d be with me--except all these?" he answered, very solemnly.
And swept his hand about the room as if he saw strange shapes standing in
rows round the walls. "I wish," he went on, almost querulously, "whoever
you may be, you would tell these people to keep their hands down. They
point at me, and thrust their dripping heads forward, holding them like
lanterns in their palms."

He turned away to the back of the bed, and then, as if he saw something
there worse than all the rest, faced about again quickly, saying, with
some pathetic intonation of his lost childhood, "There is no need for
them to point so at me, is there? I did but my duty."

"Father!" said I, gently touching his cheek with my hand as I used to do.

"Ah, what is that?" he said, quickly. "Did some one call me father? Let
me go! I tell you, sirs, let me go! She needs me. They are torturing her.
I must go to her!"

"Father," I said again, putting him gently back, "it is I--your own son
Hugo--come back to speak with you, to help if it may be--to die for the
Little Playmate if need be."

"Hugo--Hugo!" he said. "Yes, yes--of course, I know--my little lad, my
pretty boy!"

He pushed me back to look at me, eagerly, wistfully--and then thrust me
sharply away.

"Bah!" he said; "you lie! What need to lie to a dying man? My Hugo had
yellow hair and a skin like lilies. Yours is dark--"

"Father," said I, "I am here disguised. Help is coming, sure and
strong, if we can only wait a little and delay the trial. But tell me
all. Speak to me freely, if you love your daughter Helene--your
daughter and my love."

He sat up now, and motioned me to come nearer. There was a dark, fierce,
unworldly light in his eyes. I set a pillow to his back, and went and
kneeled by the bed as I used to do at good-night time when I said my
Paternoster.

Then for the first time he knew me.

"Say your prayers, child!" he commanded, in his old voice.

So, though with the stress of wars and other things I had mostly
forgotten, yet I said not only that, but the little Prayer of Childhood
he had taught me. And then I kissed him as I used to do when I bade him
good-night.

"Yes," he said, softly, "it is true, after all. You are mine own
only son. Hugo--I am glad you have come so far to see your father
before he dies."

I told him how I had come, and brought Dessauer forward, introducing him
as one great in the kingdom where I was, and to whom I was much
beholden. He shook him by the ha