improve it,
and it leaves crumbs in the drink."

"Throw away that bit of cake, Jack, and have some more.

"May I help myself?"

"Certainly. But you haven't told me yet what you want to know."

At last he answered directly. "What I want to know is this," he said.
"Who poisoned Mr. Keller?"

He was cutting the cake as he spoke, and extracted a piece of candied
orange peel with the point of the knife. Once more, the widow's face had
escaped observation. She turned away quickly, and occupied herself in
mending the fire. In this position, her back was turned towards the
table--she could trust herself to speak.

"You are talking nonsense!" she said.

Jack stopped--with the cake half-way to his mouth. Here was a direct
attack on his dignity, and he was not disposed to put up with it. "I
never talk nonsense," he answered sharply.

"You do," Madame Fontaine rejoined, just as sharply on her side. "Mr.
Keller fell ill, as anyone else might fall ill. Nobody poisoned him."

Jack got on his legs. For the moment he actually forgot the cake.
"Nobody?" he repeated. "Tell me this, if you please: Wasn't Mr. Keller
cured out of the blue-glass bottle--like me?"

(Who had told him this? Joseph might have told him; Minna might have told
him. It was no time for inquiry; the one thing needful was to eradicate
the idea from his mind. She answered boldly, "Quite right, so far"--and
waited to see what came of it.)

"Very well," said Jack, "Mr. Keller was cured out of the blue-glass
bottle, like me. And _I_ was poisoned. Now?"

She flatly contradicted him again. "You were _not_ poisoned!"

Jack crossed the room, with a flash of the old Bedlam light in his eyes,
and confronted her at the fire place. "The devil is the father of lies,"
he said, lifting his hand solemnly. "No lies! I heard my master the
Doctor say I was poisoned."

She was ready with her answer. "Your master the Doctor said that to
frighten you. He didn't want you to taste his medicines in his absence
again. You drank double what any person ought to have drunk, you greedy
Jack, when you tasted that pretty violet-colored medicine in your
master's workshop. And you had yourself to thank--not poison, when you
fell ill."

Jack looked hard at her. He could reason so far as that he and Mr. Keller
must have taken the same poison, because he and Mr. Keller had been cured
out of the same bottle. But to premise that he had been made ill by an
overdose of medicine, and that Mr