It was a year before I spoke to him again and I waited till he spoke to me first then. Going into his place one day I found him tugging at a Chinaman’s tooth. After he got it out and sent the patient away he came over to see what I wanted. He was puffing and perspiring, and, feeling rather pleased with his job on the tooth, wanted to talk to somebody. “Man,” he said, “that was an awful tooth in that Chinaman. Sure I thought the jaw was comin’ off of him.”

“Yes?” I inquired. “Was it a molar?”

“No, man, ’twas no molar; ’twas a back tooth.”

He was our prison dentist. He wasn’t a bad fellow at that. He brought me a worn volume of Shakespeare and let me take it to my cell. I kept it for months and read it all, and often wondered while reading it what would have happened to the British Empire if the spirited Will Shakespeare had been flogged when he stole Mr. Lucey’s venison.