an't you
see it is a badge of mourning?'

For a week or more it would remain there, and then he would put it
carefully away, to be again brought out when the night was wild and
stormy.

It was during Maude's absence that the two brothers became more intimate
than they had been before since Arthur first came home, and it happened
in this wise. Every day, for months after Maude and his wife went away,
Frank spent hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing,
but oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen, and the Bible with
the marked passages and the handwriting around it. Then he would take
out the letter about which Jerrie had been so anxious, and examine it
carefully, studying the address, which he knew by heart, and beginning
at last to arrange the letters in alphabetical order as far as he could,
and try to imitate them. It was a difficult process, but little by
little, with the assistance of a German text book of Maude's which he
found, he learned the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put
them together, and then to read. Gradually the work began to have a
great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and asked for
some assistance.

'Never too old to learn,' he said, 'and as the house is like a tomb
without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but find it up-hill
business without a teacher. Will you help me?'

'To be sure, to be sure,' Arthur cried, brightening up at once, and
bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled Frank and
made him wish to withdraw his proposition.

But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had never
respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over
the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned
to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too,
while he could understand nearly all Arthur said to him.

'Do you think I could get along in Germany?' he asked his brother, one
day.

'Certainly you could,' Arthur replied. Do you think of going there? If
you do, go to Wiesbaden, and inquire for Gretchen--how she died, and
where she was buried. I should have gone long ago only I dreaded the
ocean voyage so confoundedly, and then I forget so badly. When are you
going?'

'Oh, I don't know--I don't know as ever,' Frank answered quickly; and
yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go to Wiesbaden and hunt
up Marguerite Heinrich's friends, if possible.