broken bread, some cold soup, on which grease had formed a firm
coating.

Lying there, sleeping and waking and sleeping again, young Haeckel, one
time of His Majesty's secret service and student in the University, had
lost track of the days. He knew not how long he had been a prisoner,
except that it had been eternities. Twice a day, morning and evening,
came his jailer and loosened his bonds, brought food, of a sort, and
allowed him, not out of mercy, but because it was the Committee's
pleasure that for a time he should live, to move about the room and
bring the blood again to his numbed limbs.

He was to live because he knew many things which the Committee would
know. But, as the concierge daily reminded him, there was a limit to
mercy and to patience.

In the mean time they held him, a hostage against certain contingencies.
Held him and kept him barely alive. Already he tottered about the
room when his bonds were removed; but his eyes did not falter, or his
courage. Those whom he had served so well, he felt, would not forget
him. And meanwhile, knowing what he knew, he would die before he became
the tool of these workers in the dark.

So he lay and thought, and slept when thinking became unbearable, and
thus went his days and the long nights.

The concierge untied him, and stood back. "Now," he said.

But the boy--he was no more--lay still. He made one effort to rise, and
fell back.

"Up with you!" said the concierge, and jerked him to his feet. He caught
the rail of the bed, or he would have fallen. "Now--stand like a man."

He stood then, facing his captors without defiance. He had worn all that
out in the first days of his imprisonment. He was in shirt and trousers
only, his feet bare, his face unshaven--the thin first beard of early
manhood.

"Well?" he said at last. "I thought--you've been here once to-night."

"Right, my cuckoo. But to-night I do you double honor."

But seeing that Haeckel was swaying, he turned to Herman Spier. "Go
down," he said, "and bring up some brandy. He can do nothing for us in
this state."

He drank the brandy eagerly when it came, and the concierge poured him a
second quantity. What with weakness and slow starvation, it did what no
threat of personal danger would have done. It broke down his resistance.
Not immediately. He fought hard, when the matter was first broached
to him. But in the end he took the letter and, holding it close to the
candle, he examined it closely