efore she could gain the safety of the stairway.

"Hartmann _has_ been talking to you. What has he been saying?"

He had seized her hand as she made to mount the stairway. As she did not
reply to his question, he repeated it, adding:

"Do you really imagine, Kathrien, that you care for that--fellow?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, please, Frederik," she pleaded.

"No? But it is necessary. Do you----"

She broke away from his suddenly rough grip and fled up the stairway to
her own room. As the door shut behind her, Frederik, with clouded face
and working lips, strode over to the desk. He passed close by Peter
Grimm. But the Dead Man was still staring blankly after Kathrien.

"Oh, Katje," he muttered, "even Love could not get my message to you!
Less influence would be needed to change the fate of a nation than the
mind of one good woman. I think a good woman--a _good_ woman,--is more
stubborn than anything else in the Universe. Not excepting myself. When
she has made up her mind to do _right_,--which invariably means to
sacrifice herself and thereby make as many other people wretched as
possible--not even a Spirit from the Other World can influence her."

With a despairing shrug of the shoulders he turned toward his nephew,
and his face hardened. Frederik had seated himself at the desk. He had
drawn out the little handful of personal letters that had arrived that
afternoon for Peter Grimm and those that Mrs. Batholommey had put into
the drawer for safe keeping.

One letter after another Frederik cut open, glanced over, and either put
back into the drawer or laid under a paperweight on the desk. Peter
Grimm crossed to the opposite side of the desk and stood looking down at
him with set face and sad, reproving gaze.

"Frederik Grimm," said the Dead Man at last, his voice low but
infinitely impressive, "my beloved nephew! You sit there opening my mail
with the heart of a stone. You are saying to yourself: 'He is gone;
there will be fine times ahead.' But there is one thing you have
forgotten, Frederik: The Law of Reward and Punishment. Your hour has
come--_to think_!"

Frederik, unheeding, continued to open, read, and sort the letters
before him.

At the Dead Man's last words, his nephew picked from the heap a blue
envelope, ripped it open, and pulled out the enclosures:--a single sheet
of blue paper and a cheap photograph.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my _God_!" he babbled over and over, foolishly, staring
from letter