“This was done, and he stopped to pant and blow in safety.  When he had recovered his breath, he cried out: 

“‘Send for the police!  We will have her chloroformed.’

“I touched Frederika on the arm;—­she followed me into an open room.

“‘Tell him,’ I whispered to her, quickly, ’tell him that if he calls in the police there will have to be an inquest over the dead body of Joachim; there may be questions asked that will be hard to answer.  The girl will have to be taken off to be tried for murder, and he will lose her.  If he attempts to use chloroform she will stab herself with the poisoned knife.  Tell him you will drug her food with narcotics; that hunger will eventually compel her to eat; and that when she sleeps she may be made a prisoner, and the knife taken away from her.’

“The quick-witted girl saw the force of these suggestions, and ran after her paramour.  She succeeded in her mission.  He fears the coming outbreak, whispers of which are now heard everywhere.  He has recalled the order for the police.  He stipulates, however—­for he is suspicious of Frederika, and fears treachery—­that he is to drug the food himself and see it placed in the room; and he has stationed two trusty guards at the door of Estella’s chamber, who are to be changed every eight hours, and who are instructed that, whenever they think she is asleep, one of them is to notify him; and carpenters will then quietly cut the door from its hinges, and they will enter, disarm her and make her a prisoner.  Estella, I find, has barricaded her door with her bedstead and the rest of the furniture.  If she sleeps she will wake with any attempt to enter the room; but she is not likely, in her present state of high-wrought excitement, to sleep at all; and she will not touch the drugged food sent in to her.  I have arranged with Frederika, who has great authority in the house, that on Monday night the two watchmen shall be furnished with some refreshment containing morphine; and when they are sound asleep, and the Prince busy with his guests, she or I will go to the room, carrying Estella’s masculine disguise, and then bring her to my room, where she will join your friend.

“I do not think she is in any present danger.  The poisoned knife is her safeguard.  The whole household, after witnessing its terrible potency, fear it as they would the fangs of a rattlesnake.  It was a lucky thought that left it with her.

“If your friend does not fail us, all will be well.

    “Farewell.

28,263 M 2.”

I need not tell you, my dear Heinrich, that we both followed this narrative with the most rapt attention and the most intense feeling.

“Brave girl!” I cried, when Maximilian stopped reading, “she is worth dying for.”  “Or living for,” said he, “which is better still.  How she rose to the occasion!”

“Yes,” I said, “that was blood.”

“There is as good stuff in the ranks,” he replied, “as ever came out of them.  The law of heredity is almost as unreliable as the law of variation.  Everything rises out of the mud, and everything goes back into it.”