"In my place?

"Yes."

"But they will find it out in five minutes."

"Still you have time to get out; and getting out and getting off is one and the same thing to you."

"And do you suppose that you can do such a thing without being punished?"

"At the worst, they can but shut me up in your place, and that will not be for long. With the locks I can easily deal, and here"--he showed me a watch-spring-saw, which he drew out of his thick hair--"with this I will cut that grating through in a quarter of an hour."

"Klaus, all that cannot have come out of your own head."

"No, out of Christel's; but I beg you make haste."

I kicked the sailor-dress, which still lay upon the floor, under the bed, for I heard the sergeant coming along the corridor. He knocked at the door, and when I opened it, handed me a bottle of brandy and a gla.s.s.

"But we are no bear, and won't drink a drop ourselves, will we?"

Klaus stared in astonishment when he saw the dreaded keeper turned into so obliging an attendant.

I closed the door again, and then fell on the good fellow's neck. The tears stood in my eyes.

"Dear, good Klaus," I cried, "you and Christel are the kindest hearts in the world, but I cannot accept your generous offer. I would not have accepted it under any circ.u.mstances; and as it is, it is not to be thought of. I could go away from here at an moment, but I will not, Klaus, I will not."

Here I embraced Klaus again, and gave free course to the tears which I had been repressing. I felt as if now for the first time I knew what a prisoner was, since I had declared that I wished to be one, and thus made myself one of my own choice. Klaus, who naturally had no conception of what was pa.s.sing within me, constantly endeavored, while casting uneasy glances at the door, to persuade me to let him take my place; he would wager his head that he would be out in twenty-four hours.

"Klaus, Klaus!" I cried, clapping him on the plump cheeks, "you want to deceive me. Confess now, you have no expectation of getting out so soon."

"Well, anyhow," he answered, very shame-facedly, "my wife thought----"

"Your wife, Klaus! your wife!"

"We have been married these two months."

I thrust Klaus into the easy-chair, sat down before him, and begged him to tell me everything. It would be the greatest kindness he could do me, I said, if he could tell me that all was going well with him; that I was by no means in so evil a straight as he imagined in his true heart of friendship; and I gave him in brief words a sketch of my adventures in the prison, my attempt to escape, my illness, and my friendly relations with the superintendent and his family.

"You see," I concluded, "that in every sense I am well taken care of; and now I must know how things have gone with you and Christel, and how you managed so soon to become man and wife. Only twenty-two, Klaus, and married already! How do you expect to get on? And your Christel has let you come away? Klaus, Klaus, I don't like the look of that."

I laughed at him, and Klaus, who now at last perceived that nothing could come of his plan to rescue me, laughed also, but not very heartily.

"There it is," said he. "How will she look when I come back without you."

"'Without _thee_,'[6] I said, Klaus. I am not going to put up with any breach of our old brotherhood now, or I shall think you too proud to be on terms of _thee_ and _thou_ with a prisoner. And how will she look when you come back without me?"

"There it is," said Klaus, "how will she, indeed! We are so happy; but one or the other of us was always saying, 'and he is shut up there!'

and then there was an end of all our happiness, especially because in a manner it is Christel's fault that you are here; for that morning at Zanowitz----"

"Klaus," I interrupted him, "do you know then that for a while I believed that Christel herself gave the information to get rid of your father?"

"No," said Klaus, "she did not do that, thank G.o.d; though more than once she was quite desperate and thought of killing herself."

He wiped his forehead with his hand; I had touched a painful subject.

We sat awhile without speaking, when Klaus commenced again:

"One good result it has had: 'he'"--Klaus had already adopted Christel's habit of never calling 'him' by his name--"'he' of course had to give up the guardianship of Christel, and as a person of damaged reputation, could not interfere much with me. Aunt Julchen in Zanowitz, with whom Christel stayed after that day, fitted Christel out, and we might have lived like angels, if--" and Klaus, with a melancholy look at me, shook his big head.

"And you are still in Berlin, in the commerzienrath's machine-shops?" I asked, to give his thoughts another direction.

"Of course," he said, "I have been promoted already; I am now foreman in my shop."

"And you earn plenty of money?"

"So much that we don't know what to do with it."

"Your Christel is an excellent housekeeper----"

"And washes and irons to that extent that our whole house smells of nothing but soap and flat-irons."

Klaus showed his teeth; I pressed his hand in token of sympathy with his happiness, though I had never been especially ravished by the perfumes he so highly prized; but now more urgently than ever I desired to know how this happy young pair ever made up their minds so cruelly to risk their good fortune.

"I told you already," answered Klaus, "that we never were quite happy. Wherever we went or stood, and above all when we were in real good humor about anything, the thought always came up: if he could only be here! And four weeks ago yesterday, when we had some _Bierkaltschale_[7]--no, no, we could stand it no longer."

"Some _Bierkaltschale_?" I asked, in some surprise.

"Yes; don't you know how you always used to have some made for you at the forge, in the summer-time, when you wanted to give yourself a treat? Christel often made it for you. Well, then, just four weeks ago we were drinking some--they have an excellent beer for it in Berlin, much better than ours, that was always a little bitter--and I was enjoying it, when Christel on a sudden let the ladle fall and began to howl, and I knew at once what she was thinking of, and then I began, and we kept on drinking and howling, and when we had finished, we both said together: It can't go on this way! So then we put our heads together----"

"As you did that evening when I met you on the heath?"

"And contrived a plan at last," continued Klaus, who would have turned red at my indiscreet remark, had the color of his complexion allowed it, "that is to say, Christel contrived it. She had read just such a story, only the prisoner was a king's son, and his deliverer was a knight, who disguised himself as a priest--of course that wouldn't do, but a sailor would do, Christel said, for here in the workhouse there was sure to be many a tarpaulin, and of course there would be some coming to see them. And anyhow, Christel said, a sailor's dress was the best disguise in a sea-port. So we practised the whole thing----"

"You practised it?"

"To be sure; it wasn't so easy; we went through it every night for a week when I came home from work, until Christel said at last she thought it would do at a pinch."

"It went capitally, Klaus!"

"Yes, but what good has it done?" asked Klaus, with a regretful look at the bed under which the disguise was lying, "when I had my ears bored to put these rings in? and when Christel every morning rubbed my face with bacon----"

"With bacon?"

"I must look like a sailor from the other side, Christel said, and for that there is nothing so good as to rub your face with bacon and then scorch it at a furnace."

"You look like a mulatto, Klaus."

"So Christel said; but what good would it do if I looked like a negro, when you won't come out?"

"It does this good, Klaus," I cried, catching the faithful fellow round the neck, "that you two have given me one of the happiest moments of my life, and which I should not have had had I taken your generous offer.