be killed. They shot me
here, and here, and here, and this saber-cut would have split the skull
of any other man. But it was willed that I should come back here."

"My poor brother! You must fly from here at once!"

"From what?" tranquilly.

"The chancellor is suspicious."

"I know that. But since you, my brother, failed to identify me,
certainly his excellency will not. I shall make no slip as in your case.
And you will not betray me when I tell you that I have returned
principally to find out whence came those thousand crowns."

"Ah! Find that out, Hans; yes, yes!" Hermann began to look more like
himself. "But what was your part?"

"Mine? I was to tell where her highness and her nurse were to be at a
certain hour of the day. Nothing more was necessary. My running away was
the expression of my guilt; otherwise they would never have connected me
with the abduction."

"Have you any suspicions?"

"None. And remember, you must not know me, Hermann, no matter where we
meet. I am sleepy." Hans rose.

And this, thought Hermann, his bewilderment gaining life once more, and
this calm, unruffled man, whose hair was whiter than his own, a veteran
of the bloodiest civil war in history, this prosperous mechanic, was his
little brother Hans!

"Hans, have you no other greeting?" Hermann asked, spreading out his
arms.

The wanderer's face beamed; and the brothers embraced.

"You forgive me, then, Hermann?"

"Must I not, little Hans? You are all that is left me of the blood.
True, I swore that if ever I saw you again I should curse you."

The two stood back from each other, but with arms still entwined.

"Perhaps, Hans, I did not watch you closely enough in those days."

"And what has become of the principal cause?"

"The cause?"

"Tekla."

"Bah! She is fat and homely and the mother of seven squalling children."

"What a world! To think that Tekla should be at the bottom of all this
tangle! What irony! I ruin my life, I break the heart of the grand duke,
I nearly cause war between two friendly states--why? Tekla, now fat and
homely and the mother of seven, would not marry me. The devil rides
strange horses."

"Good night, Hans."

"Good night, Hermann, and God bless you for your forgiveness. Always
come at night if you wish to see me, but do not come often; they might
remark it."

A rap on the door startled them. Hans, a finger of warning on his lips,
opened the door. Carmichael stood outside.

"Ah, Capt