For weeks he would seem perfectly rational, and then suddenly his mood would change, and he would talk strange things to himself and the child, who was now so necessary to him, and who alone had a soothing influence over him.

Only the day before, as Jerry had told Frank, Arthur had been unusually excited, after listening to a simple air which he had taught to her, and which, at his request, she sang to him after Maude had gone out and left them alone.
'I could swear you were Gretchen, singing to me in the twilight, and across the meadow comes the tinkle of the bells where the cows and goats are feeding,' he said to her, as he paced up and down the room.' Then, stopping suddenly, he went up to her, and pushing her soft, wavy hair from her forehead, looking long and earnestly into her face.
'Cherry,' he said at last, using the pet name he often gave her, 'you _are_ some like Gretchen as she must have been when of your age.

Oh, if you only were hers and mine! But there was no child; and yet--and yet--' He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.
The paragraph was as follows: 'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make you as glad as I am.' Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped and irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who said to her: 'What do you think she meant by the something which would make me glad as she was ?' 'I don't know,' Jerry answered him.

'Who wrote it?
Gretchen ?' 'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never went back to see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot everything, even Gretchen herself.

Poor little Gretchen! What was the idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this letter, when I heard you sing?
It is gone, and I cannot recall it.' There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the letter away, and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying he was going to write her again, or her friends, and find out what she meant.
The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we have described, and gave him the promise to bring him any letter directed to Germany which Arthur might entrust to her.