e with a strange calm.

"The scar? I do not remember. Grandmother says that when I was little I
must have been burned."

"_Gott!_"

"What did you say, Herr?"

"Nothing. You can't remember? Think!" tensely now.

"What's all this nonsense about?" she cried, with a nervous laugh. "It's
only a scar."

She went on with the kneading. She patted the dough into four squares.
These she placed on the oven-stove. She wiped her hands on a cloth for
that purpose, and sighed contentedly.

"There! It's a fine mystery, isn't it?"

"Yes." But Grumbach was shaking as with ague.

"What is the matter, Herr?" with concern.

"I grow dizzy like this sometimes. It doesn't amount to anything."

Gretchen turned down her sleeves. "You must go now, for I have other
work."

"And so have I, Gretchen."

He gained the street, but how he never knew. He floated. Objects near at
hand were shadowy and unusual. A great calm suddenly winged down upon
him, and the world became clear, clear as his purpose, his courage, his
duty. They might shoot or hang him, as they saw fit; this would not
deter him. It might be truthfully said that he blundered back to the
Grand Hotel. He must lay the whole matter before Carmichael. There lay
his one hope. Carmichael should be his ambassador. But, God in Heaven,
where should he begin? How?

The Gipsy, standing in the center of the walk, did not see Grumbach, for
he was looking toward the palaces, a kind of whimsical mockery in his
dark eyes. Grumbach, even more oblivious, crashed into him.

Grumbach stammered an apology, and the other replied in his peculiar
dialect that no harm had been done. The jar, however, had roused Hans
out of his tragic musings. There was a glint of yellow in the Gipsy's
eye, a flaw in the iris. Hans gave a cry.

"You? I find you at this moment, of all others?"

The Gipsy retreated. "I do not know you. It is a mistake."

"But I know you," whispered Hans. "And you will know me when I tell you
that I am the gardener's boy you ruined some sixteen years ago!"

CHAPTER XIX

DISCLOSURES

The office of the American consulate in the Adlergasse ran from the
front to the rear of the building. Carmichael's desk overlooked the
street. But whenever a flying dream came to him he was wont to take his
pipe to the chair by the rear window, whence he could view the lofty
crests of the Jugendheit mountains. Directly below this window and
running parallel with it was the _Biergarten_