tranquillity wrung from the most profound grief, they both returned to
the villa.

They reached the garden wall, from the face of which the porter was
scraping something.

"There it is! there it is!" exclaimed Roland. "I have read it!"

The porter was scraping the mortar with a sharp iron, and this scraping
went through Roland's soul as if the work were done on his own heart.
All the coolness and composure that he had gained disappeared.

"There it is!" he exclaimed. "It will have to be scraped off again
to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and forever. Ah, Eric, why are
men so wicked! What good does it do them to insult us?"

Eric consoled him by saying that men are not so wicked, they merely
liked to irritate and mock one another.

He accompanied Roland to his room, and there the youth sat still, his
hand clenched and pressed against his lip, till his teeth left their
mark on his fingers. For a long while he spoke not a word. He looked at
the stuffed bird, and said softly to himself once more, "Hiawatha!"

He stood at the window, and looked down into the park, up into the sky,
where the swallows were gathering in great flocks, getting ready to
cross the sea into warmer lands. Everything, everything has its home,
something was saying in the heart of this youth; the plant that cannot
stir is carried to a secure shelter, and the swallow draws to a place
where it can still be happy. O, if some one could only tell us now
where we might be happy!

All at once he shrank back from the window, for he saw the Russian
prince entering the courtyard; behind the Prince came the Doctor in his
carriage. Roland begged Eric to leave him alone, and not bring any one
to see him.

Eric went away, and Roland locked himself up in his room.

CHAPTER XII.

SONNENKAMP FINDS A CONGENIAL SPIRIT.

Sonnenkamp was sitting alone in his large room; he looked up towards
the castle, which was nearly completed. Who will dwell in it? He turned
his eye away. He stood for a long time in front of Roland's picture.

"One should have no children, know nothing of them," he exclaimed. He
was terrified at the sound of his own voice.

He opened the money-safe; he contemplated the neatly-arranged papers,
and the drawers that contained the coined and uncoined gold.

"What help are you to me? and still----"

There was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

Joseph answered:--