senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no
delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose
verge it was balanced.

It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
that his goal was there.

He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
no agreeable sight.

A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads--sluggishly
swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted--their clothes
were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
pauper's hell.

Which had rung the bell?

Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the