for the watchman was dead, and dead he remained. His death was reported,
and investigated. As day broke, his body was taken to the hospital.
It would be a pretty pass if the soul should come back and in all
probability look for its body in East Street, and fail to find it. Perhaps it
would rush to the police station first, next to the Directory Office where it
could advertise for lost articles, and last of all to the hospital. But we
needn't worry. The soul by itself is clever enough. It's the body that makes it
stupid.
As we said before, the watchman's body was taken to the hospital. They
put it in a room to be washed, and naturally the galoshes were pulled off
first of all. That brought the soul dashing back posthaste, and in a flash the
watchman came back to life. He swore it had been the most terrible night he
had ever experienced, and he would never go through it again, no, not for
two pennies. But it was over and done with. He was allowed to leave that
same day, but the galoshes were left at the hospital.
IV. A GREAT MOMENT, AND A MOST EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY
Everyone in Copenhagen knows what the entrance to Frederic's Hospital
looks like, but as some of the people who read this story may not have been
to Copenhagen, we must describe the building-briefly.
The hospital is fenced off from the street by a rather high railing of heavy
iron bars, which are spaced far enough apart-at least so the story goes-for
very thin internes to squeeze between them and pay little visits to the world
outside. The part of the body they had most difficulty in squeezing through
was the head. In this, as often happens in the world, small heads were the
most successful. So much for our description.
One of the young internes, of whom it could be said that he had a great
head only in a physical sense, had the night watch that evening. Outside the
rain poured down. But in spite of these difficulties he was bent upon getting
out for a quarter of an hour. There was no need for the doorman to know
about it, he thought, if he could just manage to slip through the fence. There
lay the galoshes that the watchman had forgotten, and while the interne had
