This man was my teacher from my sixth till my twelfth year. I was a very mischievous boy, always ready for fun, and hating to sit still, and he treated me with continual grave kindness. We seldom exchanged a word that had not to do with the lessons he was teaching me. But once it was different: it was on the day on which I had gone to the monastery school for the first time. I came home weeping bitterly because of the contemptuous way in which my school-fellows had treated me for my religion's sake. The "Bocher" came in, and I told him of my distress. He listened to me in silence, and then opened the Bible at the place where he had given me my last lesson on the previous evening. My tears would not stop. "Don't cry," he said; "don't cry, my child, 'they know not what they do.'" And then he added, in a harsh stern tone, such as I had never heard from him before: "Don't cry. They are not worth your tears. And a day of retribution will come sooner or later." I looked up at him in surprise, and saw that his face wore a strange threatening expression. He was silent for a time, and gradually the fierce look faded away. Then he explained the passage to me in a quiet voice.... I was his only pupil during all these years, but all at once he gave up teaching me. A strange and important event had taken place in his own life, which made him wish me to leave him. I only spoke to him once afterward. * * * * * Old Graf Adam Bortynski was a hard man, loved by none and feared by all. He belonged to a younger branch of the Bortynskis, and so had had very little chance of ever becoming head of the family. He seldom lived in the country, and had his rents sent to him in Paris, London, Monaco, or Homburg. Very little was known about him in Barnow, when he suddenly came there as master at the death of young Graf Arthur, who died in Paris of apoplexy brought on by intemperance. People used to whisper mysteriously in Barnow about that time that no one had had such an evil influence on the late lord of the manor as his present successor, Graf Adam.