There was, however, another reason for my frequent refusal to take
food, in my belief that the detectives had resorted to a more subtle
method of detection. They now intended by each article of food to
suggest a certain idea, and I was expected to recognize the idea thus
suggested. Conviction or acquittal depended upon my correct
interpretation of their symbols, and my interpretation was to be
signified by my eating, or not eating, the several kinds of food placed
before me. To have eaten a burnt crust of bread would have been a
confession of arson. Why? Simply because the charred crust suggested
fire; and, as bread is the staff of life, would it not be an inevitable
deduction that life had been destroyed--destroyed by fire--and that I
was the destroyer? On one day to eat a given article of food meant
confession. The next day, or the next meal, a refusal to eat it meant
confession. This complication of logic made it doubly difficult for me
to keep from incriminating myself and others.

It can easily be seen that I was between several devils and the deep
sea. To eat or not to eat perplexed me more than the problem conveyed
by a few shorter words perplexed a certain prince, who, had he lived a
few centuries later (out of a book), might have been forced to enter a
kingdom where kings and princes are made and unmade on short notice.
Indeed, he might have lost his principality entirely--or, at least, his
subjects; for, as I later had occasion to observe, the frequency with
which a dethroned reason mounts a throne and rules a world is such that
self-crowned royalty receives but scant homage from the less elated
members of the court.

For several weeks I ate but little. Though the desire for food was not
wanting, my mind (that dog-in-the-manger) refused to let me satisfy my