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an anonymous letter that read as follows: "The child you are looking for
is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her
own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people
with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of
greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained
to what she now has in mind."

To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be
reasonably certain was her own: "This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!"

The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced
that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced
to do it by the kidnappers.

The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A
telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a
short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to
say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to
France.

Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life.
She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.

Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven.
As soon as he had really grasped the full meaning of the tragedy, he
went quietly into the attic room, threw himself across the bed of his
lost daughter, and wept. "Man, man, are you weeping at last?" a voice
seemed to call out to him.

Of evenings he would sit with his mother, and they would both brood over
the loss. Once Marian began to speak; she talked of Eva. She had always
been made uneasy by the child's love for mimicry and shows of any kind.
Long ago, she said, when Eva was only eight years old, a company of
comedians had come to the village, and Eva had taken a passionate
interest in them. She would run around the tent in which they played,
from early in the morning until late in the evening. She had made the
acquaintance of some of them at the time, and one of them took her along
to a performance. Whenever the circus came to town, it was impossible to
keep her in the house. "At times I thought to myself, there must be
gipsy blood in her veins," said Marian sadly, "but she was such a good
and obedient child."

Another time she told the following story. One Sunday in spring she took
a walk with Eva. It had grown late, night had come on, and on the return
journey they had to go through the forest. Marian became tired, and sat
do