gh he's too apt to allow
his feelings to carry him away; for he's even more sentimental than the
average German, and entirely lacking in the characteristic German
phlegm. He is as vivacious and excitable as a Frenchman, and I fancy
there's a good big dash of French blood in his pedigree, though he'd be
angry if any one suggested such a thing!

He did not know me for a moment, but when I told him who I was he
welcomed me effusively.

"Ah, now I remember; we met in London, when I was there with my poor
friend. 'We heard at midnight the clock,' as our Shakespeare says. And
you are going to take his place? I have not yet the shock recovered of
his death; from it I never shall recover. O judgment, to brutish beasts
hast thou fled, and their reason men have lost. My heart, with my friend
Carson, in its coffin lies, and me, until it returns, you must excuse!"

I surmised that he was quoting Shakespeare again, as he had to Medhurst.
I wanted to smile, though I was so downright wretched. He would air what
he conceived to be his English, and he was funny!

"Would you mind speaking German?" I asked, for there was a good deal I
wanted to learn from him, and I guessed I should get at it all the
sooner if I could head him off from his quotations. His face fell, and I
hastened to add--

"Your English is splendid, of course, and you've no possible need to
practise it; but my German's rusty, and I'd be glad to speak a bit. Just
you pull me up, if you can't understand me, and tell me what's wrong."

My German is as good as most folks', any day, but he just grabbed at my
explanation, and accepted it with a kindly condescension that was even
funnier than his sentimental vein. Therefore the remainder of our
conversation was in his own language.

"I hear you've left the _Zeitung_," I remarked. "Going on another
paper?"

"The editor of the _Zeitung_ dismissed me," he answered explosively.
"Pig that he is, he would not understand the reason that led to my
ejection from Russia!"

"Conducted to the frontier, and shoved over, eh? How did that happen?" I
asked.

"Because I demanded justice on the murderers of my friend," he declared
vehemently. "I went to the chief of the police, and he laughed at me.
There are so many murders in Petersburg, and what is one Englishman more
or less? I went to the British Embassy. They said the matter was being
investigated, and they emphatically snubbed me. They are so insular, so
narrow-minded; they c