and gabble from the reeking and sleepless patients, who had been penned up for the long and terrible night.  Concluding that every thing was as safe for his operations as it would become at any time, he slowly felt his way to the door of the ward which held Paul Benedict, and found it fastened on the outside, as he had anticipated.  Lifting the bar from the iron arms that held it, and pushing back the bolt, he silently opened the door.  Whether the darkness within was greater than that without, or whether the preternaturally quickened ears of the patients detected the manipulations of the fastenings, he did not know, but he was conscious at once that the tumult within was hushed.  It was apparent that they had been visited in the night before, and that the accustomed intruder had come on no gentle errand..  There was not a sound as Jim felt his way along from stall to stall, sickened almost to retching by the insufferable stench that reached his nostrils and poisoned every inspiration.

On the morning of his previous visit he had taken all the bearings with reference to an expedition in the darkness, and so, feeling his way along the hall, he had little difficulty in finding the cell in which he had left his old friend.

Jim tried the door, but found it locked.  His great fear was that the lock would be changed, but it had not been meddled with, and had either been furnished with a new key, or had been locked with a skeleton.  He slipped the stolen key in, and the bolt slid back.  Opening the outer door, he tried the inner, but the key did not fit the lock.  Here was a difficulty not entirely unexpected, but seeming to be insurmountable.  He quietly went back to the door of entrance, and as quietly closed it, that no sound of violence might reach and wake the inmates of the house across the road.  Then he returned, and whispered in a low voice to the inmate: 

“Paul Benedict, give us your benediction.”

“Jim,” responded the man in a whisper, so light that it could reach no ear but his own.

“Don’t make no noise, not even if I sh’d make consid’able,” said Jim.

Then, grasping the bars with both hands, he gave the door a sudden pull, into which he put all the might of his huge frame.  A thousand pounds would not have measured it, and the door yielded, not at the bolt, but at the hinges.  Screws deeply imbedded were pulled out bodily.  A second lighter wrench completed the task, and the door was noiselessly set aside, though Jim was trembling in every muscle.

Benedict stood at the door.

“Here’s the robe that Abram sent ye,” said Jim, throwing over the poor man’s shoulders an ample blanket; and putting one of his large arms around him, he led him shuffling out of the hall, and shut and bolted the door.