A Mayfair Magician

Despite the venerable antiquity of the saying, it is not always true that "Out of evil cometh good," but certainly out of the apparent evil of the snow- burst which, on the morning of a Christmas Eve not many winters ago, suddenly buried H. M. Prison at Nether-moor from the sight of heaven and cut it off from all communication with the rest of earth, there came to me two good things in the shape of spontaneously offered and most generous hospitality, and one of the strangest stories of what I can only call inverted genius and diverted human power that it has ever been my good fortune to hear.