ng to
fasten in his hair. One glance at his face told all.

"It is the fever," said Antoine; and he put down the bread and water and
fetched an old blanket and a pillow; and that day and for many days, the
gaoler hung above his prisoner's pallet with the tenderness of a woman.
Was he haunted by the vision of a burly figure that had bent over his
own sick bed in the Rue de la Croix? Did the voice (once so familiar in
counsel and benediction!) echo still in his ears?

"_The blessing of a dying priest upon you if you do well, and his curse
if you do ill to this poor child, whose home was my home in better
days._"

Be this as it may, Antoine tended his patient with all the constancy
compatible with keeping his presence in the prison a secret; and it was
not till the crisis was safely past, that he began to visit the cell
less frequently, and re-assumed the harsh manners which he held to befit
his office.

Monsieur the Viscount's mind rambled much in his illness. He called for
his mother, who had long been dead. He fancied himself in his own
chateau. He thought that all his servants stood in a body before him,
but that not one would move to wait on him. He thought that he had
abundance of the most tempting food and cooling drinks, but placed just
beyond his reach. He thought that he saw two lights like stars near
together, which were close to the ground, and kept appearing and then
vanishing away. In time he became more sensible; the chateau melted into
the stern reality of his prison walls; the delicate food became bread
and water; the servants disappeared like spectres; but in the empty
cells, in the dark corners near the floor, he still fancied that he saw
two sparks of light coming and going, appearing and then vanishing away.
He watched them till his giddy head would bear it no longer, and he
closed his eyes and slept. When he awoke he was much better, but when he
raised himself and turned towards the stone--there, by the bread and the
broken pitcher, sat a dirty, ugly, wrinkled toad gazing at him, Monsieur
the Viscount, with eyes of yellow fire.

Monsieur the Viscount had long ago forgotten the toad which had alarmed
his childhood; but his national dislike to that animal had not been
lessened by years, and the toad of the prison seemed likely to fare no
better than the toad of the chateau. He dragged himself from his pallet,
and took up one of the large damp stones which lay about the floor of
the cell, to throw