He lay shivering under the dingy coverlet, his limbs like ice, his head on fire, meditating his revenge. He was not going to lie there like an unreasoning animal till death released him from suffering. He would be even with Vyvyan Topsparkle before he died, brief as his time might be. The beldame came in presently, before he had had time to shape his thoughts. She brought two basins of gruel, and a rushlight in a great iron cage, which she set upon the empty hearth, where it looked like a lighthouse shedding long slanting lines of light over a dark sea. "You'll not want anything more to-night, will you, good gentleman?" she asked. "I'm going home to my family, and there's no one else in the house that cares to come into this room; so I hope you'll spend a comfortable night, and to-morrow morning old Biddy Flanagan will come and look after ye again. Lord! how sweet he sleeps!" looking down at the slumberer behind the curtain. "Sure, there never was such a cure; but I'm afraid his beauty is a thrifle damaged, poor dear sowl." "What's the hour, woman?" asked Fétis. "Sure, darlint, 'tis just on the stroke of six." "And quite dark outside?" "As black as your hat, surr. God bless your honour, and give yez a good night's rest!" She was gone, in haste to return to her brood, and to feed them with broken victuals secreted about her person at odd intervals during her daily duties. 'Twas almost as tender a thing, though not altogether so honest, as the maternal ministrations of the pelican. Fétis dozed for a little, wandered in his mind for a little, then woke with a start, perfectly lucid, and heard the clock of St. Bride's strike ten. No, he would not lie there like a dog. He would find a way of escape somehow. He got up, and though he reeled and staggered for the first minute or two, while he groped for his clothes by the dim glimmer of the rushlight, he felt stronger presently--much stronger than he had felt in the morning, when he tried to dress himself and gave it up for a bad job. It was but the strength of fever, perhaps, but it served. He shuffled on his clothes and went to the door. It was locked on the outside. Then he tried the window, a rotten old guillotine sash, which opened easily and hung loose upon a frayed and rotten cord. He found a piece of wood in the fireplace, and propped the sash up before he dared look out. His fellow-patient had been wakeful and slightly delirious in the earlier part of the evening, but had sunk off to sleep again, and was snoring heavily.