ught of that!" Then he shook his head violently.

"I cannot think of her as anything but a baby!"

"Yes, but she'd be a grown-up young lady," insisted Jenny.

"How old was she when you--when she--when you left her."

"Three years and two months," said Von Barwig softly.

"Then she'd be nineteen," said Jenny, "just my age; big, grown-up young
lady."

"She is my little baby," repeated Von Barwig plaintively. "I can see
her now so plainly; always playing with her little doll--the doll with
one eye out. That was the doll she loved, Jenny; the doll she had when
I last saw her."

The old man was calm now. The idea that the girl was a grown-up young
woman, although obvious enough, changed his train of thought. For the
moment it took his attention from the immediate cause of his
unhappiness, and brought his imagination into play.

"A grown-up young lady!" he mused. "Yes, of course! But I can't see
her as grown up; I can't see her, Jenny. I can only remember her as a
wee tot walking around with her one-eyed doll; the eye she kicked out!
I remember that so well."

In spite of his misery, the old man laughed aloud as he recalled the
circumstance that led up to the loss of the eye. The consternation in
the face of the child as she handed him the piece of broken eye had
made him laugh; and he laughed now hysterically as he recalled the
incident. Jenny seeing him laugh, laughed too.

"Thank God he can still laugh," she thought.

"Ah, well!" he went on, drawing a deep breath. "They are gone, and
I--look no more. My search is over, Jenny, over and done. But I go
back; I see once more my Leipsic. There they know me! Here I am an
outcast, a beggar."

Jenny could only shake her head and look at him helplessly. She
realised that any effort she might make to influence him to change his
plans would be useless; and more and more did she hate the woman who
had been the cause of all his misery, the woman whose portrait he
looked at so lovingly.

"A beggar," Von Barwig repeated to himself. "Yes, that's it! I can
fall no lower, I give up!"

The fortune of the broken-spirited, broken-hearted old man was now at
its lowest ebb; and he gave up the fight. There was a long silence.
Jenny was thinking hard. What could she say or do; how could she help
him?

A knock at the door broke the stillness, which had become almost
oppressive.

Chapter Fourteen

"Come in," said Von Barwig wearily. He barely looked