"When Jane comes back, I'll give you both a quiet little supper
there after the play maybe. It'll be my treat, my boy."

The old man worked patiently and fruitlessly over his "inventions."
They came to naught, but they lightened his otherwise barren
existence. There was not a day or night in which his mind was wholly
free from thoughts of James Bansemer.

He counted the weeks and days until the man would be free, and his
eyes narrowed with these furtive glances into the future. He felt
in his heart that James Bansemer would come to him at once, and
that the reckoning for his single hour of triumph would be a heavy
one to pay. Sometimes he would sit for hours with his eyes staring
at the Napoleon above the bookcase, something like dread in their
depths. Then again he would laugh with glee, pound the table with
his bony hand--much to the consternation of Chang--and exclaim as
if addressing a multitude:

"I hope I'll be dead when he gets out of there! I hope I won't live
to see him, free again. That would spoil everything. Let me see,
I'm seventy-one now; I surely can't live much longer. I want to
die seeing him as I saw him that day. The last thing I think of on
earth must be James Bansemer's face behind the bars. Ha, ha, ha!
It was worth all the years, that one hour! It was even worth while
being his slave. I'm not afraid of him! No! That's ridiculous. Of
course, I'm not afraid of him. I only want to know he's lying in
a cell when I die out here in the great, free world! By my soul,
he'll know that a handsome face isn't always the best. He laughed
at my face, curse him. His face won her--his good looks! Well,
well, well, I only hope she's where she can see his face now!"