assword.
It was the same Karl who, severely admonished for his recklessness, the
next time added to his challenge the precaution, "Unless you instantly
say 'Fatherland' I'll fire!" Yet his perfect good humor and childlike
curiosity were unmistakable throughout, and incited his comrades and
his superiors to show him everything in the hope of getting some
characteristic comment from him. Everything and everybody were open to
Karl and his good-humored simplicity.

That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the gateway
and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran spontaneously before
them and shouted "Heraus!" to the sentries. But the general promptly
checked "the turning out" of the guard with a paternal shake of his
finger to the over-zealous soldier, in whom the consul recognized Karl.
"He is my Bursche now," said the general explanatorily. "My wife has
taken a fancy to him. Ach! he is very popular with these women." The
consul was still more surprised. The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he
knew to be a pronounced Englishwoman,--carrying out her English
ways, proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt,
uncompromisingly, without fear and without reproach. That she should
follow a merely foreign society craze, or alter her English household so
as to admit the impossible Karl, struck him oddly.

A month or two elapsed without further news of Karl, when one afternoon
he suddenly turned up at the consulate. He had again sought the consular
quiet to write a few letters home; he had no chance in the confinement
of the barracks.

"But by this time you must be in the family of a field-marshal, at
least," suggested the consul pleasantly.

"Not to-day, but next week," said Karl, with sublime simplicity; "THEN I
am going to serve with the governor commandant of Rheinfestung."

The consul smiled, motioned him to a seat at a table in the outer
office, and left him undisturbed to his correspondence.

Returning later, he found Karl, his letters finished, gazing with
childish curiosity and admiration at some thick official envelopes,
bearing the stamp of the consulate, which were lying on the table. He
was evidently struck with the contrast between them and the thin, flimsy
affairs he was holding in his hand. He appeared still more impressed
when the consul told him what they were.

"Are you writing to your friends?" continued the consul, touched by his
simplicity.

"Ach ja!" said Karl eage