ll drinking-glasses; a dirty pack of playing-cards; the mad watchman's
song, with a woodcut illustration of the suicide--all lay huddled
together. He took from the drawer the song, and two of the
drinking-glasses, and called to his little guest to come out of the cell.

"There;" he said, filling the glasses, "you never tasted such wine as
that in all your life. Off with it!"

Jack turned away with a look of disgust. "What did you say of wine, when
I drank with you the other night?" he asked reproachfully. "You said it
would warm my heart, and make a man of me. And what did it do? I couldn't
stand on my legs. I couldn't hold up my head--I was so sleepy and stupid
that Joseph had to take me upstairs to bed. I hate your wine! Your wine's
a liar, who promises and doesn't perform! I'm weary enough, and wretched
enough in my mind, as it is. No more wine for me!"

"Wrong!" remarked Schwartz, emptying his glass, and smacking his lips
after it.

"You made a serious mistake the other night--you didn't drink half
enough. Give the good liquor a fair chance, my son. No, you won't? Must I
try a little gentle persuasion before you will come back to your chair?"
Suiting the action to the word, he put his arm round Jack. "What's this I
feel under my hand?" he asked. "A bottle?" He took it out of Jack's
breast-pocket. "Lord help us!" he exclaimed; "it looks like physic!"

Jack snatched it away from him, with a cry of delight. "The very thing
for me--and I never thought of it!"

It was the phial which Madame Fontaine had repentantly kept to herself,
after having expressly filled it for him with the fatal dose of
"Alexander's Wine"--the phial which he had found, when he first opened
the "Pink-Room Cupboard." In the astonishment and delight of finding the
blue-glass bottle immediately afterwards, he had entirely forgotten it.
Nothing had since happened to remind him that it was in his pocket, until
Schwartz had stumbled on the discovery.

"It cures you when you are tired or troubled in your mind," Jack
announced in his grandest manner, repeating Madame Fontaine's own words.
"Is there any water here?"

"Not a drop, thank Heaven!" said Schwartz, devoutly.

"Give me my glass, then. I once tried the remedy by itself, and it stung
me as it went down. The wine won't hurt me, with this splendid stuff in
it. I'll take it in the wine."

"Who told you to take it?" Schwartz asked, holding back the glass.

"Mrs. Housekeeper told me."

"A