And now the watcher, on whom perhaps depended the duration of a worthier life than his, had paltered with his trust, while drinking at the beer-house or chattering with a sweetheart, the bell might ring unheeded, and the unhappy creature, falling with the last tremor of vitality, to obtain a desperate succor, would become indeed the corpse like which he had been laid out in the morgue.

Claudius smiled grimly and sadly.  On what flimsy bases the best plant of wise men too often rest!  The latest power of nature had been harnessed to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man.  The bell would tinkle—­the watcher would be laughing out of earshot—­and the life would sink back into Lethe after swimming to the shore!

The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed with the sexton, the undertaker’s men and the hearse-coachman.

If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most uselessly?  The resuscitated man would not be “of his parish,” since he was a wanderer from afar.  Let the natives bury their own dead!

At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very loudly.  It sounded in his ear like the last trump.  Could he doubt that this appeal was to him exclusively?  The removal of the custodian, his own miraculous escape—­all pointed to this conclusion.

But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his road, repeat to him the alarm?  Not much time would be lost, for the gong still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor’s in such a crisis.

But Claudius’ hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer.  On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of destruction.  He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth, to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.

He glanced at the brazen monitor:  its surface still shivered, though his senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound.  But there was no delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose verge it was balanced.

It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so gladly climbed.  On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted that his goal was there.

He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door.  Heavy with iron banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it, but Claudius dragged it open with violence.  He sprang inside with the vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was no agreeable sight.