“From what?” tranquilly.

“The chancellor is suspicious.”

“I know that.  But since you, my brother, failed to identify me, certainly his excellency will not.  I shall make no slip as in your case.  And you will not betray me when I tell you that I have returned principally to find out whence came those thousand crowns.”

“Ah!  Find that out, Hans; yes, yes!” Hermann began to look more like himself.  “But what was your part?”

“Mine?  I was to tell where her highness and her nurse were to be at a certain hour of the day.  Nothing more was necessary.  My running away was the expression of my guilt; otherwise they would never have connected me with the abduction.”

“Have you any suspicions?”

“None.  And remember, you must not know me, Hermann, no matter where we meet.  I am sleepy.”  Hans rose.

And this, thought Hermann, his bewilderment gaining life once more, and this calm, unruffled man, whose hair was whiter than his own, a veteran of the bloodiest civil war in history, this prosperous mechanic, was his little brother Hans!

“Hans, have you no other greeting?” Hermann asked, spreading out his arms.

The wanderer’s face beamed; and the brothers embraced.

“You forgive me, then, Hermann?”

“Must I not, little Hans?  You are all that is left me of the blood.  True, I swore that if ever I saw you again I should curse you.”

The two stood back from each other, but with arms still entwined.

“Perhaps, Hans, I did not watch you closely enough in those days.”

“And what has become of the principal cause?”

“The cause?”

“Tekla.”

“Bah!  She is fat and homely and the mother of seven squalling children.”

“What a world!  To think that Tekla should be at the bottom of all this tangle!  What irony!  I ruin my life, I break the heart of the grand duke, I nearly cause war between two friendly states—­why?  Tekla, now fat and homely and the mother of seven, would not marry me.  The devil rides strange horses.”

“Good night, Hans.”

“Good night, Hermann, and God bless you for your forgiveness.  Always come at night if you wish to see me, but do not come often; they might remark it.”

A rap on the door startled them.  Hans, a finger of warning on his lips, opened the door.  Carmichael stood outside.

“Ah, Captain!” Hans took Carmichael by the hand and drew him into the room.

Carmichael, observing Hermann, was rather confused as to what to do.

“Good evening, Hermann,” he said.

“Good evening, Herr Carmichael.”

Hermann passed into the hail and softly closed the door after him.  It was better that the American should not see the emotion which still illumined his face.

“What’s the good word, Captain?” inquired Hans.

Carmichael put in a counter-query:  “What was your brother doing here?”