The news from America was more encouraging to England and to the Americans in England. German spies were being arrested with amazing frequence. Ambassadors were floundering in hot water and setting up a large traffic in return-tickets. Even the trunks of certain "Americans" were searched--men and women who were amazed to learn that curious German documents had got mixed up in their own effects. Some most peculiar checks and receipts turned up. It was shortly after a cloudy account of one of these trunk-raids had been published in the London papers that Sir Joseph had his first stroke of paralysis. Sir Joseph was in pitiful case. His devotion to Marie Louise was heartbreaking. Her sympathy had not been exhausted, but schooled rather by its prolonged exercise, and she gave the forlorn old wretch a love and a tenderness that had been wrought to a fine art without losing any of its spontaneous reality. At first he could move only a bit of the great bulk, sprawled like a snowdrift under the sheet. He was helpless as a shattered soldier, but slowly he won back his faculties and his members. The doors that were shut between his brain and his powers opened one by one, and he became a man again. The first thing he wrote with his rediscovered right hand was his signature to a document his lawyer brought him after a consultation. It was a transfer of twenty thousand pounds in British war bonds, "for services rendered and other valuable considerations," to his dear daughter Marie Louise Webling. When the warrant was handed to her with the bundle of securities, Marie Louise was puzzled, then shocked as the old man explained with his still uncertain lips. When she understood, she rejected the gift with horror. Sir Joseph pleaded with her in a thick speech that had relapsed to an earlier habit. "I am theenkink how close I been by dyink. Du bist--zhoo are in my vwill, of coorse, but a man says, 'I vwill,' and some heirs says, 'You vwon't yet!' Better I should make sure of somethink." "But I don't want money, papa--not like this. And I won't have you speak of wills and such odious things." "You have been like our own daughter only more obeyink as poor Hedwig. You should not make me sick by to refuse." She could only quiet him by accepting the wealth and bringing him the receipt for its deposit in a safe of her own. When he was once more able to hoist his massive body to its feet and to walk to his own door, he said: "_Mein_--my _Gott_! Look at the calendar once. It is nineteen seventeen already." He ceased to be that simple, primitive thing, a sick man; he became again the financier. She heard of him anew on war-industry boards. She saw his name on lists of big subscriptions. He began to talk anew of Nicky, and he spoke with unusual anxiety of U-boats. He hoped that they would have a bad week. There was no questioning his sincerity in this. And one evening he came home in a womanish flurry. He pinched the ear of Marie Louise and whispered to her: