’Oh, Mr. Tracy! are you here!  How you scared me?  I thought it was a tramp!’ she said, as he came toward her.

‘Do you come here often?’ he asked, as he offered her his hand.

’Yes, pretty often.  I like it, because mother died here, and sometimes I feel as if she would make it known to me here who she was.  I talk to her and ask her to tell me, but she never has.  Oh, don’t you wish she would?’

Frank shuddered involuntarily, for to have Jerry told who she really was, was the last thing he could desire, but as a criminal is said always to talk about the crime he has committed and is hiding, so Frank, when with Jerry, felt impelled to talk with her of the past and what she could remember of it.  Seating himself upon the bench with her at his side, he said: 

‘And you really believe the woman found here was your mother?’

‘Why, yes.  Don’t you?  Who was my mother, if she wasn’t?’ and Jerry’s eyes opened wide as he looked at him.

‘I don’t know, I am sure.  Does my brother talk of Gretchen now?’ was the abrupt reply.

‘Yes, at times,’ Jerry answered:  ’and yesterday, after I sang him a little German song, which he taught me, he had them pretty bad—­the bees in his head, I mean:  that is what he calls it when things are mixed; and he says he is going to write to her, or her friends.’

’Write to her!  I thought he had given that up.  I thought he—­Did he say, “Write to her friends?"’ Frank gasped as he felt himself grow cold and sick with this threatened danger.

Arthur had seemed so quiet and happy with Jerry, and had said so little of Gretchen, that Frank had grown quite easy in his mind, and the black shadow of fear did not trouble him quite so much as formerly.  But now it was over him again, and grew in intensity as he questioned the child.

‘Have you ever tried to find out who Gretchen is?’ he asked at last.

‘No,’ she replied, ‘but I guess she is his wife.’

‘Yes,’ Frank said, falteringly, ’his wife; and where do you think she lived?’

’Oh, I know that.  In Wiesbaden.  He told me so once, and it seems as if I had been there, too, when he talked about it, and I hear the music and see the flowers, and a white-faced woman is with me, not at all like mother, who, they say, was ugly and dark; black as a nigger, Tom told me once, when he was mad.  Was she black?’

Mr. Tracy made no reply to this, but said, suddenly: 

‘Jerry, do you like me well enough to do me a favor, a great favor?’

’Why, yes, I guess I do.  I like you very much, though not as well as I do Harold and Mr. Arthur.  What do you want?’ was Jerry’s answer.

After hesitating a moment, Mr. Tracy began: 

’There are certain reasons why I ought to know if my brother writes to Gretchen, or her friends, or any one in Germany, especially Wiesbaden.  A letter of that kind might do me a great deal of harm; if he should write to any one in Germany, you would, perhaps, he asked to post the letter, as he never goes to town?’