Doctor Behrend stepped nearer him, and exchanged a glance with Jane, whose eyes forbade his giving the true answer. "Oh no, not so bad as that, Frederic; but you are severely wounded." Frederic was perfectly conscious; he had seen the glance, and understood it. "You may as well tell me," he said, "I have no fear of death. My master!"--he turned entreatingly to Jane--"did you not say, Miss, that my master was in peril--that he would be lost?" Jane buried her face in her hands. She was suffering a two-fold torture. The guard doubled, she herself incapable of taking a step forward; her dying brother before her, and perhaps at this very moment Walter had fallen. Her courage was at an end; she yielded to the impossible. Frederic understood the wordless answer. "Then I do not want to live any longer!" he said calmly but decidedly. "I knew it when he took leave of me, and without him I could not endure life!" Again he closed his eyes, and lay motionless as before. The physician approached Jane, and bent down to her with a low whisper. "I can give you one consolation," he said. "The inevitable will happen calmly, almost painlessly. If you have anything to say to him--hasten!" He left the room to look after the other wounded men, and, at a low word from Jane, Atkins withdrew into the adjoining chamber. The brother and sister were now alone. She bent over him; his face had regained its wonted expression, only that it was now half lifeless and ghastly pale. He scarce appeared to suffer. The look that had glanced forth at the first mortal danger had vanished, and the family resemblance with it. Jane felt that she must set circumspectly about her task, lest the frail life-tenure be too suddenly riven, and she prepare for him a final anguish instead of a final joy. She had strength for the effort. There was in the whole world but one being who had power to rob Jane Forest of her self-control. Even at the death-bed of her brother, this self-mastery asserted its right. Her decision was made; this brother should not leave the world without the last kiss of his sister. "Fritz!" Again he opened his eyes, surprised at the strange appellation; but it seemed to be a tender, melancholy remembrance this name awakened in him, the name Jane had so feared she might hear from Walter's lips. She bent yet lower down to the dying man, and took gently his hand in hers. "You have spoken to me of your childhood. Have you no remembrance at all of your parents--of the real parents, I mean?" Frederic shook his head. "Only a little! I remember the great ship we were going to sail on over the water, and how my father let go my hand, and sent me to my mother; how all at once father and mother were both gone, and I stood alone in a narrow street among a crowd of people. I must have screamed loudly and wept bitterly, for I did not become quiet until Erdmann took me in his arms and carried me to his wife. That is all I know."