e others gathered noiselessly outside the window and
listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a
low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard,
but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.

Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.

They held their breath.

"Come out," called the doctor softly.

The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.

At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself,
was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking
with excitement.

"Do you suppose he's forgotten English?" she whispered to Richard, who
made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe's
father and lost memories.

"I think the doctor had better take you in hand," said Billie.

"I have an incurable disease," answered the young man, not in the least
ashamed.

Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of
the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The
young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up,
the German girl was saying:

"I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?"

"Of course," answered the doctor impatiently, "but what did he ask you?"

Alberdina broke into German.

"No, no. In English."

"He very sig yet ees----"

The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.

"I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr.
Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at
the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at
Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, 'but a hut.'

"'I have been in an accident?'" the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell
translated it.

"When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.

"Seeing her shake her head, he said:

"'The Baron von Metz is here?'

"'No,' answered Alberdina.

"'None of the household?'"

Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in
Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram,
although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a "Miss Phoebe
Jones," at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had
been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the
telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into
unconsci