"No—he keeps to himself, but I saw him by chance the other day with uncle Wallmoden in Berlin."
"And how does he look? Is he much changed in these last years?"
Willibald shrugged his shoulders: "He has certainly grown old. You would hardly recognize him with his white hair."
"White hair!" exclaimed Hartmut. "He is scarcely fifty-two years old—has he been ill?"
"No—not that I know. His gray hair came suddenly in a few months when he demanded that his resignation be accepted."
Hartmut grew pale and stared at the speaker with anxious eyes.
"My father wished to leave the army, he, heart and soul a soldier, devoted to his profession—in what year did that happen?"
"They would not accept it," said Will, evasively. "They sent him to a distant garrison instead, and for the last three years he has been minister of war."
"But he wanted to go—in what year was it?" Hartmut asked in a determined voice now.
"It was when you disappeared. He believed his honor demanded it. You should not have treated your father so, Hartmut; it nearly killed him."