y, that he vowed he would see that all her
wishes, no matter how fanciful, were gratified.

"I hope she won't go mad!" he said to himself; "her behaviour is odd, to
say the least of it. Odd!--wholly inexplicable."

It was rather too bad that just now, when his mind was harassed with
misgivings at home, he should also be bothered with disturbances outside
his own home. But so it was. Events of an unprecedented nature were
taking place in the town, and it fell to his lot to cope with them.
Night after night children--mostly of the poorer class--disappeared, and
despite frantic yet careful and thorough searches, no clue as to what
had befallen them had, so far, been discovered. The Count doubled the
men on night duty, but in spite of these and other extraordinary
precautions the disappearances continued, and the affair--already of the
utmost gravity--promised to be one that would prove disastrous, not
merely to the heads of families, but to the head of the police himself.
So long as the missing ones had been of the lower orders only, the Count
had not had much to fear--the murmurings of their parents could easily
be held in check--but now that a few of the children of the rich had
been spirited away, there was every likelihood of the matter reaching
the ears of the Court. One evening, when the Count had hardly recovered
his equanimity after a stormy interview with Herr Meichen, the banker,
whose three-year-old daughter had vanished, and a still more distressing
scene with Otto Schmidt, the lawyer, whose six-year-old daughter had
disappeared, his patience was called upon to undergo a still further
trial in consequence of a visit from General Carl Rittenberg, a person
of the greatest importance, not only in the town, but in the whole
province. Purple in the face with suppressed fury, the General burst
into the room where the head of the police sat.

"Count!" he cried, striking the table with his fist, "this is beyond a
joke. My child--my only child--Elizabeth, whom my wife and I
passionately love, has been stolen. She was walking by my side in
Frederick Street this afternoon, and as it suddenly became foggy, I left
her a moment to hail a vehicle to take us home. I wasn't gone from her
more than half a minute at the most, but when I returned she had gone. I
searched everywhere, shouting her name; and passers by, compassionate
strangers, joined me in my search; but though we have looked high and
low not a trace of her have w