Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/168

   smote the heavy door several times with the ball of his hand.

Jacob!' he called, softly. 'Jacob, Jacob, my dear little Jacob!' He leaped back and raised his pick; it seemed as if the sounds of his sick brother's distress had robbed him of his senses.

"I seized the pick, and he whirled on me with a snarl. Indeed, Doctor, the Jew was like a tigress who hears the wail of a captured cub.

" 'Idiot!' I whispered, 'do you want to rouse the garrison?'

" 'Listen!' said he, and raised his hand suddenly. I listened, and in a lull of the surf there reached our ears a series of pathetic sounds. You know the sound, Doctor; the feeble strangling of a pulmonary patient when too weak to cough, something between a cough and a rattle—and then it suddenly ceased and there came to our ears, in a voice as thin as a wafer's edge:  'Isidore!' 

"And then Rosenthal went mad. He knew, [ 152 ]