Then above was the little room where Helene 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 should 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.”