"The first day I spent in prison I was half beside myself with rage. I had done things for which I had merited punishment, even of man, and now that punishment had come, it was for something I had not done. The irony, as well as the injustice of it, made me nearly wild. I had my first taste of the crank--which is as miserable, as futile, and as irritating a mode of torture as was ever spewed out of a flesh and blood crank's unhealthy stomach; and I was having, what they called there, dinner, when the cell door opened, and--Tom Ossington came in. It was just after noon, in the broad day. He came right in front of me, and, leaning on his stick, he stood and watched me. I had not been thinking of him, and, a moment before, had been hot with fury, ready to dare or do anything; but, at the sight of him, the strength went out of me. My bones might have been made of jelly, they seemed so little able to support my body. There was nothing about him which was in the least suggestive of anything unusual. He was dressed in a short coat and felt hat, which were just like the coat and hats which he always had worn; and he had in his hand the identical stick which I had seen him carry perhaps a thousand times. If it was a ghost, then there are ghosts of clothes as well as of men. If it was an optical delusion, then there are more things in optics than are dreamt of in our philosophy. If it was an hallucination born of a disordered mind, then it is possible to become lunatic without being conscious of any preliminary sappings of the brain; and it is indeed but an invisible border line which divides the madmen from the sane. "'Well, Charlie,' he said, in the quiet tones which I had known so well, 'so it's come to this. You made a bit of a mistake in coming when you did to fetch away that fortune of yours.' "'It seems,' I said, 'as if I had.' "He laughed--that gentle laugh of his which had always seemed to me to be so full of enjoyment. "'Never mind, Charlie, you come another time. The fortune won't run away while you're in here.' "With that, he turned and limped out of the cell; the door seeming to open before him at a touch of his hand, and shutting behind him as noiselessly as it had opened. It was only after he had gone that I realised what it was that I had seen. In an instant I was in a muck of sweat. While I was sitting on my stool, more dead than alive, the door opened again, this time with clatter and noise enough, and a warder appeared. He glared at me in a fashion which meant volumes. "'Is that you talking in here? You'd better take care, my lad, or you'll make a bad beginning.' "He banged the door behind him--and he went." Ballingall paused, to wipe his brow with the back of his hand; and he sighed.