"Well," replied the nurse, "they may indeed shut up quite a lot more. He can deal with the violent ones better than the professor can. There was one here who gave us a lot of trouble, because he wouldn't eat. He'd thrown his plate at me head. Look here! What a cut! But your brother had him eating inside of ten minutes." "Will he soon be free?" asked Johannes. "They ought to make him a professor," was the reply. "I've heard they're to examine him to-morrow." * * * * * Little was said while Johannes was accompanying Marjon to the boarding-house in which she now lived. It was kept by one of Markus's friends, a workman in the iron foundry. The man was called Jan van Tijn, and was foreman of the hammer-works. He earned sixteen guldens a week, and had nine children. His dwelling had three small rooms and a kitchen, and there twelve persons had to sleep--father, mother, nine children, and the boarder. But Juffrouw van Tijn was still young, with a fresh face and a pair of strong arms, and she made light of her work. "If there are to be still more of us," said Jan, "we must begin to lie in a row--spoon-fashion." Jan had a long blonde moustache and a pair of shrewd eyes, and his manner of speech was coarse--terribly so. Marjon slept in the little kitchen, and, as Jan's eldest girl was not yet sixteen, Marjon could be of great service in the family. "Did you get him out?" asked Jan, who had come in his working-blouse to meet them. And when they shook their heads, he began cursing, tremendously. "Well-! Did ye ever see such scoundrels? I'd like to pitch into the loons! Can't that perfesser see that Markus knows more in his little finger than the whole scurvy lot of them--patients, doctors, perfessers, and all? And because he's given the priest a dressing-down, and broken an image worth a nickel, must he be shut up in a mad-house? Well-!!!" Jan was furious, and proposed, with the aid of a sledge-hammer, to convince the learned gentlemen that they had made a blunder. "He is to be examined to-morrow," said Johannes, thinking to calm him. But Jan retorted scornfully, "Examined! Examined! I'll examine their own cocoanuts with a three-inch gimlet! If anything comes out but sawdust I hope to drop dead." He said much more that I will not repeat. Johannes stayed away from the Villa Dolores the entire day, for it was too dreary for him there. He would now far rather be in this poor household with its many children. He noticed how the young mother managed her uproarious little troop, how constantly and cheerfully busy she was the whole day long--bearing, and getting the better of, difficulties which would have dismayed and discouraged many another.