led--I am unable to state as an
eyewitness, owing to my absence at the time. This curious portion of the
narrative will be found related by Jack himself, on a page still to come.
In the meanwhile, the course of events compels me to revert to the
circumstances which led to my departure from London.

While Mrs. Wagner was still in attendance at the palace, a letter reached
her from Mr. Keller, stating the necessity of increasing the number of
clerks at the Frankfort branch of our business. Closely occupied as she
then was, she found time to provide me with those instructions to her
German partners, preparing them for the coming employment of women in
their office, to which she had first alluded when the lawyer and I had
our interview with her after the reading of the will.

"The cause of the women," she said to me, "must not suffer because I
happen to be just now devoted to the cause of poor Jack. Go at once to
Frankfort, David. I have written enough to prepare my partners there for
a change in the administration of the office, and to defer for the
present the proposed enlargement of our staff of clerks. The rest you can
yourself explain from your own knowledge of the plans that I have in
contemplation. Start on your journey as soon as possible--and understand
that you are to say No positively, if Fritz proposes to accompany you. He
is not to leave London without the express permission of his father."

Fritz did propose to accompany me, the moment he heard of my journey. I
must own that I thought the circumstances excused him.

On the previous evening, we had consulted the German newspapers at the
coffee-house, and had found news from Wurzburg which quite overwhelmed my
excitable friend.

Being called upon to deliver their judgment, the authorities presiding at
the legal inquiry into the violation of the seals and the loss of the
medicine-chest failed to agree in opinion, and thus brought the
investigation to a most unsatisfactory end. The moral effect of this
division among the magistrates was unquestionably to cast a slur on the
reputation of Widow Fontaine. She was not pronounced to be guilty--but
she was also not declared to be innocent. Feeling, no doubt, that her
position among her neighbors had now become unendurable, she and her
daughter had left Wurzburg. The newspaper narrative added that their
departure had been privately accomplished. No information could be
obtained of the place of their retreat.

But f