The Reformatory, a boastful, brick building set in grounds that
seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that
would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without
the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no
application for admission, with or without permits, would be
honoured upon any day save Thursday. This was Tuesday.

Presently, the chains having fallen within after a feudal rattling,
an old man who looked born to the business of snapping up a
drawbridge in lieu of a taste for any other exclusiveness peered at
St. George through absurd smoked glasses, cracked quite across so
that his eyes resembled buckles.

"Good morning," said St. George; "has the Readers' Guild arrived
yet?"

The old man grated out an assent and swung open the door, which
creaked in the pitch of his voice. The bare hall was cut by a wall
of steel bars whose gate was padlocked, and outside this wall the
door to the warden's office stood open. St. George saw that a
meeting was in progress there, and the sight disturbed him. Then the
click of a key caught his attention, and he turned to find the old
man quietly and surprisingly swinging open the door of steel bars.

"This way, sir," he said hoarsely, fixing St. George with his buckle
eyes, and shambled through the door after him locking it behind
them.

If St. George had found awaiting him a gold throne encircled by
kneeling elephants he could have been no more amazed. Not a word had