The whole conversation with the Grand Master occurred to Dumiger.  There could be no doubt that the clock would go into his possession; that it was a deep-laid scheme to spoil him of the result of all his labor.  Better, far better, that Marguerite should bear the pain of separation, than that the clock should be endangered, and by such a man.

“Marguerite,” said Dumiger, in a low voice, after a long pause, “it is fixed.  We must part for a short time.  I will write from my prison to some of my friends; they will not desert me in this necessity.  A few short hours, and I shall return to you, my own Marguerite.”

But Marguerite had fainted, and the lips which touched his cheek were cold and pale.

Slowly she opened those large blue eyes, and although her lips faltered, the look and the voice were both earnest as she bade him go.

“Yes, Dumiger, you are right:  ambition such as yours is a less selfish passion than love like mine.  Leave me for a time.  I know the interval will be short.  It is another step toward the greatness to which you are aspiring.”

The man looked at them with a vague and vacant look.  He had been witness to this description of scene so frequently, that he began to believe it to be a part of the debtor’s craft.  As some people can regard the most beautiful varying tints of heaven, the lights and shadows which flit across the face of nature, and see nothing more in them than a part of that vast and complicated machinery that governs the world—­so he, in these lights and shadows of life, only beheld the natural workings of the human mind.

With a pale cheek but a firm step Dumiger departed.  The last sound that fell upon his ear as he left his door, was the blessing murmured by his bride.  Again he felt disposed to turn back and sacrifice all for his affection; but already one of the city guard stood behind him, and the rattle of arms on the pavement told him that his arrest had not been lightly planned or carelessly conducted.

The castle toward which Dumiger and his guards directed their steps was the Grimshaus, formerly a citadel and an important point of defense for the town of Dantzic, though now converted into a prison for political offenders and debtors.  The reader may be aware that the laws against debtors in the great free commercial cities were intolerably severe.  Some men were permitted to groan away their whole lives in hopeless misery.  The creditor was in general without pity, and the debtor unpitied.  He was entirely at the mercy of the jailer, who had it in his power to load him with chains, and even on the slightest pretext of insubordination to execute summary justice upon him.  These laws, however, had as yet little affected Dumiger; though threatened with arrest on one or two previous occasions his difficulties had always been arranged.  But the present debt was more serious than any which had as yet been pressed for, and he could not but feel that friends might be less willing to become surety.