It is all very easy for you, middle-aged reader, sitting over this page in the broad daylight, to call me by all manner of asinine and anserine unchristian names, because I had these fancies running through my head.  I don’t care much for your abuse.  The question is not, what it is reasonable for a man to think about, but what he actually does think about, in the dark, and when he is alone, and his whole body seems but one great nerve of hearing, and he sees the phosphorescent flashes of his own eyeballs as they turn suddenly in the direction of the last strange noise,—­what he actually does think about, as he lies and recalls all the wild stories his head is full of, his fancy hinting the most alarming conjectures to account for the simplest facts about him, his common-sense laughing them to scorn the next minute, but his mind still returning to them, under one shape or another, until he gets very nervous and foolish, and remembers how pleasant it used to be to have his mother come and tuck him up and go and sit within call, so that she could hear him at any minute, if he got very much scared and wanted her.  Old babies that we are!

Daylight will clear up all that lamp-light has left doubtful.  I longed for the morning to come, for I was more curious than ever.  So, between my fancies and anticipations, I had but a poor night of it, and came down tired to the breakfast-table.  My visit was not to be made until after this morning hour; there was nothing urgent, so the servant was ordered to tell me.

It was the first breakfast at which the high chair at the side of Iris had been unoccupied.—­You might jest as well take away that chair,—­said our landlady,—­he’ll never want it again.  He acts like a man that ’s struck with death, ‘n’ I don’t believe he ’ll ever come out of his chamber till he ’s laid out and brought down a corpse.—­These good women do put things so plainly!  There were two or three words in her short remark that always sober people, and suggest silence or brief moral reflections.

—­Life is dreadful uncerting,—­said the Poor Relation,—­and pulled in her social tentacles to concentrate her thoughts on this fact of human history.

—­If there was anything a fellah could do,—­said the young man John, so called,—­a fellah ‘d like the chance o’ helpin’ a little cripple like that.  He looks as if he couldn’t turn over any handier than a turtle that’s laid on his back; and I guess there a’n’t many people that know how to lift better than I do.  Ask him if he don’t want any watchers.  I don’t mind settin’ up any more ’n a cat-owl.  I was up all night twice last month.