o attend to."

"Well, then, I should hammer away until you did hear me."

"For that old gossip Rezi to hear you," she protested. "Her cottage is
not fifty paces away from our back door."

"Then it will have to be the front door, after all," he rejoined
philosophically.

"No, no!--the neighbours--and perhaps the tap-room full of people."

"But d----n it, Klara," he exclaimed impatiently, "I have made up my
mind to come and spend my last evening with you--and when I have made up
my mind to a thing, I am not likely to change it because of a lot of
gossiping peasants, because of old Rezi, or the whole lot of them. So if
you don't want me to come in by the front door, which is open, or to
knock at the back door, which is locked, how am I going to get in?"

"I don't know."

"Well, then, you'll have to find out, my pretty one," he said
decisively, "for it has got to be done somehow, or that gold watch we
spoke of the other day will have to go to somebody else. And you know
when I say a thing I mean it. Eh?"

"There is a duplicate key," she whispered shyly, ". . . to the back
door, I mean."

"I thought there was," he remarked dryly. "Where is it?"

"In the next room. . . . It hangs on a nail by father's bedside."

"Go and get it, then," he said more impatiently.

"Not now," she urged. "Leopold is looking straight at you and me."

He shrugged his aristocratic shoulders.

"You are not afraid of that monkey?" he said with a laugh.

"Well, no! not exactly afraid. But he is so insanely jealous; one never
knows what kind of mischief he'll get into. He told me just now that
whenever father is away from home he takes his stand outside this house
from nightfall till morning--watching!"

"A modern Argus--eh?"

"A modern lunatic!" she retorted.

"Well!" resumed the young man lightly, "lunatic or not, he won't be able
to keep an eye on you to-night, even though your father will be away."

"How do you mean?"

"Hirsch is off to Fiume in half an hour."

"To Fiume?"

"Yes. You know he has a brother coming home from America."

"I know that."

"His ship is due in at Fiume the day after to-morrow. Leopold must start
by the same train as your father to-night, in order to catch the express
for Fiume at Budapesth to-morrow."

"Did he tell you all that?"

"I have known all along that he meant to meet his brother at Fiume, and
yesterday he said something about it again. So you see, my pretty one,
that we can have a co