"Nobody recognises me," sobbed the youth, whose left hand was bleeding badly. He had hurt himself somewhat severely when he leaped over the fence of the headsman's house. "Oh, why have you come home just at this time?" lamented the old servant, "if only it had been any other day in the whole year but this; this house is a sad dwelling-place just now, there are two corpses in it." "Who has died then?" "Mistress Leonora and little Ned. How they are all weeping within there." "I shall be the third." The servant was silent. Perhaps he thought to himself: "Nobody will weep for you." "I have deserted from my regiment a third time." "Oh dear, oh dear! And why have you come home again?" "I wanted to speak to my father once for all." "From henceforth your father will speak to nobody but the Lord God." "I don't ask him to be kind to me. I want to tell him that Death is very near him, and he must try to avoid it." "Methinks the poor old man would rather seek out death than fly from it; but you may be seen and recognised here, young master, and taken away--and then..." "They will hang me up, eh? Don't be afraid. The pistol with which I shot the captain is loaded, one shot will be sufficient to save me from the gallows-tree--show me where my father is." "Go, then! Where the mourning is loudest there will you find him." The youth went in the direction indicated and entered the room. The room was wholly darkened, the mirrors and pictures were draped in black; in the midst of it stood two coffins, within which lay two pallid shapes like wax figures. It was impossible to recognise them. On a candelabra beside the coffins burnt four large wax candles, and a gilded crucifix had been placed on a little table right opposite. Kneeling at the foot of the dead was a white-haired man. He glanced now at the one now at the other of the departed, and from time to time would press his clenched hands to his lips and moan softly like one in a troubled sleep. It was a heart-breaking sight--this old white-haired man crushed beneath the hand of God, moaning like some wild beast dedicated to death, but unable to utter a word or shed a tear. When God visits His people with affliction He also gives them tears that they may weep out their sorrow, and power of speech that they may talk of their griefs and so find relief, but even these things were denied to this old man. There he knelt, scourged by the wrath of God, humbled to the very earth, like a withered branch which stiffens into dry lifelessness without complaint. The young man, groping his way along, with his soul benumbed with sorrow, approached the old man, and gently, noiselessly knelt down by his side.