Thus a year passed amid pangs unspeakable for the lord of the castle. He had cherished a secret hope that the child would not live long in the gloomy tower, but this hope was blighted by Melcher's account of the boy's thriving condition. He was almost in despair. He had not sufficient courage for a fresh crime; and yet it would be impossible to keep a growing child in the basement of the tower much longer without discovery. His cries had already been heard by the villagers in the silence of night, but superstition had lent its aid to protect the guilty. "The devil is at his pranks again in the castle," the peasants in Tausens would say, and they avoided the haunted tower as far as was possible,--crossing themselves with a muttered prayer if they were ever near enough to it to hear any inexplicable sounds. Thus far their superstition had shielded Herr von Heydeck; but who could say when some man, more courageous than his fellows, might not attempt to explore the source whence the ghostly cries proceeded? And then? Why, then discovery, disgrace, and misery were the inevitable consequences. The wretched man had almost made up his mind to have recourse once more to the doctor's aid, when chance pointed a way of release for him. He saw an advertisement in a paper offering a child for adoption. An unnatural mother, pleading extreme poverty, appealed to the compassion of any generous individual who would adopt her child, and consented, if any such were found, to relinquish all her maternal rights. As Heydeck read he thought of the hidden child. If this woman had been successful in only appealing to human compassion, could he not be far more sure of success in invoking the aid of man's cupidity? And he devised the scheme which he proceeded to carry into execution. He put an advertisement in a Berlin newspaper offering a sum of ten thousand thalers to any one who would adopt an orphan boy and so educate him as his own that the child should never learn that he was not the genuine offspring of his adopted parent. He used every caution with regard to this advertisement. He went to Berlin, and there, under an assumed name, he himself received all the answers to his offer,--destroying them after he had read them. Among these one seemed especially desirable. A merchant by the name of Delmar, residing in a distant provincial town, declared himself ready to take the boy. He wrote that he had had the misfortune a short time before to lose his wife and only child, Paul. The care of another child would soothe his grief, and by a judicious outlay of the promised capital he trusted he might insure the boy's future welfare.