e, or insomnia, or betrayed
trust--whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to
end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which
belong only to the abnormal.

A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires
an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without
peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every
one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the
other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity.

To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of
life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him
wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in
the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the
Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At
first he listened to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim
Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though
it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the
bed to face the watchers.

"What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset.

"Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause. They told him that
it was.

"Any telegrams for me?" he asked.

There was an instant's hesitation. They had had no instructions on this
point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own
logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were
several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'."

"Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising
himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will.

"I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim
imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of
you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and
there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you."

"Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was
conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the
blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired.
Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams
lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that
of the doctor and the nurse.

"You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy
vibration in the voice--a sign