"I had a presentiment that we should want a consoling something of this
sort," said Fritz. "Fill your glass, David, and let out the worst of it
at once, before we get to the end of the bottle."

I let out the best of it first--that is to say, I told him what I have
related in the preceding pages. Fritz was deeply interested: full of
compassion for Jack Straw, but not in the least converted to my aunt's
confidence in him.

"Jack is supremely pitiable," he remarked; "but Jack is also a smoldering
volcano--and smoldering volcanos burst into eruption when the laws of
nature compel them. My only hope is in Mr. Superintendent. Surely he will
not let this madman loose on us, with nobody but your aunt to hold the
chain? What did she really say, when you left Jack, and had your private
talk in the reception-room? One minute, my friend, before you begin,"
said Fritz, groping under the bench upon which we were seated. "I had a
second presentiment that we might want a second bottle--and here it is!
Fill your glass; and let us establish ourselves in our respective
positions--you to administer, and I to sustain, a severe shock to the
moral sense. I think, David, this second bottle is even more deliciously
brisk than the first. Well, and what did your aunt say?"

My aunt had said much more than I could possibly tell him.

In substance it had come to this:--After seeing the whip, and seeing the
chains, and seeing the man--she had actually determined to commit herself
to the perilous experiment which her husband would have tried, if he had
lived! As to the means of procuring Jack Straw's liberation from the
Hospital, the powerful influence which had insisted on his being received