A desperate purpose formed itself within his mind.
Turning to the wall where hung a noble picture, a lovely landscape, whose rich coloring, warm sunlight, and rural peace formed a sharp, strange contrast with the meagre, famine-stricken apartment, he was about to take it down from its fastening when his hand was arrested by a word—“Father!”
He turned, and saw his son looking at him with his great eyes full of horror and alarm, as if he were committing a murder.
“I tell you I must, and I vill,” said he, savagely.
His wife looked up, sprang to his side, and with her hands upon his arm, said, “No, Berthold, you must not, you shall not sell dot picture.”
He silently pointed to his children crying for bread.
“Take der dress off my back to sell, but not dot picture. Ve may as vell die before him goes, for we certainly vill after. Dot is de only ding left of der happy past. Dot, in Gott’s hands, is my only hope for der future. Dot picture dells you vat you vas, vat you might be still if you vould only let drink alone. Many’s der veary day, many’s der long night, I’ve prayed dot dot picture vould vin you back to your former self, ven tears and sufferings vere in vain. Leave him, and some day he vill tell you so plain vat you are, and vot you can be, dot you break der horrid spell dot chains you, and your artist-soul come again. Leave him, our only hope, and sole bar against despair and death. I vill go and beg a dousand times before dot picture’s sold; for if he goes, your artist-soul no more come back, and you’re lost, and ve all are lost.”
The man hesitated. His good angel was pleading with him, but in vain.
Stamping his foot with rage and despair, he shouted, hoarsely, “It is too late I am lost now.”
And he tore the picture from its fastening. His wife sank back against the wall with a groan as if her very soul were departing.
But before his rash steps could leave the desolation he had made, he was confronted by the tall form of Dennis Fleet.
The man stared at him for a moment as if he had been an apparition, and then said, in a hard tone, “Let me pass!”
Dennis had knocked for some time, but such was the excitement within no one had regarded the sound. He had, therefore, heard the wife’s appeal and its answer, and from what he knew of the family from his mission scholar, the boy Ernst, comprehended the situation in the main. When, therefore, matters reached the crisis, he opened the door and met the infatuated man as he was about to throw away the last relic of his former self and happier life. With great tact he appeared as if he knew nothing, and quietly taking a chair he sat down with his back against the door, thus barring egress. In a pleasant, affable tone, he said: “Mr. Bruder, I came to see you on a little business tonight. As I was in something of a hurry, and no one appeared to hear my knock, I took the liberty of coming in.”
The hungry little ones looked at him with their round eyes of childish curiosity, and for a time ceased their clamors. The wife sank into a chair and bowed her head in her hands with the indifference of despair. Hope had gone. A gleam of joy lighted up Ernst’s pale face at the sight of his beloved teacher, and he stepped over to his mother and commenced whispering in her ear, but she heeded him not. The man’s face wore a sullen, dangerous, yet irresolute expression. It was evident that he half believed that Dennis was knowingly trying to thwart him, and such was his mad frenzy that he was ready for any desperate deed.
XVII
Rescued
In a tone of suppressed excitement, which he tried in vain to render steady, Mr. Bruder said: “You haf der advantage of me, sir. I know not your name. Vat is more, I am not fit for bissiness dis night. Indeed, I haf important bissiness elsewhere. You must excuse me,” he added, sternly, advancing toward the door with the picture.
“Pardon me, Mr. Bruder,” said Dennis, politely. “I throw myself entirely on your courtesy, and must ask as a very great favor that you will not take away that picture till I see it, for that, in part, is what I came for. I am in the picture trade myself, and think I am a tolerably fair judge of paintings. I heard accidentally you had a fine one, and from the glimpse I catch of it, I think I have not been misinformed. If it is for sale, perhaps I can do as well by you as anyone else. I am employed in Mr. Ludolph’s great store, the Art Building. You probably know all about the place.”
“Yes, I know him,” said the man, calming down somewhat.
“And now, sir,” said Dennis, with a gentle, winning courtesy impossible to resist, “will you do me
