“What’s that? Who’s there?” he asked sharply.
“That’s the bakehouse,” Daniel replied, as if surprised at such a question. “It’s one of their long nights.”
Never, during the brief remainder of his life, did Samuel eat a mouthful of common bread without recalling that midnight apparition. He had lived for half a century, and thoughtlessly eaten bread as though loaves grew ready-made on trees.
“Listen!” Daniel commanded him.
He cocked his ear, and caught a feeble, complaining wail from an upper floor.
“That’s Dick! That is!” said Daniel Povey.
It sounded more like the distress of a child than of an adventurous young man of twenty-four or so.
“But is he in pain? Haven’t you fetched the doctor?”
“Not yet,” answered Daniel, with a vacant stare.
Samuel gazed at him closely for a second. And Daniel seemed to him very old and helpless and pathetic, a man unequal to the situation in which he found himself; and yet, despite the dignified snow of his age, wistfully boyish. Samuel thought swiftly: “This has been too much for him. He’s almost out of his mind. That’s the explanation. Some one’s got to take charge, and I must.” And all the courageous resolution of his character braced itself to the crisis. Being without a collar, being in slippers, and his suspenders imperfectly fastened anyhow,—these things seemed to be a part of the crisis.