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“The Mayor’s first words were: ‘Ah, you have come again, is it, Meinherr Marny; and it is the same young man, too, Herr Fuddles. Well, well, it is much trouble that you have.’ (I’d give it to you in German, old man, but you wouldn’t understand it–this to me in a sort of an aside.)

“Fiddles never moved a muscle of his face. You would have thought that he was the least interested man in the room. Only once did his features relax, and that was when the cobbler arrived with his head swathed in bandages. Then a grim smile flickered about the corners of his mouth, as if fate had at last overtaken his enemy.

“Of course, the Mayor dismissed the case. Gretchen’s tearful, pleading face, the landlady’s positive statement of helping put the dear young gentleman to bed; the key and the use I had made of it; the reluctant testimony of the officers, who had tried the knob and could not get in until I had turned the lock, together with the well-known animosity of the cobbler (and all because Fiddles had ridiculed his workmanship on a pair of shoes the boy had left with him to be half-soled), turned the tide in the lad’s favor and sent us all back to the inn rejoicing.

“Some weeks later Fiddles came into my room, locked the door, pulled down the shades, looked under the bed, in the closet and behind the curtains, and sat down in front of me. (I had to return to Munich the next day, and this would be our last night together.)

“You have been very good to me, Master,’ he said with a choke in his voice. ‘I love people who are good to me; I hate those who are not. I have been that way all my life–it would have been better for me if I hadn’t.’ Then he leaned forward and took my hand. ‘I want you to do something more for me; I want you to promise me you’ll take me home to America with you when you go. I’m tired dodging these people. I want to get somewhere where I can shoot and hunt and fish, and nobody can stop me. I snared that rabbit; been snaring them all summer; going to keep on snaring them after you’re gone. I love to hunt them–love the fun of it–born that way. And I’ve got something else to tell you’–here a triumphant smile flashed over his face–‘I smashed that cobbler!’

“‘You, Fiddles!’ I laughed. ‘Why, you were dead drunk, and I put you under the pump and–‘

“‘Yes, I know you thought so–I intended you should. I heard every word that you said, and what little Gretchen said–dear little Gretchen, I had studied it all out, and to play drunk seemed the best way to get at the brute, and it was; they’d have proved it on me if I hadn’t fooled them that way–‘ and again his eyes snapped and his face flushed as the humor of the situation rose in his mind. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Don’t tell Gretchen.’ The light in his eyes was gone now. I’d rather she’d think me drunk than vulgar, and it was vulgar, and maybe cowardly, to hit him, but I couldn’t help that either, and I’m not sorry I did it.’

“‘But I locked you in,’ I persisted. Was this some invention of his fertile imagination, or was it true?

“‘Yes, you locked the door,’ he answered, as he broke into a subdued laugh. ‘I dropped from the window sill when it got dark–it wasn’t high, about fifteen feet, and the waterspout helped–ran down the back way, gave him a crack as he opened the door, and was back in bed by the help of the same spout before he had come to. He was leaving the next day and it was my only chance. I wasn’t out of the room five minutes–maybe less. You’ll forgive me that too, won’t you?'”

Marny stopped and looked into the smouldering coals. For a brief instant he did not speak. Then he rose from his chair, crossed the room, took the miniature from the wall where he had hung it and looked at it steadily.

“What a delightful devil you were, Fiddles. And you were so human.”

“Is he living yet?” I asked.

“No, he died in Gretchen’s arms. I kept my promise, and two months later went back to the village to bring him to America with me, but a forester’s bullet had ended him. It was on the Baroness’s grounds, too. He wouldn’t halt and the guard fired. Think of killing such an adorable savage–and all because the blood of the primeval man boiled in his veins. Oh, it was damnable!”

“And you know nothing more about him? Where he came from?” The story had strangely moved me. “Were there no letters or notebooks? Nothing to show who he really was?”

“Only an empty envelope postmarked ‘Berlin.’ This had reached him the day before, and was sealed with a coat of arms in violet wax.”