Appendix E - Page 2

us little peace."

"She can do even greater things, my father. She will save us, I know she
will."

Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chair
where he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by his
beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in the
aftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room and
gently woke him, saying--

"My presentiment was true! She will save us. Three times has she
appeared to me in my dreams, and said, 'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to
the Herr Heartless, ask them to come and bid.' There, did I not tell you
she would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!"

Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.

"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon as
to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. THEY bid
on books writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own."

But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early she was
on her way up the Neckar road, as joyous as a bird.

Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having an early
breakfast in the former's castle--the Sparrow's Nest--and flavoring
it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each other
which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they
could not touch without calling each other hard names--and yet it was
the subject which they oftenest touched upon.

"I tell you," said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself yet with your
insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and
worthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish
custom and husband your means, but all in vain. You are always lying
to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to
deceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet I
have detected your hand in it--incorrigible ass!"

"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. Where I
give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen.
The idea of YOUR swelling around the country and petting yourself with
the nickname of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be such
a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. Your life is a continual
lie. But go on, I have tried MY best to save you from beggaring yourself
by your riotous charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my hands
of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's what you are."

"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught, springing up.

"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to