tress, if I have frightened you."

His voice was wonderfully gentle. But there was something strange in his
accent--and there was perhaps a foreign formality in his addressing my
aunt as "Mistress." Englishmen in general would have called her "ma'am."

We men kept our places at a safe distance from his chain. My aunt, with a
woman's impulsive contempt of danger when her compassion is strongly
moved, stepped forward to him. The superintendent caught her by the arm
and checked her. "Take care," he said. "You don't know him as well as we
do."

Jack's eyes turned on the superintendent, dilating slowly. His lips began
to part again--I feared to see the ferocious expression in his face once
more. I was wrong. In the very moment of another outbreak of rage, the
unhappy man showed that he was still capable, under strong internal
influence, of restraining himself. He seized the chain that held him to
the wall in both hands, and wrung it with such convulsive energy that I
almost expected to see the bones of his fingers start through the skin.
His head dropped on his breast, his wasted figure quivered. It was only
for an instant. When he looked up again, his poor vacant brown eyes
turned on my aunt, dim with tears. She instantly shook off the
superintendent's hold on her arm. Before it was possible to interfere,
she was bending over Jack Straw, with one of her pretty white hands laid
gently on his head.

"How your head burns, poor Jack!" she said simply. "Does my hand cool
it?"

Still holding desperately by the chain, he answered like a timid child.
"Yes, Mistress; your hand cools it. Thank you."

She took up a little straw hat on which he had been working when his door
was opened. "This is very nicely done, Jack," she went on. "Tell me how
you first came to make these pretty things with your straw."

He looked up at her with a sudden accession of confidence; her interest
in the hat had flattered him.

"Once," he said, "there was a time when my hands were the maddest things
about me. They used to turn against me and tear my hair and my flesh. An
angel in a dream told me how to keep them quiet. An angel said, "Let them
work at your straw." All day long I plaited my straw. I would have gone
on all night too, if they would only have given me a light. My nights are
bad, my nights are dreadful. The raw air eats into me, the black darkness
frightens me. Shall I tell you what is the greatest blessing in the
world? Daylight! Dayl