CHAPTER LIII.
AFTER TWO YEARS.
Two years since Harold and Jerrie went away, and it was October again, and the doors and windows of the Park House were all open to the warm sunshine which filled the rooms, where the servants were flitting in and out with an air of importance and pleased expectancy, for that afternoon the master was coming home, with Harold and Jerrie; and what was more wonderful and exciting still, there was in the party a little boy, born in Wiesbaden six months before, and christened Frank Tracy.

They had gone directly to Germany--Arthur, Harold, and Jerrie--for the former would not stop a day until Wiesbaden was reached; and there, overcome with fatigue and the recollections of the past which crowded upon him so fast, Arthur fell sick and was confined to his room in the hotel for a week, during which time Jerrie explored the city with Harold and a guide, finding every spot connected with Gretchen and her life, even to the shop were Frau Heinrich had sold her small wares.
As soon as her father was able, she took him to them one by one.

Hand in hand, for he seemed weak as a little child, they went to the bench under the trees where he had first seen Gretchen knitting in the sunshine, with the halo on her hair, and here Arthur took off his hat as if on consecrated ground, and whispered, 'May God forgive me!' then to the little shop once kept by Frau Heinrich, where Arthur astonished the woman by buying out half her stock, which he ordered sent to his hotel, and afterward gave away; then to the English church, where he knelt before the altar and seemed to be praying, though the words he said were spoken more to Gretchen than to God; then to the house where he had lived with his bride, when heaven came down so close that she could touch it, or rather, to the site of the house, for fire had done its work there and they could only stand before the ruins, while Arthur said again and again, 'May God forgive me!' then to the house where Jerrie had lived and Gretchen had died, and where the picture still hung upon the wall, a wonder and delight to all who had rented the place since Marian's parents parents lived there.

Jerrie recognized it in a moment, and so did Arthur, but he could only wring his hands before it and sob, 'Oh, Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was, Jerrie found the room she remembered so well, where she had played and her mother had died.
'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and mother sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the door and let the firelight shine upon the paper.

I can see it all so distinctly, and over there in the corner was the bed where she died.' Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate now, he said the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and streaming eyes, while Jerrie stood over him, with her arm around his neck.
'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so many years ?--Arthur, your husband, who loved you through all?
Come back to me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true--tender and true! My heart is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I should wish I were dead, like you.