“And what have you done?”

“Done?  Why, I picked him up in my arms and carried him upstairs again.  And a fine job I had too!  Here!  Come here!”

Daniel strode impulsively across the shop—­the counterflap was up —­and opened a door at the back.  Samuel followed.  Never before had he penetrated so far into his cousin’s secrets.  On the left, within the doorway, were the stairs, dark; on the right a shut door; and in front an open door giving on to a yard.  At the extremity of the yard he discerned a building, vaguely lit, and naked figures strangely moving in it.

“What’s that?  Who’s there?” he asked sharply.

“That’s the bakehouse,” Daniel replied, as if surprised at such a question.  “It’s one of their long nights.”

Never, during the brief remainder of his life, did Samuel eat a mouthful of common bread without recalling that midnight apparition.  He had lived for half a century, and thoughtlessly eaten bread as though loaves grew ready-made on trees.

“Listen!” Daniel commanded him.

He cocked his ear, and caught a feeble, complaining wail from an upper floor.

“That’s Dick!  That is!” said Daniel Povey.

It sounded more like the distress of a child than of an adventurous young man of twenty-four or so.

“But is he in pain?  Haven’t you fetched the doctor?”

“Not yet,” answered Daniel, with a vacant stare.

Samuel gazed at him closely for a second.  And Daniel seemed to him very old and helpless and pathetic, a man unequal to the situation in which he found himself; and yet, despite the dignified snow of his age, wistfully boyish.  Samuel thought swiftly:  “This has been too much for him.  He’s almost out of his mind.  That’s the explanation.  Some one’s got to take charge, and I must.”  And all the courageous resolution of his character braced itself to the crisis.  Being without a collar, being in slippers, and his suspenders imperfectly fastened anyhow,—­these things seemed to be a part of the crisis.

“I’ll just run upstairs and have a look at him,” said Samuel, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Daniel did not reply.

There was a glimmer at the top of the stairs.  Samuel mounted, found the gas-jet, and turned it on full.  A dingy, dirty, untidy passage was revealed, the very antechamber of discomfort.  Guided by the moans, Samuel entered a bedroom, which was in a shameful condition of neglect, and lighted only by a nearly expired candle.  Was it possible that a house-mistress could so lose her self-respect?  Samuel thought of his own abode, meticulously and impeccably ‘kept,’ and a hard bitterness against Mrs. Daniel surged up in his soul.

“Is that you, doctor?” said a voice from the bed; the moans ceased.

Samuel raised the candle.

Dick lay there, his face, on which was a beard of several days’ growth, distorted by anguish, sweating; his tousled brown hair was limp with sweat.