have such a hard time of it!"

When he began to eat ravenously after his enforced abstinence,
hearty foods and heavy drinks were supplied. It is the German
fashion at such times to build up the strength quickly with lusty
meals. He was started promptly again on the road to gastric ruin.

Often at night a cold sweat would bead over Gard. What would he do
about Frau Bucher and Elsa? He had been thrown helpless into their
hands. Holy Smoke! Would he become a German in spite of himself? He
sometimes wished the Imperial Secret Service might scare him out of
the country as had been the case with the lucky Deming.

The Buchers had likely saved his life. He had been brought by them
faithfully back to health. How was he going to repay? What excuses
could he offer when the time came to face Frau's proposal? How could
he possibly make his escape at all agreeably? Was ever a fellow in
just such a pickle?

And here was the ever-capable Elsa dutifully bringing his viands and
at times reading to him stories from Hoffmann. She was like a real
fairy out of a German story book. The new Heine she had given him
lay there, but neither suggested opening it. It was not a thing to
get well over.

To a sick man, his nurse seems heavenly. And Elsa looked truly
golden as she sat there over the Hoffmann, with the sunlight
streaming about her head. In Gard's phantasmagoria at night there
had often been a blond maiden, dancing and lovely--but mingled at
length into some unpleasant circumstance like that connected with
the phantom princess he had ridden with in Italy.

Ernst, still limping from his beating, came in now and then and read
out of a ponderous volume on the Relation of German Music to the
Reformation. It was full of intricate, plodding, dull detail in the
German style, which the lad found of interest. But Gard, despite
this kindness, could not make much headway with it. Smoking was, of
course, permitted to accompany his man-like return to health, and it
was always a genial hour to have Anderson sitting there in the
wreaths of nicotine before the summery window, talking, talking.

The correspondent came several times, bringing comic papers. Gard
pleased him by saying he was veering round to the journalist's way
of thinking on things German. He related the Der Tag incident at the
ball. The family life of the Teutons, the life of the plain
people--all were substantiating the essential and alarming truth of
the old man's beliefs. At