seph was sent in haste for a physician, and by the use of strong
salts Roland was restored to consciousness. His father and Eric
undressed him and put him to bed, the poor boy moaning all the while,
and his teeth chattering with the chill that followed the first attack
of fever.

Sonnenkamp looked in terror at the anxiety depicted on the physician's
face when he saw his patient.

"It is a very violent attack; I don't know what the result may be. Has
he often such?" asked the doctor.

"Never before! never before!" cried Sonnenkamp.

After the application of various restoratives Roland was able again to
speak, and his first words were:--

"I thank you, Eric."

The doctor left, after giving strict orders that the patient should be
kept quiet, so that if possible he might sleep. After an hour of
anxiety, during which Eric and Sonnenkamp scarcely ventured to speak to
one another, he returned; and having examined Roland again, he
pronounced that the nervous system had been overstrained, and that he
was threatened with nervous fever.

"Misfortunes never come singly," said Sonnenkamp. They were the only
words he spoke that night, during the whole of which he watched in the
adjoining room, occasionally stealing on tip-toe to the sick boy's bed
to listen to his breathing.

When Frau Ceres sent to know why they did not return to the
drawing-room, they sent an evasive answer and begged her to go to bed.
Having understood, however, that Roland was slightly unwell, she came
softly to his bedside during the night, and seeing him quietly sleeping
returned to her own room.

"Misfortunes never come singly," Sonnenkamp repeated when the next
morning at dawn the physician pronounced the fever to have declared
itself. He ordered the most careful nursing, and wanted to send for a
sister of charity, but Eric said that his mother would be the best
nurse Roland could have.

"Do you think she will come?"

"Certainly."

A telegram was at once despatched to the green house, and in an hour
the answer came that mother and aunt were on their way.

The news of the beautiful boy's severe illness spread rapidly through
the city. Servants in all manner of liveries, and even the first ladies
and gentlemen, came to inquire after him.

The noisy music of the noon parade startled Roland as it passed the
house, and he screamed:--

"The savages are coming! the savages are coming! the red skins, the
savages are coming! Hiawatha! Laughing-wa