large plate-glass windows
and rows of tables on a covered verandah outside. It was undoubtedly a
"_kolossal_" establishment after the best Berlin style. So that there
might be no mistake about the name it was placarded all over the front
of the place in gilt letters three feet high on glass panels--Cafe
Regina.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning and at that early hour I had
the place to myself. I felt very small, sitting at a tiny table, with
tables on every side of me, stretching away as it were into the
_Ewigkeit_, in a vast white room with mural paintings of the crassest
school of impressionism.

I ordered a good, substantial breakfast and whiled away the time while
it was coming by glancing at the morning paper which the waiter brought
me.

My eyes ran down the columns without my heeding what I read, for my
thoughts were busy with Francis. When did he come to the cafe? How was
he living at Duesseldorf?

Suddenly, I found myself looking at a name I knew ... it was in the
personal paragraphs.

"Lieut.-General Count von Boden," the paragraph ran, "Aide-de-Camp to
H.M. the Emperor, has been placed on the retired list owing to
ill-health. General von Boden has left for Abbazia, where he will take
up his permanent residence." There followed the usual biographical
notes.

Of a truth, Clubfoot was a power in the land.

I ate my breakfast at a table by the open door, and surveyed the busy
life of the square where the pigeons circled in the sunshine. A waiter
stood on the verandah idly watching the birds as they pecked at the
stones. I was struck with the profound melancholy depicted in his face.
His cheeks were sunken and he had a pinched look which I had observed in
the features of most of the customers at Haase's. I set it down to the
insufficient feeding which is general among the lower classes in Germany
to-day.

But in addition to this man's wasted appearance, his eyes were hollow,
there were deep lines about his mouth and he wore a haggard look that
had something strangely pathetic about it. His air of brooding sadness
seemed to attract me, and I found my eyes continually wandering back to
his face.

And then, without warning, through some mysterious whispering of the
blood, the truth came to me that this was my brother. I don't know
whether it was a passing mood reflected in his face or the shifting
lights and shadows in his eyes that lifted the veil. I only know that
through those features ravage