Leave little Jack with me! I'll send him home safe and sound--I feel like
a father to him."

The doctor hesitated. What was he to do? Jack had already returned to the
cell in which his mistress lay. To remove him by the brutal exercise of
main force was a proceeding from which Doctor Dormann's delicacy of
feeling naturally recoiled--to say nothing of the danger of provoking
that outbreak of madness against which the doctor had himself warned Mr.
Keller. Persuasion he had already tried in vain. Delegated authority to
control Jack had not been conferred on him. There seemed to be no other
course than to yield.

"If you persist in your obstinacy," he said to Jack, "I must return alone
to Mr. Keller's house, and tell him that I have left you here with your
friend."

Jack was already absorbed in his own thoughts. He only repeated vacantly,
"Good-night."

Doctor Dormann left the room. Schwartz looked in at his guest. "Wait
there for the present," he said. "The porter will be here directly: I
don't want him to see you."

The porter came in after an interval. "All right for the night?" he
asked.

"All right," Schwartz answered.

The porter withdrew in silence. The night-watchman's reply was his
authority for closing the gates of the Deadhouse until the next morning.

Schwartz returned to Jack--still watching patiently by the side of the
couch. "Was she a relation of yours?" he asked.

"All the relations in the world to me!" Jack burst out passionately.
"Father and mother--and brother and sister and wife."

"Aye, aye? Five relations in one is what I call an economical family,"
said Schwartz. "Come out here, to the table. You stood treat last
time--my turn now. I've got the wine handy. Yes, yes--she was a fine
woman in her time, I dare say. Why haven't you put her into a coffin like
other people?"

"Why?" Jack repeated indignantly. "I couldn't prevent them from bringing
her here; but I could have burnt the house down over their heads, if they
had dared to put her into a coffin! Are you stupid enough to suppose that
Mistress is dead? Don't you know that I'm watching and waiting here till
she wakes? Ah! I beg your pardon--you don't know. The rest of them would
have let her die. I saved her life. Come here, and I'll tell you how."

He dragged Schwartz into the cell. As the watchman disappeared from view,
the wild white face of Madame Fontaine appeared between the curtains of
her hiding-place, listening to Jack's narra