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Herr Sohnstein locked the door again, as he had been ordered to do, and then brought Hans through the shop and into the little back room. Hans evidently was not a party to the mystery, whatever the mystery might be. He looked at Minna as wonderingly as she looked at him, and he was distressingly ill at ease. But there was no time for either of them to ask questions, for as Hans entered the room from the shop, Gottlieb returned to it. In his hand Gottlieb held the brown old parchment on which the lebkuchen recipe was written; the smile had left his face; he was very pale. For a moment there was an awkward pause. Then Gottlieb, trembling a little as he walked, crossed the room to where Hans stood and placed the parchment in his hands. And it was in a trembling, broken voice that Gottlieb said:

“Hans, a most wicked man have I been. But my dead Minna has helped me, and here I give again to thee what I stole from thy chest–I who was a robber.” Then Gottlieb covered his face with his hands, and presently each of his bony knuckles sparkled with a pendant tear.

“My own dear father!” said Minna; and her arms were around him, and her head was pressed close upon his breast.

“My own good brother, thou couldst not be a thief!” said Aunt Hedwig; and, so saying, clasped her stout arms around them both.

“My good old friend! all now is right again,” said Herr Sohnstein; who then affected to put his arms around the three, but really embraced only Aunt Hedwig. However, there was quite enough of Aunt Hedwig to fill even Herr Sohnstein’s long arms; and he made the average of his one-third of an embrace all right by bestowing it with a threefold energy.

The position of Hans as he regarded this affectionately writhing group (that was not unsuggestive of the Laoecoon: with a new motive, a fourth figure, a commendable addition of draperies, and a conspicuous lack of serpents) would have been awkward under any circumstances; and as the circumstances were sufficiently awkward to begin with, he was very much embarrassed indeed. To Aunt Hed-wig’s credit be it said that she was the first (after Minna, of course; and Minna could not properly act in the premises) to perceive his forsaken condition.

“Come, Hans,” said the good Hedwig, her voice shaken by emotion and the tightness of Herr Sohn-stein’s grip about her waist.

“Thou hadst better come, Hans,” added Herr Sohnstein, jollily.

“Wilt thou come, Hans–and forgive me?” Gottlieb asked.

But it was not until Minna said, very faintly, yet with a heavenly sweetness in her voice: “Thou mayst come, Hans!” that Hans actually came.

And then for a while there was such hearty embracing of as much of the other four as each of them could grasp that the like of it all for good-will and lovingness never had been seen in a bakery before. And Gottlieb’s good angel exulted greatly; and the devil, who had lingered about the premises in the hope that even at the eleventh hour the powers of evil might get the better of the powers of good, acknowledged his defeat with a howl of baffled rage: and then fled away in a blue flame and a flash of lightning that made the waters of the East River (which stream he was compelled to wade, thanks to General Newton, who took away his stepping-stones) fairly hiss and bubble. And never did he dare to show so much as the end of his wicked nose in the Cafe Nuernberg again!

“But thou wilt not take from me this little one, my daughter, Hans?” Gottlieb asked, when they had somewhat disentangled themselves. “Thou wilt come and live with us, and be my partner, and together we will make the good lebkuchen once more. Is it not so?”

Hans found this a trying question. He looked at Herr Sohnstein, doubtfully. “Ah,” said Herr Sohnstein, “thou meanest that a very hard-hearted, money-lending man has hired a shop for thee and has made it the most splendid bakery and the finest restaurant on all the East Side, eh? And thou art afraid that this man, this old miser man, will keep thee to thy bargainings, already?”