She showed her surprise. "Makes toys?"

"Yes. He is an old man--eighty-five. He was born in Nuremberg. Until
he was twenty-five he made elephants like the one in your window. Now
do you see?"

She was not sure that she did see. "Well?"

"I want him for my father's Christmas present."

"Impossible," coldly; "he is not for sale."

He was still patient. "He will make you another--many others."

He had her attention now. "Make--elephants?"

"Yes. He needs only a pattern. There are certain things he has
forgotten. I should like to make him happy."

Miss Emily, hostilely convinced that it was not her business to
contribute to the happiness of any octogenarian Hun, shook her head,
"I'm sorry."

"Then you won't sell him?"

"Certainly not."

He still lingered. "You love your toys--I have been here before, and I
have watched you. They are not just sawdust and wood and cloth and
paint to you--they are real--"

"Yes."

"My father is like that. They are real to him. There's an old wax
doll that was my mother's. He loves her and talks to her--. Because
she was made in that Germany which is dead--"

The fierceness in his voice, the flash of his eye; the thrust of his
hand as if it held a rapier!

"Dead?"

"The Germany he knew died when Prussia throttled her. Her poetry died,
her music--there is no echo now from the Rhine but that of--guns."

"You feel--that way--?"

"Yes."

"Then sit down and tell me--tell me--" She was eager.

"Tell you what?"

"About your father, about the toys, about the Germany that is--dead."

He was glad to tell her. It poured forth, with now and then an
offending phrase, "Gott in Himmel, do they think we have forgotten? My
father came to America because he loved freedom--he fought in the Civil
War for freedom--he loves freedom still; and over there they are
fighting for slavery. The slavery of the little nations, the slavery
of those who love democracy. They want Prussia, and more Prussia, and
more Prussia--" He struck his hand on the counter so that all the
dolls danced.

"They are fighting to get the whole world under an iron heel--to
crush--to grind--to destroy. My father reads it and weeps. He is an
old man, Fraeulein, and his mind goes back to the Germany which sang and
told fairy tales, and made toys; do you see?

"Yet there are people here who do not understand, who point their
fingers at him, at me. Who think because I am Ulrich Stoelle that I