shouldst speak to the clerk in thine office, Inspector-jee; this name is almost illegible."

"'Tis Shureef, clear enough, Darogah-jee," dissented the Inspector, huffily; "and I should have thought it fits thine own name too close for--"

"Shureef," read out Shurruf, the Overseer, brusquely, "Shureef, Khoja, thirty-five, lurking house trespass by night, habitual offender, ten years."

The Doctor looked up sharply. Ten years meant business; one can teach a lot in ten years--carpet-weaving, wood-carving, pottery-making--and the Doctor's hobby was his gaol. What he saw was a man, looking many years older than his age, haggard and grey, yet despite this with a lightness and suppleness in every limb. Though this figure was lean where the Overseer was fat, wrinkled where the Overseer showed smooth, there was a similarity in the rich colour of their skins, in the regularity of their features, which made the Englishman turn to look at the Darogah with the mental remark that the race-characteristics of India were very instructive; for Shurruf was a Khoja also. "All right," said the Doctor. "Number five hundred and eight."

"Five hundred and eight," repeated the habitual offender, calmly. "I will not forget. Salaam, Huzoor! Salaam, Darogah-jee!"

"Do you know the man?" asked the Doctor quickly of his subordinate; he was sharp as a needle, and there had been a note in the salutation which he did not understand.

"He was in for two years when I was sub-overseer at Loodhiana, Huzoor," replied Shurruf, imperturbably. "He gave much trouble there; he will not here, since the Doctor-sahib knows how to manage such as he."

Once more there was an undertone, but the Doctor's attention was riveted by the adroit flattery, and he rose to begin his inspection with a smile. It was true; he did know how to manage a gaol, and there could not possibly be any cause for complaint when he was there to apportion each ounce of food scientifically, to rout every germ, every microbe, and treat even contumacy as a disease. The five hundred and odd prisoners were, as it were, the Doctor's chessmen. He marshalled them this way and that, checkmating their vile souls and bodies while they were in his care. If they passed out of it into their own, he took no heed. They might make what they liked of themselves. But if they died, and, as the phrase runs, chose the Guardianship of God, he buried them temporarily in the gaol graveyard with all possible sanitary precautions, against the time when relations or friends might appear to claim the corpse. There was no official regulation as to the limit of time within which such claim could be preferred; but as a dead body remains in the special Guardianship of God for a year, it was an understood thing that man should take over the task before the Almighty gave up the job; it was more satisfactory, especially if the corpse was a Hindu and had to be burned. As for the Doctor, he would have preferred to burn the lot, Hindu and Mahomedan alike; failing that, he--took precautions.

As he walked down the line rapidly his sharp eye noted every detail, and Shurruf Deen had many a swift, probing question to answer. He answered them, however, as swiftly, for he was the best gaoler conceivable; so good that even the Doctor allowed that he was almost capable of managing the gaol himself. A man of unimpeachable character, he had yet a curious insight into the minds of the criminals he guarded, and a singular tact in managing them, so that his record of continual rise in the world seemed likely to lengthen itself by an appointment to the most important gaolership in the Province. Shurruf Deen was working all he knew to secure this, and therefore, as he followed the Doctor, his keen, bold eyes were everywhere forestalling the possibility of blame. They fell, among other things, on Shureef's thin, somewhat bowed figure, as it was marched off to be shaved, washed, manacled, and dressed to pattern. Then they turned almost mechanically to the paper he still held. Shureef Deen, Khoja--ten years' hard--three months' solitary. He gave a faint sigh of relief. Solitary confinement, even when broken up by philanthropy into blocks of a week, gave time. It meant many ameliorations to a prisoner's lot which would be unsafe amid the ruck. Besides no man, he told himself, would be fool enough to risk losing these favours simply to spite another man.

He repeated this thought aloud that same evening, after lights were out, and the silence of solitary cells lay all over the gaol, save in one of the latter, where Shurruf sate whispering to Shureef. In the utter darkness the curious similarity of the place to a wild beast's cage, with its inner grating-barred cubicle and its outer high-walled yard let open to the sky, was lost, and the two men might have been anywhere. Shurruf, however, sate on the millstones, as being more suited to his figure, while Shureef crouched on the ground beside the little heap of corn he was bound to give back ounce for ounce in flour and bran. And as he crouched, leaning listlessly against the wall, his supple hand moved among the wheat raising it idly, and as idly letting it slip back through his thin fingers.

"Fate!" he echoed to something the other said; "nay, 'twas not Fate, brother, which sent me to thy gaol. I was hard pressed; I am growing old for the life; it kills men soon. The police would have had me in the big dacoity case at Delhi despite all; so I bungled one farther north, to come--where thou wast--brother."

"And thou didst right," assented Shurruf, eagerly; "I can make things easy for thee."

The wheat slipped with a soft patter, like rain, through Shureef's fingers. "'Twas not that either which brought me to thy gaol. Listen. I am far through this life, but another begins. I am not going to plead guilty there. It is not guilty there, not guilty on the first count, not guilty as a lad of fifteen for theft--" He paused, then a faint curiosity came to his listlessness and he looked at the half-seen figure beside him--"and such a theft! I--I have not done so mean a one--since--"

Shurruf moved uneasily. "Mayhap not; boys do things men do not. And I have always--yea! thou knowest it--upheld thee better than some think. What then? Thy life is past amendment now, save for tobacco and such like; and these I will give, if thou art wise, for the ten years--"

"I shall not live three months of the ten years, brother," interrupted Shureef, calmly; and at the words a pang of regret that the solitary confinement could not be inflicted straight on end shot through Shurruf's breast, killing the faint remorse the remark had awakened; it would have simplified matters so much to have Shureef safe from the possibility of tale-bearing for those three months. "And, as I said, I want none of these things," went on Shureef; "I only want the truth. Promise to tell it, and I say naught; wilt promise, brother?"

"No!" whispered Shurruf, fiercely. "What good would it do now?"

"It would make some mourn for me; it would make more than cursing follow me; it would be evidence for me, a boy, at the Great Court."

The sleek face beside the anxious one took a strange expression, half joy, half fear. "That is fools' talk. Doth not the Lord know, is He not just?"

"Yes, He knows," persisted Shureef; "but others must know, else they will not claim my body, else my grave will not be cooled with tears. It would not harm thee much, Shurruf. Mayhap 'twould be wiser for thee not to seek advancement, since one, who might hear if the truth were told, seeks it also; but if thou stayest in this fat post--"

"Peace, fool!" interrupted Shurruf, passionately. "I will not. Thou hast no