The Queen of Sheba, and My Cousin the Colonel. Thomas Bailey Aldrich
and a small, elderly, blue-eyed gentleman, followed by a man of gigantic stature, entered the chamber.
"My dear sir," cried the gentleman, making a courteous, deprecatory gesture with his palms spread outward, "we owe you a million apologies. There has been a most lamentable mistake!"
"A mistake!" said Lynde haughtily. "Mistake is a mild term to apply to an outrage."
"Your indignation is just; still it was a mistake, and one I would not have had happen for the world. I am Dr. Pendegrast, the superintendent of this asylum."
"This is an asylum!"
"An asylum for the insane," returned Dr. Pendegrast. "I do not know how to express my regret at what has occurred. I can only account for the unfortunate affair, and throw myself upon your generosity. Will you allow me to explain?"
Lynde passed his hand over his forehead in a bewildered way. Then he looked at the doctor suspiciously; Lynde's late experience had shaken his faith in the general sanity of his species. "Certainly," he said, "I would like to have this matter explained to me; for I'll be hanged if I understand it. This is an asylum?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you are the superintendent?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then—naturally—you are not a lunatic?"
"Certainly not!" said the doctor, starting.
"Very well; I didn't know. I am listening to you, sir."
"Early this morning," said Dr. Pendegrast, somewhat embarrassed by Lynde's singular manner, "a number of patients whom we had always considered tractable seized the attendants one by one at breakfast, and, before a general alarm could be given, locked them in the cells. Some of us were still in our bedrooms when the assault began and were there overpowered. We chanced to be short-handed at the time, two of the attendants being ill, and another absent. As I say, we were all seized—the women attendants and nurses as well—and locked up. Higgins here, my head-man, they put into a strait-jacket."
"Yes, sir," spoke up Higgins for himself, "they did so!"
"Me," continued Dr. Pendegrast, smiling, "they confined in the padded chamber."
Lynde looked at him blankly.
"A chamber with walls thickly cushioned, to prevent violent patients from inflicting injury on themselves," explained the doctor. "I, you see, was considered a very bad case indeed! Meanwhile, Morton, the under-keeper, was in the garden, and escaped; but unfortunately, in his excitement, he neglected to lock the main gate after him. Morton gave the alarm to the people in the village, who, I am constrained to say, did not behave handsomely. Instead of coming to our relief and assisting to restore order, which might easily have been done even then, they barricaded themselves in their houses, in a panic. Morton managed to get a horse, and started for G—In the meantime the patients who had made the attack liberated the patients still in confinement, and the whole rushed in a body out of the asylum and spread themselves over the village."
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