“Then I awake. I am alone; the light is out; blood is on my face. I am paralyzed with fear, so I cannot stand. When I can walk, I leave, for I think maybe that only in Germany do I hear the guns. For twenty years I live in Spain. Still do I hear the guns.
“I go to France, but yet every night at the same hour freezes my blood and I hear the death volley.
“I come to America, which I have hated, yet never a night is missed. It is at the same hour. What I hate comes to me. Whatever I fear is mine. To run away from something is for me to meet it. My estate is gone; money I have not. I sink like a man in a quicksand, down, down, down. I come here. Lower I cannot.”
“One day in the Bend, where das Gesindel live, I see the little girl—she of the golden hair, who wiped my stain away.
“But she is dead. I know for sure the face. What it means I know not. Again I fall as dead.
“I have one thing in the world left—only one; it is my scissors-grinder. I sell it and give all the money to bury her. It is the first—it is the only good I ever did. Then, an outcast, I go out into the world where no pity is. I sit me down in a dark alley; strange is my heart, and new.
“It is time for the guns—yet is my blood warm! I wait. The volley comes not!
“The hour is past!
“‘My Gott! My Gott!’ I say. ‘Can this be true?’ I wait one, two, three minutes; it comes not. I scream for joy—I scream loud! I feel an iron hand on me. I am put in prison. Yet is the prison filled with light—yet am I in heaven. The guns are silent.”
One day a big letter with several patches of red sealing-wax and an aristocratic monogram arrived at the bunk-house.