paralyzed with fear, so I cannot stand. When I can walk, I leave, for
I think maybe that only in Germany do I hear the guns. For twenty
years I live in Spain. Still do I hear the guns.

"I go to France, but yet every night at the same hour freezes my blood
and I hear the death volley.

"I come to America, which I have hated, yet never a night is missed.
It is at the same hour. What I hate comes to me. Whatever I fear is
mine. To run away from something is for me to meet it. My estate is
gone; money I have not. I sink like a man in a quicksand, down, down,
down. I come here. Lower I cannot.

"One day in 'the Bend', where das Gesindel live, I see the little
girl--she of the golden hair who wiped my stain away.

"But she is dead. I know for sure the face. What it means I know not.
Again I fall as dead.

"I have one thing in the world left--only one; it is my
scissors-grinder. I sell it and give all the money to bury her. It is
the first--it is the only good I ever did. Then, an outcast, I go out
into the world where no pity is. I sit me down in a dark alley;
strange is my heart, and new.

"It is time for the guns--yet is my blood warm! I wait. The volley
comes not!

"The hour is past!