So whenever I was approaching the sixth green--a hole I played by some muscular aberration consistently well--I felt a flickering unease, hoping to Heaven the inmates were locked in their cells; yet if they were out at their pathetic exercises I could not keep my eyes off them. There was one considerable compensation, however, in this proximity, for it was through it that I made the acquaintance of Lanton, one of the Asylum doctors. I not only took a strong personal liking for him, but he interested me deeply. He is a distinguished alienist, and passionately absorbed in the study of insanity, and yet at the same time he detests his job. Many a time he has had to cancel a round with me, and nearly always for the same reason, that he has been assaulted by a patient. “Didn’t get the hyoscin hydrobromide (or whatever it was) in quite quick enough,” he will say, as he surveys me quizzingly yet wearily through a pair of rainbow eyes, “and the Asylum chairs are infernally hard. It took four of our strongest warders to keep him from creating a vacancy on the staff.” As time went on the strain began to tell, and he has lost his resiliency, but he has always remained a charming, and I felt heroic, person. He has promised to chuck it if he gets a definite danger signal, for he has the wrong temperament to resist the withering experiences of his day’s work much longer. Those patients who are allowed out take their daily walk along a deserted bye-road which runs parallel to the third hole, and one day when I was playing with Lanton, that shuffling, damned parade was passing by just as I hit a quick, short hook into the hedge bordering the road. As I walked towards it my eye was caught by an individual walking alone and writing busily in a note-book. He was dressed in a round clerical hat, a “dog-collar,” a clerical frock-coat, a pair of riding breeches, and brown boots. As I approached he looked up at me with an extremely penetrating, cunning, and yet preoccupied expression on his face--and then he went on with his writing. When we had finished the round I described him to Lanton, and asked who he was. “The Reverend Wellington Scot,” he replied. “And a very curious case. If you would like to know more, come down to my study this evening. That’s all about him now.” When I arrived at the Asylum, Lanton was just about to set out on his evening round. He went to a drawer and got out a note-book. “Read this while I’m away. I’ll be back in about an hour. There are the drinks and Gold-flakes.” When he had gone I picked up the note-book, and saw that it was filled with a very delicate script. I began to read. * * * * *