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MY FRIEND THE MURDERER.


"Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.

"Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher.

"And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for him?"

"He is a walking drug-shop," said I. "He has the whole British pharmacopœia inside him. I believe his tubes are as sound as yours are."

"Then there's 7 and 108, they are chronic," continued the warder, glancing down a blue slip of paper. "And 28 knocked off work yesterday—said lifting things gave him a stitch in his side. I want you to have a look at him, if you don't mind, Doctor. There's 31 too—him that killed John Adamson in the Corinthian brig—he's been carrying on awful in the night, shrieking and yelling, he has, and no stopping him neither."