Schwartz, highly diverted, threw his cap up to the ceiling. "Drinkable gold, ora pro nobis!" he shouted, profanely adapting himself to Jack's humor. "You shall be Pope, my boy—and I'll be the Pope's butler. Allow me to help your sacred majesty back to your chair."
Jack's answer betrayed another change in him. His tones were lofty; his manner was distant. "I prefer the floor," he said; "hand me down my mug." As he reached up to take it, the alarm-bell over the door caught his eye. Debased as he was by the fiery strength of the drink, his ineradicable love for his mistress made its noble influence felt through the coarse fumes that were mounting to his brain. "Stop!" he cried. "I must be where I can see the bell—I must be ready for her, the instant it rings."
He crawled across the floor, and seated himself with his back against the wall of one of the empty cells, on the left-hand side of the room. Schwartz, shaking his fat sides with laughter, handed down the cup to his guest. Jack took no notice of it. His eyes, reddened already by the brandy, were fixed on the bell opposite to him. "I want to know about it," he said. "What's that steel thing there, under the brass cover?"
"What's the use of asking?" Schwartz replied, returning to his bottle.
"I want to know!"
"Patience, Jack—patience. Follow my fore-finger. My hand seems to shake a little; but it's as honest a hand as ever was. That steel thing there, is the bell hammer, you know. And, bless your heart, the hammer's everything. Cost, Lord knows how much. Another toast, my son. Good luck to the bell!"
Jack changed again; he began to cry. "She's sleeping too long on that sofa, in there," he said sadly. "I want her to speak to me; I want to hear her scold me for drinking in this horrid place. My heart's all cold again. Where's the mug?" He found it, as he spoke; the fire of the brandy went down his throat once more, and lashed him into frantic high spirits. "I'm up in the clouds!" he shouted; "I'm riding on a whirlwind. Sing, Schwartz! Ha! there are the stars twinkling through the skylight! Sing the stars down from heaven!"
Schwartz emptied his bottle, without the ceremony of using the glass. "Now we are primed!" he said—"now for the mad watchman's song!" He snatched up the paper from the table, and roared out hoarsely the first verse:
The moon was shining, cold and bright,
In the Frankfort Deadhouse, on New Year's night
And I was the watchman, left alone,
While the rest to feast and dance were gone;
I envied their lot, and cursed my own—
Poor me!
"Chorus, Jack! 'I envied their lot and cursed my own'——"