smiled kindly at them and patted their heads.

"I heard nothing from Karl for quite a while after he went to Paris.
We wondered, Barbara and I, why he did not write. Then, one day,
about three months after he had gone to Paris, came a letter from
London and we saw at once that it was in his handwriting. He'd been
expelled from Paris again and compelled to leave the city within
twenty-four hours, and he and his family were staying in cheap
lodgings in Camberwell. He said that everything was going splendidly,
but never a word did he say about the terrible poverty and hardship
from which they were suffering.

V

"Well, a few months after that, I managed to get into trouble with the
authorities at Cologne, along with a few other comrades. We heard that
we were to be arrested and knew that we could expect no mercy. So
Barbara and I talked things over and we decided to clear out at once,
and go to London. We sold our few things to a good comrade, and with
the money made our way at once to join Barbara's sister in Dean
street. I never dreamed that we should find Karl living next door to
us.

"But we did. Nobody told me about him--I suppose that nobody in our
house knew who he was--but a few days after we arrived I saw him pass
and ran out and called to him. My, he looked so thin and worn out that
my heart ached! But he was glad to see me and grasped my hand with
both of his. Karl could shake hands in a way that made you feel he
loved you more than anybody else in all the world.

"In a little while he had told me enough for me to understand why he
was so pale and thin. If it were not for hurting his feelings, I
could have cried at the things he told me. He and the beautiful Jenny
without food sometimes, and no bed to lie upon! And it seemed all the
worse to me because I knew how well they had been reared, how they had
been used to solid comfort and even luxury.

"But it was not from Karl that I learned the worst. He was always
trying to hide the worst. Never did I hear of such a man as he was for
turning things bright side upwards. But Conrad Schramm, who was
related to Barbara--a sort of second cousin, I think--lodged in the
same house with us. Schramm was the closest friend Karl and Jenny had
in London then, and he told me things that made my heart bleed. Why,
when a little baby was born to them, soon after they came to London,
there was no money for a doctor, nor even to buy a cheap cradle for
the little thing.