"Ah, Jack, that was a great day in your life, wasn't it?"
"A great day? Oh, good Lord in Heaven! where are there words that are big enough to speak about it?" He sprang to his feet, wild with the sudden tumult of his own recollections. "The sun—the warm, golden, glorious, beautiful sun—met us when we came out of the gates, and all but drove me stark-staring-mad with the joy of it! Forty thousand devils—little straw-colored, lively, tempting devils—(mind, I counted them!)—all crawled over me together. They sat on my shoulders—and they tickled my hands—and they scrambled in my hair—and they were all in one cry at me like a pack of dogs. 'Now, Jack! we are waiting for you; your chains are off, and the sun's shining, and Mistress's carriage is at the gate—join us, Jack, in a good yell; a fine, tearing, screeching, terrifying, mad yell!' I dropped on my knees, down in the bottom of the carriage; and I held on by the skirts of Mistress's dress. 'Look at me!' I said; 'I won't burst out; I won't frighten you, if I die for it. Only help me with your eyes! only look at me!' And she put me on the front seat of the carriage, opposite her, and she never took her eyes off me all the way through the streets till we got to the house. 'I believe in you, Jack,' she said. And I wouldn't even open my lips to answer her—I was so determined to be quiet. Ha! ha! how you two fellows would have yelled, in my place!" He sat down again in his corner, delighted with his own picture of the two fellows who would have yelled in his place.
"And what did Mistress do with you when she brought you home?" I asked.
His gaiety suddenly left him. He lifted one of his hands, and waved it to and fro gently in the air.
"You are too loud, David," he said. "All this part of it must be spoken softly—because all this part of it is beautiful, and kind, and good. There was a picture in the room, of angels and their harps. I wish I had the angels and the harps to help me tell you about it. Fritz there came in with us, and called it a bedroom. I knew better than that; I called it Heaven. You see, I thought of the prison and the darkness and the cold and the chains and the straw—and I named it Heaven. You two may say what you please; Mistress said I was right."
He closed his eyes with a luxurious sense of self-esteem, and appeared to absorb himself in his own thoughts. Fritz unintentionally roused him by continuing the story of Jack's introduction to the bedroom.
"Our little friend," Fritz began confidentially, "did the strangest things when he found himself in his new room. It was a cold day; and he insisted on letting the fire out. Then he looked at the bedclothes, and——"
Jack solemnly opened his eyes again, and stopped the narrative at that point.
"You are not the right person to speak of it," he said. "Nobody must speak of it but a person who understands me. You shan't be disappointed, David. I understand myself—I'll tell you about it. You saw what sort of place I lived in and slept in at the madhouse, didn't you?"
"I saw it, Jack—and I can never forget it."