th anxious expectation. At last, after
all the formalities, came the verdict: "five months' imprisonment." He
leant against the railing that separated him from his judges. The wood
gave a creak. Long after the fat gentleman had sat down again Vogt went
on listening. Surely something more was coming; some mitigation of this
terrible sentence? But the trial was at an end.

The condemned man was taken away by a non-commissioned officer; he
walked with unsteady steps, his eyes staring into vacancy. In the
passage outside he caught sight of Wegstetten. The captain was talking
to an old man in civilian clothes. Vogt felt a thrill when he saw the
white hair that surrounded the old man's face. But it was only after he
had gone round the next corner of the passage that the recognition
struck him: great God, it was his father!

Involuntarily he stopped and tried to turn back; but the non-com, took
his arm and pushed him forward, not roughly, yet in such fashion that
the prisoner gave up his attempt.

"You fool, you!" said his companion; "if you had said you were quite
sick with shame for your silly behaviour, you'd have got off with a
month!"

After endless questions the turnpike-keeper had managed to find his way
to the court-house of the army-corps. He had been wandering through
street after street; the busy traffic of the capital had made his head
spin, and he was tired to death with this unwonted tramping over hard
stone pavements.

He had arrived before the court-room door just as the witnesses were
leaving. He had recognised Captain von Wegstetten immediately--his boy
had so often described the little man with his gigantic red moustache
and sparkling eyes--and he was not afraid of addressing him on the
spot.

Wegstetten was at first not particularly pleased at this encounter; but
the honest troubled face of the old soldier touched him, and he
listened patiently.

The turnpike-keeper had not much to say; it only amounted to an earnest
representation of how well-conducted his son had always hitherto been;
of how glad he had been to be a soldier; and he ended with a bitter
lamentation that all this should have happened to such a good, brave
lad; the boy must have gone clean out of his senses. The old man said
it all with the most touching self-restraint. He took great pains to
preserve a soldierly bearing, and omitted none of the customary tokens
of respect, just as if he had been still clad in his old sergeant's
u