, thin and graceful, of gold and silver and
pewter.

"Is there anything you want?" asked the clock-mender.

Herr Ludwig turned. How old this clock-mender was, how very old!

"Yes," he said. "I've a watch I should like you to look over." And he
carelessly laid the beautiful time-piece on the worn wooden counter.

The clock-mender literally pounced upon it. "Where did you get a watch
like this?" he demanded suspiciously.

"It is mine. You will find my name engraved inside the back lid."

The clock-mender pried open the case, adjusted his glass--and dropped
it, shaking with terror.

"You?" he whispered.

"Sh!" said Herr Ludwig, putting a finger to his lips.

CHAPTER XIV

FIND THE WOMAN

The watch, slipping from the clock-mender's hand, spun like a coin on
the counter, while the clock-mender himself, his eyes bulging, his jaw
dangling, it might be said, staggered back upon his stool.

"So this is the end?" he said in a kind of mutter.

"The end of what?" demanded the owner of the watch.

"Of all my labors, to me and to what little I have left!"

"Fiddlesticks! I am here for no purpose regarding you, my comrade. So
far as I am concerned, your secret is as dead as it ever was. I had a
fancy that you were living in Paris."

"Paris! _Gott!_ For seventeen, eighteen years I have traveled hither and
thither, always on some false clue. Never a band of Gipsies I heard of
that I did not seek them out. Nothing, nothing! You will never know what
I have gone through, and uselessly, to prove my innocence. It always
comes back in a circle; what benefit to me would have been a crime like
that of which I was accused? Was I not high in honor? Was I not wealthy?
Was not my home life a happy one? What benefit to me, I say?" a growing
fierceness in his voice and gestures. "All my estates confiscated, my
wife dead of shame, and I molding among these clocks!"

"But why the clocks?" in wonder.

"It was a pastime of mine when I was a boy. I used to be tinkering among
all the clocks in the house. So I bought out this old shop. From time to
time I have left it in the hands of an assistant. The grand duke has a
wonderful Friesian clock. One day it fell out of order, and the court
jeweler could do nothing with it. I was summoned, I! No one recognized
me, I have changed so. I mended the clock and went away."

"But what is the use of all this, now that her highness is found?"

"My honor; to the duke it is black as ever."