“The most learned the Doctor Schmidt,” I announced, lest there should be some stranger in the room.  And indeed my precaution was necessary enough.  For, from my father’s bed-head, disengaging himself reluctantly, like a disturbed vulture napping up from the side of a dying steer, Friar Laurence rose out of the darkness, and, folding his robe about him, stalked to the door without a word or nod to either of us.  I stood holding the edge of it till I had watched him well down the stairs.  Then Dessauer relieved me at the stair-head as I went to approach my father.

I saw a change in him, very startling, indeed, to see.  “In the uttermost extremity” he was, indeed, as he had written.  A ghastly pallor overspread his face; his eyes were wild, his breathing came both quick and hard.  The fire cast nickering lights over his face and on the outlines of his lank figure under the scarlet mantle which had been cast over him.  One corner of it was cast aside, as if for air or coolness, and I could see a thing which gave me a cold chill in the marrow of my spine.

My father still wore the dress which he only donned when some poor soul was about to die and pay the forfeit.

At first Gottfried took no notice of me whatever, but lay looking at the ceiling, his lips muttering something steadily, though what the words were I could not hear.

“Father,” I said at last, bending over him gently, “I have come to see you.”

He turned to me, as if suddenly and regretfully summoned back from very far away.  It was a movement I had seen in many dying men.  He looked at me, a strange, luminous comprehension growing up gradually in his eyes.

“Hugo,” he said, “you have come home at last!  The Little Playmate has come home, too.  We three will make a merry party in the old Red Tower.  We have not been all together for so long.  Lord Christ, but I have been a man much alone!  Hugo, why did you leave me so long?  Ah, well, I do not blame you, my son.  You have been pushing your fortunes, doubtless, and you have—­so they tell me—­become a great man in Plassenburg.  And the little maid is a lady of honor, and very fair to see.  But now you two have come to the old garret, like birds homing to the nest.”

“Yes, father,” I said to him, “we have both come home to you, the Little Playmate and I. And now you will give us your blessing!”

“The Little Playmate—­say rather the Little Princess,” he cried, cheerfully, as, with the air of one who brings good tidings, he sat up in bed.  Then he pointed to a chair on which a pillow had carelessly been flung.  “Little Maid,” he said, looking at the cushion as if it had been Helene, “I am glad you have come back to be wedded to my boy.  That was like you.  I ever wished it, indeed.  But I never expected to see my children thus happy.  Yet I always knew you and Hugo were made for each other.  You are at your sewing, little maid.  Well, ’tis natural.  I mind me when my own love sat making dainties of just such delicate and wreathed whiteness.”