"We want to throw them." "No, don't do that. But I'll make you a new doll-carriage and these will be lovely wheels." The children assented and Amanda brought a pair of scissors in order to make holes in the little wheels. But they were too hard and the points of the blades slipped. "Ask father to use his small gimlet." Amanda ran to the open window behind which he for whom all this was prepared was quietly making out his monthly bills. Toni's breath failed. If he recognised the poisonous fruits, it was all over with her plan. But the risk was not to be avoided. He looked at the discs for a moment. And yet for another. No, he did not know their nature but was rather pleased with them. It did not even occur to him to warn the little girl to beware of the unknown fruit. He called into the shop ordering an apprentice to bring him a tool-case. The boy in his blue apron came and Toni observed that his eyes rested upon the fruits for a perceptible interval. Thus there was, in addition to the children, another witness and one who would be admitted to oath. Weigand bored holes into four of the discs and threw them, jesting kindly, into the children's apron. The others he kept. "He has pronounced his own condemnation," Toni thought as with trembling fingers she mended an old toy to fit the new wheels. Nothing remained but to grind the proper dose with cinnamon, to sweeten it--according to instructions--and spice a rice-pudding therewith. But fate which, in this delicate matter, had been hostile to her from the beginning, ordained it otherwise. For that very evening came the apothecary, not, as a rule, a timid person. He was pale and showed Weigand the fruits. He had, by the merest hair-breadth, prevented his little girl Marie from nibbling one of them. The rest followed as a matter of course. The new wheels were taken from the doll-carriage, all fragments were carefully sought out and all the discs were given to the apothecary who locked them into his safe. "The red-headed girl must be sacrificed after all," Toni thought. She planned and schemed, but she could think of no way by which the waitress could be saved from that destruction which hung over her. There was no room for further hesitation. The path had to be trodden to its goal. Whether she left corpses on the way-side, whether she herself broke down dead at the goal--it did not matter. That plan of her life which rivetted her fate to her beloved's forever demanded that she proceed. The old physician came hurrying to the inn next morning. He was utterly confounded by the scarcely escaped horrors. "You really look," he said to Toni, "as if you had swallowed some of the stuff, too." "Oh, I suppose my fate will overtake me in the end," she answered with a weary smile. "I feel it in my bones: there will be some misfortune in our house." "For heaven's sake!" he cried, "Put that red-headed beast into the street."