him to himself.

He appreciated this woman, and the sentiment of this appreciation,
stirred by a display of something resembling emotion, only added another
pang to his mental anguish. When her voice ceased he moved uneasily, and
said:

"I haven't been feeling well for the last few days."

He might have meant this as an opening to a complete confidence; but Mrs
Verloc laid her head on the pillow again, and staring upward, went on:

"That boy hears too much of what is talked about here. If I had known
they were coming to-night I would have seen to it that he went to bed at
the same time I did. He was out of his mind with something he overheard
about eating people's flesh and drinking blood. What's the good of
talking like that?"

There was a note of indignant scorn in her voice. Mr Verloc was fully
responsive now.

"Ask Karl Yundt," he growled savagely.

Mrs Verloc, with great decision, pronounced Karl Yundt "a disgusting old
man." She declared openly her affection for Michaelis. Of the robust
Ossipon, in whose presence she always felt uneasy behind an attitude of
stony reserve, she said nothing whatever. And continuing to talk of that
brother, who had been for so many years an object of care and fears:

"He isn't fit to hear what's said here. He believes it's all true. He
knows no better. He gets into his passions over it."

Mr Verloc made no comment.

"He glared at me, as if he didn't know who I was, when I went downstairs.
His heart was going like a hammer. He can't help being excitable. I
woke mother up, and asked her to sit with him till he went to sleep. It
isn't his fault. He's no trouble when he's left alone."

Mr Verloc made no comment.

"I wish he had never been to school," Mrs Verloc began again brusquely.
"He's always taking away those newspapers from the window to read. He
gets a red face poring over them. We don't get rid of a dozen numbers in
a month. They only take up room in the front window. And Mr Ossipon
brings every week a pile of these F. P. tracts to sell at a halfpenny
each. I wouldn't give a halfpenny for the whole lot. It's silly
reading--that's what it is. There's no sale for it. The other day
Stevie got hold of one, and there was a story in it of a German soldier
officer tearing half-off the ear of a recruit, and nothing was done to
him for it. The brute! I couldn't do anything with Stevie that
afternoon. The story was enough, too, to make one's blood b