“Is there anything you want?” asked the clock-mender.

Herr Ludwig turned.  How old this clock-mender was, how very old!

“Yes,” he said.  “I’ve a watch I should like you to look over.”  And he carelessly laid the beautiful time-piece on the worn wooden counter.

The clock-mender literally pounced upon it.  “Where did you get a watch like this?” he demanded suspiciously.

“It is mine.  You will find my name engraved inside the back lid.”

The clock-mender pried open the case, adjusted his glass—­and dropped it, shaking with terror.

“You?” he whispered.

“Sh!” said Herr Ludwig, putting a finger to his lips.

CHAPTER XIV

FIND THE WOMAN

The watch, slipping from the clock-mender’s hand, spun like a coin on the counter, while the clock-mender himself, his eyes bulging, his jaw dangling, it might be said, staggered back upon his stool.

“So this is the end?” he said in a kind of mutter.

“The end of what?” demanded the owner of the watch.

“Of all my labors, to me and to what little I have left!”

“Fiddlesticks!  I am here for no purpose regarding you, my comrade.  So far as I am concerned, your secret is as dead as it ever was.  I had a fancy that you were living in Paris.”

“Paris! Gott! For seventeen, eighteen years I have traveled hither and thither, always on some false clue.  Never a band of Gipsies I heard of that I did not seek them out.  Nothing, nothing!  You will never know what I have gone through, and uselessly, to prove my innocence.  It always comes back in a circle; what benefit to me would have been a crime like that of which I was accused?  Was I not high in honor?  Was I not wealthy?  Was not my home life a happy one?  What benefit to me, I say?” a growing fierceness in his voice and gestures.  “All my estates confiscated, my wife dead of shame, and I molding among these clocks!”

“But why the clocks?” in wonder.

“It was a pastime of mine when I was a boy.  I used to be tinkering among all the clocks in the house.  So I bought out this old shop.  From time to time I have left it in the hands of an assistant.  The grand duke has a wonderful Friesian clock.  One day it fell out of order, and the court jeweler could do nothing with it.  I was summoned, I!  No one recognized me, I have changed so.  I mended the clock and went away.”

“But what is the use of all this, now that her highness is found?”

“My honor; to the duke it is black as ever.”

“Have you gone forward any?”

“Like Sisyphus!  I had begun to give up hope, when the Gipsy I was seeking was seen by one of my agents.  He alone knows the secret.  And I am waiting, waiting.  But you believe, Ludwig?”

“Carl, you are as innocent of it all as I am or as my brother was.  Come with me to Jugendheit.”