one cry at me
like a pack of dogs. 'Now, Jack! we are waiting for you; your chains are
off, and the sun's shining, and Mistress's carriage is at the gate--join
us, Jack, in a good yell; a fine, tearing, screeching, terrifying, mad
yell!' I dropped on my knees, down in the bottom of the carriage; and I
held on by the skirts of Mistress's dress. 'Look at me!' I said; 'I won't
burst out; I won't frighten you, if I die for it. Only help me with your
eyes! only look at me!' And she put me on the front seat of the carriage,
opposite her, and she never took her eyes off me all the way through the
streets till we got to the house. 'I believe in you, Jack,' she said. And
I wouldn't even open my lips to answer her--I was so determined to be
quiet. Ha! ha! how you two fellows would have yelled, in my place!" He
sat down again in his corner, delighted with his own picture of the two
fellows who would have yelled in his place.

"And what did Mistress do with you when she brought you home?" I asked.

His gaiety suddenly left him. He lifted one of his hands, and waved it to
and fro gently in the air.

"You are too loud, David," he said. "All this part of it must be spoken
softly--because all this part of it is beautiful, and kind, and good.
There was a picture in the room, of angels and their harps. I wish I had
the angels and the harps to help me tell you about it. Fritz there came
in with us, and called it a bedroom. I knew better than that; I called it
Heaven. You see, I thought of the prison and the darkness and the cold
and the chains and the straw--and I named it Heaven. You two may say what
you please; Mistress said I was right."

He closed his eyes with a luxurious sense of self-esteem, and appeared to
absorb himself in his own thoughts. Fritz unintentionally roused him by
continuing the story of Jack's introduction to the bedroom.

"Our little friend," Fritz began confidentially, "did the strangest
things when he found himself in his new room. It was a cold day; and he
insisted on letting the fire out. Then he looked at the bedclothes,
and----"

Jack solemnly opened his eyes again, and stopped the narrative at that
point.

"You are not the right person to speak of it," he said. "Nobody must
speak of it but a person who understands me. You shan't be disappointed,
David. I understand myself--_I'll_ tell you about it. You saw what sort
of place I lived in and slept in at the madhouse, didn't you?"

"I saw it, Jack--and