied.
will hold three comfortably. The nearest railway
there's uncle's old shandrydan in the barn, which
station is only nine miles away.'
Here was comforting news.

'You are going with us, Ann?' I said.

'I daren't stay here, that's certain,' she answered
he found out what I had done. But come up to
simply. 'My uncle would half kill me, when
'Mrs Rudyard can
the cottage, while I get a few things ready and
leave the keys,' she added.
sit down while I get the shandrydan ready.
There is not a soul about; they are all off to
the fair.'

A quarter of an hour later, the shandrydan, a nondescript country vehicle, was in readiness. a small corded box containing some of her worldly Ann had deposited among the straw at the bottom belongings. Like all north-country girls, she possessed a profusion of warm wraps and shawls, and she was as anxious as I was that Mrs Rudyard should be well protected from the keen autumn breezes.

By Ann's advice, we took a byroad which In order to reach this road, we were Ann's debouched into the main road about three miles farther on. compelled to drive past the old tower. eyes met mine as we skirted a corner of the boundary wall, and at the same moment I felt a shudder run through Catherine. She and I time. had set eyes on those cruel old walls for the last

We reached the railway station without adventure, and sent the shandrydan back under care of a porter. My first duty was to despatch a telegram to Mrs Staveley, asking her to meet us at a following day. Mrs Staveley's house was within certain hotel in London as early as possible the a few miles of Isterby Manor; and in the state of Catherine's health, I did not deem it advisable to take her at once back to a neighbourhood fraught to her with so many painful recollections; besides which, Mr Rudyard in one of his mad fits might choose to go in search of his wife, and Mrs Staveley's house was one of the first places he would be likely to visit. In London, Catherine Before noon next day, Mrs Staveley had the would at least be safe from his violence. But little more remains to be told. We never satisfaction of embracing her long-lost niece. his wife, nor did we care to inquire. heard whether Rudyard made any efforts to trace

Mrs Staveley took a pretty little furnished house in the suburbs of London, and there Catherine went to live with her aunt. She had a long illness, during which she was faithfully she had suffered and gone through during those nursed by Ann; it was nature's reaction after all terrible weeks in Dunleap Tower; but when at length it left her, it left her stronger and better in health than she had been for years, more especially when she found that her husband But not for long had she any need to start and seemed to have no intention of molesting her. came to the door. Little more than six months tremble whenever a louder ring than ordinary after our escape, Mr Rudyard, in one of his mad

Chambers's Journal,
Sept. 26, 1885.)

THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.

the top, and then, with a rapid twitch of the the miners can shift the lamps from place to
The lamps used are of
tail, to accomplish its purpose. This only happens place as they work-extend on either side into
when the fish succeeds in striking the falling the several workings.
If it strikes the incandescent form, inclosed in a stout glass
water straight with its snout.
obliquely, it is immediately carried down to globe, which is further protected on the out-
side by wirework. A small switch in connection
the pool below.
with each lamp will allow the workman to reduce
or increase the amount of light at pleasure. The
system has already been tried experimentally, and
gives every sign that when established perma-
nently, it will prove a success.

lives on the water.

We have much pleasure in calling attention to a new material which is intended more particularly for the clothing of those who risk their It has been invented by Mr William Jackson of London, and it consists of cotton, silk, or woollen fabrics interwoven with cork cut into the thinnest shreds imaginable. The material was lately submitted to a severe test. Three persons who could not swim were dressed in clothing made of it: one as a naval officer, the second in boating costume, and The three the third in ordinary lady's attire. were then unceremoniously thrown into the sea from the end of Ryde pier, with the result that they floated without difficulty and without any kind of exertion on their part. We may mention that machinery has been contrived that will cut the cork into shreds as thin as paper or linen. Messrs Brown and Porter, of Liverpool, have patented a very clever contrivance to enable workmen to ascend tall chimneys and similar high structures quite independently of scaffolding. It consists of a staging which grasps the chimney, and which, by the turn of a wheel, ascends it by a spiral movement. In the case of a circular chimney, the staging is triangular in shape, and can be tightened as it rises, so as to adapt itself to the reduced circumference of the structure The parts of the staging towards the top. which actually touch the brickwork are three rollers set at an angle, and it is by turning one of these that the contrivance is made to creep up the structure. The staging for square chimneys is still more simple. It consists of two frames, one depending from the other, either of which can be firmly bolted to the chimney. On the lower one is a gallery for workmen to stand upon. Its mode of progression up the chimney is somewhat like that of a leech, one frame being fastened, while the other creeps up to it by means of screws. Then the first one is released, and, after the second is bolted to the chimney, is raised to a higher level. By this step-by-step motion, the staging is made gradually to ascend to any height required.

room.

A new method of ventilating ships has been suggested by an Australian inventor. Pipes are made to extend from the various places that require ventilation, to the furnace in the engineThe furnace-doors are made to fit very tightly, so that no air can reach the fuel except through these ventilation pipes. Powerful suction is in this way established, and all, foul air is drawn off into the furnace, while fresh air is made to take its place through orifices provided The plan is only applicable for the purpose. a special to steamships, unless in other cases furnace be employed.

The necessary plant for lighting the Low Moor Colliery by electricity is now being prepared, and the whole of the apparatus is to be erected at the bottom of the pit. Permanent wires are being fixed along the principal roadways from to the extreme end of the workings, the shaft while branch wires-which are movable, so that

Mr Thomas Burt, M.P., in addressing an audience of colliers at Barnsley the other day, maintained that an explosion in a colliery should be followed by a searching inquiry by experienced men, such as always follows a railway disaster. He reminded his hearers that they had other perils to guard against besides the risk of explosion, and told them of the great danger of omitting to support the roof of the workings with a sufficiency of props and stays. He stated that the number of lives lost during the past thirty years as a result of insufficient timbering was nearly double that due to explosions of firedamp.

Engineering states that last year four thousand five hundred tons of borax were produced in the States of California and Nevada, and that the supply can never fail, because as fast as the deposits are removed, they are renewed. Many new uses for this substance have been found since it has become so plentiful. A few years back, it was used in the United States almost solely as a flux in welding iron. Now it is employed in glazing iron and pottery, for softening water, in the manufacture of soap, and lastly, as a preservative for meat.

In factories, warehouses, theatres, and other large establishments where it is considered desirable to employ night-watchmen or firemen, it has long been customary to place tell-tale clocks in different parts of the building, which show whether or not the watchers have regularly gone their rounds every hour throughout the night. Dr Millar, of Bethnal House Asylum, has contrived a clock of very simple design which accomplishes this work with great accuracy. The axle for the hour-hand carries a paper disc instead of the usual hand, and the whole arrangement box is a hole just large enough to admit a pencil; is contained in a strong box. In the lid of this and it is the duty of the night attendant in passing a station where one of these clocks is placed to insert a pencil into the hole and give it a twist, so that it leaves a mark on the disc of paper slowly travelling below. The next morning an inspection of the paper will show how many times the spot was visited and at what hours. By using differently coloured pencils and slightly shifting the paper disc, records for a whole week can easily be made on one piece of paper. More than one hundred clocks on this principle are at different asylums in this already in use country.

It A new form of torpedo has lately been tried success in the United States. with some consists of an iron tube measuring sixteen inches in diameter and forty-two inches in length, conIt is fired from another tube, taining, besides its explosive, a charge of rocket composition. which gives it initial direction in its course.

In practice it is found that it will attain a A rival to india-rubber and gutta-percha, which velocity through the water of ten feet per second, is enthusiastically described by an American firm and that it will preserve a straight course even as the best gum in the world,' has been found when contending with a swift current. It is in the dried milk of the bullet-tree (Mimusops obvious that such a weapon may prove quite globosa). This gum, which is commonly known as efficient as the complicated torpedoes in pre- as Balata, seems to possess all the advantages of sent use, whilst its cost must be very moderate india-rubber and gutta-percha without the intractin comparison with them. able nature of the one or the friability of the other. It is now regularly collected in British Guiana, and has for some time been exported as a superior kind of gutta-percha.

Those who have visited any large engineering works will know that rivets for iron-work, instead of being hammered into position as of old, are now pressed into place by a mighty squeeze from a pair of huge jaws worked by hydraulic power. The same plan is being adopted for riveting up the plates and girders at the Charing Cross Railway Bridge Extension Works, London. But the novel part of this adaptation of the system is that the hydraulic power is borrowed of the London Hydraulic-power Company, whose mains now traverse all the important thoroughfares of the city. The near dwellers to the bridge will have reason to thank this Company for relieving them of the incessant din which night and day usually accompanies ironbridge construction.

A method of making sheet-lead which presents some novel features has been patented in Germany. The apparatus employed consists of an iron box called a receiver, the bottom of which is movable, and can be raised from beneath by an hydraulic ram. This box corresponds in length with the width of the sheet of lead to be made. At the top is a pair of jaws running the whole length of the box, the opening between which can be adjusted so as to form a slit of any desired size, such size agreeing with the thickness of the sheet-lead in course of manufacture. The operations are as follows. The receiver is filled with molten lead, which is allowed to cool down to a semi-plastic state. In the meantime the jaws are brought to the required distance from one another. The hydraulic ram is now put into motion, and the bottom of the box slowly rises, forcing the soft metal through the jaws in the form of a compact sheet. We may mention that the old method of making sheet-lead is to roll out a mass of the metal until it is reduced to the required thickness.

Professor Poleck has demonstrated by recent experiments that dry-rot increases in rapidity according to the amount of potassium and phosphoric acid which is contained in the wood where it occurs. Wood felled in the spring is rich in both these constituents, and in such wood the professor has found no difficulty in cultivating dry-rot spores. But winter-felled trees contain much less both of the acid and the potassium, and the cultivation of the spores in wood from such trees has been found quite impossible. The experiments also show that the spores require a certain definite time for full development.

The government astronomer of Hong-kong has published an account of the phenomena which precede typhoons. The first signs are feathery clouds in the sky of the cirrus type, looking like fine tufts of white wool, and which travel from east to north. These appearances are accompanied by a slight rise of the barometer, clear weather, heat, and light winds. The barometer then begins to fall; the heat becomes oppres sive; there is a swell on the sea, and the sky assumes a threatening appearance. As the storm approaches, these effects become more marked, while the wind gradually increases in force. Near the centre of the storm, the wind blows with such violence that no canvas can hold against it, and the rain pours down in torrents. Still nearer the centre, the sea is lashed into such fury that this is the most dangerous position for ships. Typhoons are most common during September and August, but they are met with all the year round.

According to the American papers, the researches which Professor S. A. Forbes, of the Illinois State College, has instituted into the Some months ago, we adverted to the system cause of the terrible mortality recently prevailing which has been introduced by the New York among fresh-water fish in some parts of the Steam-heating Company of warming houses by American continent have been rewarded with steam supplied by pipes from a central station. complete success. The Report he has just subThe system also comprises the feeding of all mitted on the subject shows that the disease is kinds of stationary steam-engines, which are thus due to a minute spherical microbe or germ rendered independent of separate boiler-power. whose diameter is only about the 1-25,000th It is now proposed to extend the steam-pipes to part of an inch. This germ he discovered dry-goods stores, so that they may act as fire- in the liver and kidneys of the diseased fish. extinguishers. The plan proposed is to establish There it forms abscesses, which ultimately destroy stand-pipes in each building, with big nozzles open- the cells of those organs, and therewith the life ing on to the separate floors. The steam could of the fish. Professor Forbes says that there at any time be turned on from the street, and are various species of this germ, the different would, it is said, quickly drive out the air from varieties of which cause specific diseases, such as the place and smother an incipient conflagration. fevers, and especially smallpox, chicken-pox, hog The proposal to use steam for the purpose of cholera, and so forth. The case which more parputting out fires is by no means a new one, ticularly prompted him to undertake this investiand possibly it has never been tried on a prac-gation was the extraordinary mortality among tical scale, because the necessary apparatus was not easy to find. But in New York, where the pipes and boiler are all ready to hand, we may look forward to some experimental trials of the system, from which much good may accrue.

the perch and other fish of Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, where the fish have for some time past been dying in enormous numbers.

Central American advices give details of the eruption of the volcano of Cotopaxi, which