"Yes, there was a fine. It comes to me,--'one hundred dollars or three months.' It is the last thing I r-remember." "You were dangerously ill by the time you reached Oakwood, and for three days Dr. Morgan left you only to visit his other patients. Between the attacks of stupor you talked a great deal, usually in German, but occasionally in English. From what you said then, and what Dr. Morgan remembered of conversations you had had with him, and from what Bob learned in Asheville, we gathered that you thought that when Dr. and Mrs. Morgan met the marshal on the road after they had been to your house, they betrayed you to him, and your arrest was the consequence. Is that so?" Von Rittenheim nodded. "Yes, it is so." "I hope it will come to you as clearly as we see it who are the Doctor's friends, that he is incapable of such a thing." "Dear lady, even already I think I see it. I r-remember darkly my trial; how the officer told of his trick to entr-rap me into selling. Ah, dear Mrs. Carroll, I was anxious to despair from my so unusual poverty, and I was hungry, and bitten with shame for my weakness--and hopeless." Unconsciously his eyes turned to the field below, where Sydney's hair gleamed red bronze in the sunset light. She was dismissing the men and horses. A great wall seemed to von Rittenheim to spring up between them, a wall made thick by his folly, and high by his disgrace, and strong by his weakness. "Though I am shameful to say such things as if they were excuses, nothing excuses me. I am without justification. I say so most humbly to you." Weakly he leaned back among his cushions. Mrs. Carroll glanced at him and hurried on. "When the first fury of the disease was spent, you seemed distressed at the sight of the Doctor, though you did not recognize him fully; so, though he has not failed to come here twice each day, it is through the nurses' reports and Bob's that he has been treating you. He can do so much better for you now if you will see him." "If I will see him?" he repeated. "Yes, I can at least make some little amends for my folly--my distr-rust. But can I win back ever my self-r-respect, so that you and other people can r-respect me? So that----" He stopped as Sydney's voice reached him. She was coming up the hill, laughing with Bob. Von Rittenheim looked appealingly at Mrs. Carroll. "Sydney," she called, "go on to the house, dear, with Bob, and send James here." She rose and laid her hand tenderly on the bent head. "Stay here a while. It is still quite warm enough for you." She went slowly across the lawn and disappeared beneath the veranda's roses. A level ray from the setting sun touched Friedrich's fair hair with gold, and went on to be splintered into a thousand tiny shafts against the swelling side of the silver cream-jug. XIII Reconciliation