As I began to undress, I glanced at the old man in the corner; he sat in the same attitude, with his head sunk in his hands. "What is wrong with him?" I asked.
Dr. Bardolph Just was bending over the body of the man on the couch; he did not look round. "Something snapped in his brain a little time ago," he answered me. "It is as though you had snapped the mainspring of a watch; the brain in him died at that moment."
"What caused it?" I asked, still shedding my clothes.
"Shock. Get your clothes off, and don't talk so much," he snapped.
He tossed certain garments to me one by one, and I flung him my own in return. So the change was made, and I presently stood up and looked down at myself, and saw myself as that young man who had stood in the garden and had talked to the girl. For, indeed, I was something like him in figure, and height, and appearance. When the doctor moved away from the couch I gasped, for there I lay, in the dress I had worn for a year, branded and numbered—and dead. It was not a pretty sight; I turned away from it, shuddering.
But the doctor laughed softly. "It is not given to every man to see himself as he will one day be," he said.
"What was his name?" I whispered.
"Gregory Pennington," he answered, looking at the body. "So you see at one stroke we get rid of Gregory Pennington, and of a certain unfortunate convict, named Norton Hyde. So far as your further christening is concerned, we must arrange that later, for this matter must be taken with a certain boldness, or weak spots may be discovered in it. I think you said you were hungry, and I daresay you've had enough of this room for the present."
"More than enough," I replied.
"Then come along, and let us see if we can find something to put better courage into you," he said. And gratefully enough I followed him from the room in that new disguise.