having established so many particulars, I found it easily

intelligible. "I have done what I can," she wrote. "I put it in
this letter; it is all I have. But do not ask me for money again;

mother is ailing most of the time, and I have not yet dared to tell
her all. I shall suffer great anxiety until I hear that the vessel

has sailed. My mistress is very good; she has given me an advance
on my wages, or I could not have sent thee any thing. Mother

thinks thou art still in Leipzig: why didst thou stay there so
long? but no difference; thy money would have gone anyhow."

It was neverthelesssingular that Otto should be without money, so
soon after the appropriation of Count Kasincsky's funds. If the

"20" in the first memorandum on the leaf meant "twenty thousand
rubles," as I conjectured, and but four thousand two hundred were

drawn by the Count previous to his flight or imprisonment, Otto's
half of the remainder would amount to nearly eight thousand rubles;

and it was, therefore, not easy to account for his delay in
Leipzig, and his destitute condition.

Before examining the fragments relating to the American phase of
his life,--which illustrated his previous history only by

occasional revelations of his moods and feelings,--I made one more
effort to guess the cause of his having assumed the name of "Von

Herisau." The initials signed to the order for the ring ("B. V.
H.") certainly stood for the same family name; and the possession

of papers belonging to one of the family was an additional evidence
that Otto had either been in the service of, or was related to,

some Von Herisau. Perhaps a sentence in one of the sister's
letters--"Forget thy disappointment so far as _I_ am concerned, for

I never expected any thing"--referred to something of the kind. On
the whole, service seemed more likely than kinship; but in that

case the papers must have been stolen.
I had endeavored, from the start, to keep my sympathies out of

the investigation, lest they should lead me to misinterpret the
broken evidence, and thus defeat my object. It must have been the

Countess' letter, and the brief, almost stenographic, signs of
anxiety and unhappiness on the leaf of the journal, that first

beguiled me into a commiseration, which the simple devotion and
self-sacrifice of the poor, toiling sister failed to neutralize.

However, I detected the feeling at this stage of the examination,
and turned to the American records, in order to get rid of it.

The principal paper was the list of addresses of which I have
spoken. I looked over it in vain, to find some indication of its

purpose; yet it had been carefully made out and much used. There
was no name of a person upon it,--only numbers and streets, one

hundred and thirty-eight in all. Finally, I took these, one by
one, to ascertain if any of the houses were known to me, and found

three, out of the whole number, to be the residences of persons
whom I knew. One was a German gentleman, and the other two were

Americans who had visited Germany. The riddle was read! During a
former residence in New York, I had for a time been quite overrun

by destitute Germans,--men, apparently, of some culture, who
represented themselves as theological students, political refugees,

or unfortunate clerks and secretaries,--soliciting assistance. I
found that, when I gave to one, a dozen others came within the next

fortnight; when I refused, the persecution ceased for about the
same length of time. I became convinced, at last, that these

persons were members of an organized society of beggars, and
the result proved it; for when I made it an inviolable rule to give

to no one who could not bring me an indorsement of his need by some
person whom I knew, the annoyance ceased altogether.

The meaning of the list of addresses was now plain. My nascent
commiseration for the man was not only checked, but I was in danger

of changing my role from that of culprit's counsel to that of
prosecuting attorney.

When I took up again the fragment of the first draught of a letter
commencing, "Dog and villain!" and applied it to the words "Jean"

or "Johann Helm," the few lines which could be deciphered became
full of meaning. "Don't think," it began, "that I have forgotten

you, or the trick you played me! If I was drunk or drugged the
last night, I know how it happened, for all that. I left, but I

shall go back. And if you make use of "(here some words were
entirely obliterated) . . . . "is true. He gave me the ring, and

meant" . . . . This was all I could make out. The other papers
showed only scattered memoranda, of money, or appointments, or

addresses, with the exception of the diary in pencil.
I read the letter attentively, and at first with very little idea

of its meaning. Many of the words were abbreviated, and there were
some arbitrary signs. It ran over a period of about four months,

terminating six weeks before the man's death. He had been
wandering about the country during this period, sleeping in woods

and barns, and living principally upon milk. The condition of his
pulse and other physical functions was scrupulously set down,

with an occasional remark of "good" or "bad." The conclusion was
at last forced upon me that he had been endeavoring to commit

suicide by a slow course of starvation and exposure. Either as the
cause or the result of this attempt, I read, in the final notes,

signs of an aberration of mind. This also explained the singular
demeanor of the man when found, and his refusal to take medicine or

nourishment. He had selected a long way to accomplish his purpose,
but had reached the end at last.

The confused material had now taken shape; the dead man, despite
his will, had confessed to me his name and the chief events of his

life. It now remained--looking at each event as the result of a
long chain of causes--to deduce from them the elements of his

individual character, and then fill up the inevitable gaps in the
story from the probabilities of the operation of those elements.

This was not so much a mere venture as the reader may suppose,
because the two actions of the mind test each other. If they

cannot, thus working towards a point and back again, actually
discover what WAS, they may at least fix upon a very probable

MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
A person accustomed to detective work would have obtained my little

stock of facts with much less trouble, and would, almost
instinctively, have filled the blanks as he went along. Being an

apprentice in such matters, I had handled the materials awkwardly.
I will not here retrace my own mental zigzags between character and

act, but simply repeat the story as I finally settled and accepted
it.

Otto Lindenschmidt was the child of poor parents in or near
Breslau. His father died when he was young; his mother earned a

scanty subsistence as a washerwoman; his sister went into service.
Being a bright, handsome boy, he attracted the attention of a Baron

von Herisau, an old, childless, eccentric gentleman, who took him
first as page or attendant, intending to make him a superior valet

de chambre. Gradually, however, the Baron fancied that he
detected in the boy a capacity for better things; his condescending

feeling of protection had grown into an attachment for the
handsome, amiable, grateful young fellow, and he placed him in the

gymnasium at Breslau, perhaps with the idea, now, of educating him
to be an intelligentcompanion.

The boy and his humble relatives, dazzled by this opportunity,
began secretly to consider the favor as almost equivalent to his

adoption as a son. (The Baron had once been married, but his wife
and only child had long been dead.) The old man, of course, came

to look upon the growing intelligence of the youth as his own work:
vanity and affection became inextricably blended in his heart, and

when the cursus was over, he took him home as the companion of
his lonely life. After two or three years, during which the young

man was acquiring habits of idleness and indulgence, supposing his
future secure, the Baron died,--perhaps too suddenly to make full

provision for him, perhaps after having kept up the appearance of
wealth on a life-annuity, but, in any case, leaving very little, if

any, property to Otto. In his disappointment, the latter
retained certain family papers which the Baron had intrusted to his

keeping. The ring was a gift, and he wore it in remembrance of his
benefactor.

Wandering about, Micawber-like, in hopes that something might turn