"Then he was a bad man, and it was a bad death. I alone know it, for I alone was with the poor man when death seized him with the iron hand. Then they struggled with each other, strong Harald and strong Death, and it was a horrible sight, so horrible that all the others ran away; but I would not abandon him in his last hour, for he was, after all, Oscar's son, and I had borne him in my arms when he was an innocent babe, and rocked him on my knees. So I held on and prayed, while he swore and cursed God, till Death struck him on the heart, and he cried out aloud and fell back on his pillow. Then it was all over with him, and his poor soul was at rest." "And had the baron no friend who might have stood by him in his last hour?" "Friends enough, and men among them who were not afraid of a death-bed; but they were afraid of Harald; he would have strangled and torn to pieces any one who would have come to him at that hour. I only wish they had come, one after the other; there was not one among them but deserved to have his neck twisted." "And who were these sad friends?" "First, Baron Barnewitz, not the one at Sullitz, who is still alive,--he is a good man and harms no one,--but he at Smittow, who afterwards lost all his money at play to Baron Berkow, and then sold him his daughter to pay his debts." "Melitta!" groaned Oswald, and his hands seized nervously the back of his chair. "What ails you, young master?" asked the old woman. "Nothing, nothing," murmured Oswald, with a supernatural effort to overcome a mingled feeling of horror, pity, hatred, and revenge, which arose in his heart when he saw the image of his beloved one thus dragged through the mire of vulgar passions.--Melitta sold, sold by her own father, to a man who did not love her, whom she only married to save her father from disgrace! Oswald felt that such a thought would madden him if he followed it out, and at the same time he was afraid that cunning Mr. Timm, of whose profound slumbers he was by no means quite convinced, in spite of an occasional snore from the great chest, might notice his emotion. He forced himself, therefore, to sit still and to ask, with apparent calmness: "Was Baron Berkow one of Harald's friends? Was he not too young at that time?" "He was the youngest," said Mother Claus, "and the best too. He did what he saw the others did, without thinking whether it was right or wrong. He was not as powerful as the others. When he drank one bottle, Harald drank three, and yet Harald remained master of himself and Berkow fell under the table." "Was he a handsome man?" asked Oswald.