Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken to.  His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down, and a stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.

During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was all that made life endurable.  To see her in her young beauty, flitting about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung to and increased upon him.  He did not now remember ever to have said that Gretchen was with him in the ship or on the train, or that he had sent the carriage so many times to meet her; and when be spoke of her, which he seldom did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who had died years ago.  Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was raging like that which had shaken the house and bent the evergreens the night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon the picture, but would give no reason for it when questioned except to say, ’Can’t you see it is a badge of mourning?’

For a week or more it would remain there, and then he would put it carefully away, to be again brought out when the night was wild and stormy.

It was during Maude’s absence that the two brothers became more intimate than they had been before since Arthur first came home, and it happened in this wise.  Every day, for months after Maude and his wife went away, Frank spent hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing, but oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen, and the Bible with the marked passages and the handwriting around it.  Then he would take out the letter about which Jerrie had been so anxious, and examine it carefully, studying the address, which he knew by heart, and beginning at last to arrange the letters in alphabetical order as far as he could, and try to imitate them.  It was a difficult process, but little by little, with the assistance of a German text book of Maude’s which he found, he learned the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put them together, and then to read.  Gradually the work began to have a great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and asked for some assistance.

‘Never too old to learn,’ he said, ’and as the house is like a tomb without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but find it up-hill business without a teacher.  Will you help me?’

‘To be sure, to be sure,’ Arthur cried, brightening up at once, and bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled Frank and made him wish to withdraw his proposition.