A week passed.

Meantime, where was he? what was become of him? I had gone often to his room, but had alwaysⒶalteration in the MS foundⒶemendation it vacant. I was missing him sorely. Ah, he was so interesting! there was none that could approach him for that. And there could not be a more engaging mystery than he. He was always doing and saying strange and curious things, and then leaving them but half explained or not explained at all. Who was he? what was he? where was he from? I wished I knew. Could he be converted? could he be saved? Ah, if only this could happen, and I be in some humble way a helper toward it!

[begin page 321]

While I was thus cogitating about him, he appeared—gay, of course, and even more gaily clad than he was that day that the magician burnt him. He said he had been “home.” I pricked up my ears hopefully, but was disappointed: with that mere touch he left the subject, just as if becauseⒶalteration in the MS it had no interest for him it couldn'tⒶalteration in the MS have any for others. A chuckle-headed idea, certainly.Ⓐalteration in the MS He was handy about disparagingⒶalteration in the MS other people's reasoning powers, but it never seemed to occur to him to look nearer home. He smacked me on the thigh and said,Ⓐemendation Ⓐalteration in the MS

“Come, you need an outing, you've been shut up here quite long enough. I'll do the handsome thing by you, now—I'll show you something creditable to your race.”

That pleased me, and I said so; and said it was very kind and courteous of him to find something to its credit, and be good enough to mention it.

“Oh, yes,” he said, lightly, and paying no attention to my sarcasm, “I'll show you a really creditable thing. At the same time I'll have to show you something discreditable, too, but that's nothing—that's merely human, you know. Make yourself invisible.”

I did soⒶalteration in the MS, and he did the like. We were presently floating away, high in the air, over the frosty fields and hills.

“We shall go to a small town fifty miles removed,” he said, “Thirty years ago Father Adolf was priest there, and was thirty years old. Johann Brinker, twenty years old, resided there, with his widowed mother and his four sisters—three younger than himself, and one a couple of years older, and marriageable. He was a rising young artist. Indeed one might say that he had already risen, for he had exhibited a picture in Vienna which had brought him great praise, and made him at once a celebrity. The family had been very poor, but now his pictures were wanted, and he sold all of his little stock at fine prices, and took orders for as many more as he could paint in two or three years. It was a happy family! and was suddenly become courted, caressed and—envied, of course, for that is human. To be envied is the human being's chiefest joy.Ⓐemendation

“Then a thing happened. On a winter's morning Johann was skating, when he heard a choking cry for help, and saw that a man had broken through the ice and was struggling; he flew to the spot, [begin page 322] and recognised Father Adolf, who was becomingⒶalteration in the MS exhausted by the cold and by his unwise strugglings, for he was not a swimmer. There was but one way to do, in the circumstances, and that was, to plunge in and keep the priest's head up until further help should come—which was on the way. Both men were quickly rescued by the people. Within the hour Father Adolf was as good as new, but it was not so with Johann.Ⓐalteration in the MS He had been perspiring freely, from energetic skating, and the icy water had consequences for him. Here is his small house, we will go in and see him.”

We stood in the bedroom and looked about us. An elderly woman with a profoundly melancholy face sat at the fireside with her hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed, as with age-long weariness—that pathetic attitude which says so much! Without audible words the spirit of 44 explained to me—

“The marriageable sister. There was no marriage.”

On a bed, half reclining and propped with pillows and swathed in wraps was a grizzled man of apparentlyⒶalteration in the MS great age, with hollow cheeks, and with features drawn by immemorial pains; and now and then he stirred a little, and softly moaned—whereatⒶemendation a faint spasm flitted across the sister's face, and it was as if that moan had carried a pain to her heart. The spirit of 44 breathed upon me again:

“Since that day it has been like this—thirty years!—”

“My God!”

“It is true. Thirty years. He has his wits—the worse for him—the cruelty of it! He cannot speak, he cannot hear, he cannot see, he is wholly helpless, the half of him is paralysed, the other half is but a house of entertainment for bodily miseries. At risk of his life he saved a fellow-being. It has cost him ten thousand deaths!”Ⓐalteration in the MS

Another sad-faced woman entered. She brought a bowl of gruel with her, and she fed it to the man with a spoon, the other woman helping.

“August, the four sisters have stood watches over this bed day and night for thirty years, ministering to this poor wreck. Marriage, and homes and families of their own was not for them; they gave up all their hopeful young dreams and suffered the ruin of their lives, in orderⒶalteration in the MS to ameliorate as well as they might the miseries of [begin page 323] their brotherⒶalteration in the MS.Ⓐemendation Ⓐalteration in the MS They laid him upon this bedⒶalteration in the MS in the bright morning of his youth and in the golden glory of his new-born fame—and look at him now! His mother's heart broke, and she went mad. Add up the sum: oneⒶemendation broken heart, fiveⒶalteration in the MS blighted and blasted young lives. All this it costs to save a priestⒶalteration in the MS for a life-longⒶalteration in the MS career of vice and all forms of shameless rascality! Come, come, let us go, before these enticing rewards for well-doing unbalance my judgment and persuade me to become a human beingⒶalteration in the MS myself!”

In our flight homeward I was depressed and silent, there was a heavy weight upon my spirit; then presently came a slight uplift and a glimmer of cheer, and I said—Ⓐalteration in the MS

“Those poor people will be richly requited for all they have sacrificed and suffered.”

“Oh, perhaps,” he said, indifferently.

“It is my belief,” I retorted. “And certainly a large mercy has been shown the poor mother, in granting her a blessed mental oblivion and thus emancipating her from miseries which the others, being younger, were better able to bear.”

“The madness was a mercy, you think?”

“With the broken heart, yes; for without doubt death resulted quickly and she was at rest from her troubles.”

A faint spiritual cackle fell upon my ear. After a moment 44 said—

“At dawn in the morning I will show you something.”