stockings, and a countenance which might have been of
wood, brought in a letter on a silver tray.

Paul took the square envelope and turned it over, displaying as he did
so a coronet in black and gold on the corner, like a stamp.

Karl Steinmetz saw the coronet. He never took his quiet, unobtrusive
glance from Paul's face while he opened the letter and read it.

"A fresh difficulty," said Paul, throwing the note across to his
companion.

Steinmetz looked grave while he unfolded the thick stationery.

"Dear Paul [the letter ran]: I hear you are at Osterno and that the
Moscow doctor is in your country. We are in great distress at
Thors--cholera, I fear. The fame of your doctor has spread to my people,
and they are clamoring for him. Can you bring or send him over? You know
your room here is always in readiness. Come soon with the great doctor,
and also Herr Steinmetz. In doing so you will give more than pleasure to
your old friend,"

Catrina Lanovitch.

"P.S. Mother is afraid to go out of doors for fear of infection. She
thinks she has a little cold."

Steinmetz folded the letter very carefully, pressing the seam of it
reflectively with his stout forefinger and thumb.

"I always think of the lie first," he said. "It's my nature or my
misfortune. We can easily write and say that the Moscow doctor has
left."

He paused, scratching his brow pensively with his curved forefinger. It
is to be feared that he was seeking not so much the truth as the most
convenient perversion of the same.

"But then," he went on, "by doing that we leave these poor devils to die
in their--styes. Catrina cannot manage them. They are worse than our
people."

"Whatever is the best lie to tell," burst in Paul--"as we seem to live
in an atmosphere of them--I must go to Thors; that is quite certain."

"There is no must in the case," put in Steinmetz quietly, as a
parenthesis. "No man is compelled to throw himself in the way of
infection. But I know you will go, whatever I say."

"I suppose I shall," admitted Paul.

"And Catrina will find you out at once."

"Why?"

Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one
of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.

"Because she loves you," he said shortly. "There is no coming the Moscow
doctor over her, mien lieber."

Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men--daily growing
fewer--who hold that a woman's love is not a thing to