The carriage rolled off through the town, and away down the long avenue which led to the large family mansion of Sandsgaard.

The town gossipped itself nearly crazy, but without any satisfactory result.  The house of Garman took good care of its secrets.

So much was, however, clear:  that Richard Garman had dissipated the whole of his large fortune, or else he would never have consented to come home and eat the bread of charity in his brother’s house.

On the other hand, the relation between the brothers was, at least as far as appearances went, a most cordial one.  The Consul gave a grand dinner, at which he drank his brother’s health, adding at the same time the hope that he might find himself happy in his old home.

There is nothing so irritating as a half-fulfilled scandal, and when Richard Garman a short time afterwards calmly received the post of lighthouse-keeper at Bratvold, and lived there year after year without a sign of doing anything worthy of remark, each one in the little town felt himself personally affronted, and it was a source of wonder to all how little the Garmans seemed to realize what they owed to society.

As far as that went, Richard himself was not perfectly clear how it had all come about; there was something about Christian Frederick he could not understand.  Whenever he met his brother, or even got a letter from him, his whole nature seemed to change; things he would otherwise never have thought of attempting appeared all at once quite easy, and he did feats which afterwards caused him the greatest astonishment.  When, in a state of doubt and uncertainty, he wrote home for the last time, to beg his brother to take charge of little Madeleine, his only thought was to make an end of his wasted life, the sooner the better, directly his daughter was placed in safety.  But just then he happened to get a remittance enclosed in an extraordinary letter, in which occurred several puzzling business terms.  There was something about “liquidation,” and closing up an account which required his presence, and in the middle of it all there were certain expressions which seemed to have stumbled accidentally into the commercial style.  For instance, in one place there was “brother of my boyhood;” and further on, “with sincere wishes for brotherly companionship;” and finally, he read, in the middle of a long involved sentence, “Dear Richard, don’t lose heart.”  This stirred Richard Garman into action:  he made an effort, and set off home.  When he saw his brother come on board the steamer the tears came to his eyes, and he was on the point of opening his arms to embrace him.  The Consul, however, held out his hand, and said quietly, “Welcome, Richard!  Where are your things?”

Since then nothing had been said about the letter; once only had Richard Garman ventured to allude to it, when the Consul seemed to imagine that he wished to settle up the accounts that were therein mentioned.  Nothing could have been further from the attache’s thoughts, and he felt that the bare idea was almost an injury.  “Christian Frederick is a wonderful man,” thought Richard; “and what a man of business he is!”