"The sacrifice of ten long years gone for nothing!" he said at last in stifled accents. "My hair is bleached before its time with the slavery to which I have submitted with this goal in view, and now the prize is snatched from me just as it seemed within my reach. Again I must bow my neck to the yoke, and, with a mind fitted to appropriate to itself the most precious treasures of science, toil for my bread! I have wasted the best years of my life, that I may now begin all over again--an old man. It was indeed a losing game! When my powers began to fail me, I comforted myself with hopes of a near release; but now what can sustain me when that hope has deserted me? No release in future,--nothing but a never-ending struggle for daily sustenance! Oh----!" With a long-drawn sigh of mortal agony, the tortured roan buried his face in the cushion of the sofa, and another long silence ensued, broken only by Bertha's loud sobbing. At last she could endure the silence no longer. "What is to be done now?" she asked half sorrowfully, half defiantly. "Let me alone," said Leuthold. "Leave me--you see how I am suffering and struggling!" "How did you know about the matter?" she insisted. "That fellow Lederer whispered it to me on returning from the funeral. He signed the will as a witness. We were separated in the crowd, and I could not even ask him whether I was left guardian or not. If I were only guardian----" He ceased, and sunk again into a profound reverie. There was a slight noise in the adjoining room, and a lovely, smiling child's face looked in, and a clear, musical voice cried, "Peep!" At the sound Leuthold turned his head and looked with strange emotion towards the place where his daughter was standing. The little girl planted herself firmly upon her feet, and, after a couple of futile attempts, managed, to her own great delight, to cross the high threshold. This difficulty surmounted, she tripped gleefully across to her mother, who sat nearest the door; but upon receiving a rude repulse from her--a repulse that almost threw her down--she determined to pursue her journey as far as her father. To insure her swifter progress, she betook herself to all fours, and, when she reached her goal, climbed up by her father's knees and smiled into his face. Leuthold gazed for a few moments into her round, innocent eyes; his own grew dim; he took the child in his arms and whispered, as he clasped her to his breast, "Poor child!" His breath came quick--he clasped her tighter and tighter in his arms, until suddenly a burst of tears relieved his overburdened soul. The father's heart was filled for once with pure human emotion. Gretchen tried to wipe his eyes with her little apron, and patted his cheeks with her chubby hands.