About two o'clock that day Maximilian returned home. He was covered with dust and powder-smoke, but there was no blood upon him. I did not see him return; but when I entered the drawing-room I started back. There was a stranger present. I could not long doubt as to who he was. He was locked in the arms of Max's mother. He was a pitiful sight. A tall, gaunt man; his short hair and stubby beard white as snow. He was prematurely aged--his back was stooped--his pallid complexion reminded one of plants grown in cellars; he had a dejected, timorous look, like one who had long been at the mercy of brutal masters; his hands were seamed and calloused with hard work; he was without a coat, and his nether garments had curious, tiger-like stripes upon them. He was sobbing like a child in the arms of his wife. He seemed very weak in body and mind. Maximilian gave him a chair, and his mother sat down by him, weeping bitterly, and holding the poor calloused hands in her own, and patting them gently, while she murmured words of comfort and rejoicing. The poor man looked bewildered, as if he could not quite collect his faculties; and occasionally he would glance anxiously at the door, as if he expected that, at any moment, his brutal masters would enter and take him back to his tasks. "Gabriel," said Maximilian,--and his face was flushed and working,--"this is--or was--my father." I took the poor hand in my own and kissed it, and spoke encouragingly to him. And this, I thought, was once a wealthy, handsome, portly, learned gentleman; a scholar and a philanthropist; and his only crime was that he loved his fellow-men! And upon how many such men have the prison doors of the world closed--never to open again? They took him away to the bath; they fed him; they put upon him the clothes of a gentleman. He smiled in a childish way, and smoothed the fine cloth with his hands; and then he seemed to realize, for the first time, that he was, indeed, no longer a prisoner--that his jailers had gone out of his life forever. "I must go now," said Maximilian, hurriedly; "I will be back this evening. I have a duty to perform." He returned at nightfall. There was a terrible light in his eyes. "I have avenged my father," he said to me, in a hoarse whisper. "Come this way." He took me into the library, for he would not have the women hear the dreadful story. I shut the door. He said: