At last Frank secured the revolver, but even then the maniac fought on, screaming:
“He deserves death! He shall not escape! Let me go! I will kill him! I will kill him!”
“Be quiet, professor!” commanded Frank, as he finally forced the man down upon a chair and held him there. “Be still, I tell you! You know me. I am Frank.”
“Then why didn’t you let me kill him?” panted the man, giving up at last. “You are the one he robbed. He should die, as he deserves! He was a coward! Once he stood up to shoot himself with that very pistol, but his nerve failed him, and he ran away, leaving me here in his place. I have been watching for him to come back. Ha! ha! ha! Oh, he can’t escape!”
Frank talked soothingly to the man, and finally got him back into the bed. The professor was deathly white, and his eyes fairly burned. His hands were hot and cold by turns.
Frank sat by the bedside till the doctor came and gave the sick man something that put him to sleep.
When the physician heard Frank’s story, he shook his head, saying:
“I am afraid he is done for. There is every indication that his reason is shattered. If he has another violent spell, you will be forced to have him taken to a place where he can be properly cared for.”
“As long as there is a ray of hope, doctor, he shall remain here, and I will care for him myself.”
That night Frank slept in a room near at hand, with the door standing open, so that he could hear the nurse if she called. At intervals he awoke and listened. Midnight passed, morning approached. Frank was sleeping in the gray light of dawn when the nurse awoke him and said:
“He is awake now and a great change has come over him. He is asking for you.”
Frank rose immediately, a feeling of sickening dread stabbing him to the heart.
When he entered the professor’s chamber, the sick man lay with his face turned toward the door. Near the bed a lamp burned faintly, although the pale light of morning sifted in at the windows.
Frank uttered the exclamation gently, hurrying to the bedside and clasping the thin hands that lay on the white spread.
“Do you think so?” asked the man, with a voice that seemed to come from a great distance.
“But you--you cannot wish to see me get well? You would not wish, even though I have been false to my trust and ruined you, that I should recover and spend the rest of my days in prison? I am an old, old man. At best there could not be many years left for me. They would be made shorter within prison walls.”