used to sleep. Here the wrack
was indescribable--every hidingplace rifled, her pretty worked bedquilt
lying across the doorway trampled and soiled, her dainty white clothing,
some she had worn at Plassenburg, and even the tiny dresses of her
childhood, all torn and confused together. And in the midst, what
affected me more than everything else, a tiny puppet of wood my father
had hewn her with his knife, and which she had dressed as a queen with
red ribbons and crown of tinsel--ah, so long ago--and in such happy days.

"Father!" I called, loudly. "Father!"

But in this I forgot myself. There might have been enemies lurking
anywhere in the house of pain and disaster.

My own room came next, and the way out upon the roof; but we tried not
these. There remained only the garret of my father. I climbed up, with
Dessauer behind me, and pushed the door open.

Then I stood in the entering-in, looking for the first time for years on
the face of my father.

He lay on his conch, his head bound about with a napkin. The dark wisp of
hair which rose like a cock's comb, sticking through the stained cloth
which swathed his brow, was no longer blue-black, but of an iron-gray,
splashed and brindled with pure white. His eyes were open, and shone,
cavernous and solemn, above his fallen-in cheeks. It was like looking
into the secrets of another world. That which he had so often caused
other eyes to see, the Red Axe of Thorn was now to see for himself. The
hand which lay--mere skin, muscle, and bone--on the counterpane had
guided many to the door of the mysteries. Now at its own entrance it was
to push the arras aside, for the Death-Justicer of the Mark was to go
before the Judge of all the earth.

My father lay gazing at me with deep, mournful eyes. So sad they seemed
that it was as if nothing in heaven or earth, neither joy nor sorrow,
life nor death, could have power to change their expression of
immeasurable sadness.

I entered, and my companion followed.

"You are alone? There is none with you here?" I said to my father, going
to the bedside.

He started at the voice, and looked up even eagerly. But his eyes dulled
and deadened again as he fell back.

"I did but dream!" he muttered, sadly.

"You have no one with you here, Gottfried Gottfried?" said I again, for
in a matter of life and death it was as well to make sure even at risk of
disturbing a dying man.

He set his hand to his brow as if trying to think.

"Who shoul