When John knew by Violet's regular breathing that she was fast asleep, he rose gently from his seat beside the bed and went over to the little table, on which lay, amongst so many others of the child's treasures, the mother's Bible and the gold-spotted book.
He took them up with quite a reverent, almost a guilty touch, and placed them with care upon the larger table at the foot of the bed. Then he lit the lamp, shaded it, and having once more leaned over the bed to see that Violet slept, he sat down to look at this new book in the pretty paper cover which seemed by its contents to have so excited and interested her.
He placed his finger in the page at which he found it open, and turned first to look at the title. He smiled rather sadly as he read the name, for it was a book that he remembered well having read himself when he was a youngster. He had forgotten the stories now, but he recognized the clumsy woodcut which had had the power not so long ago to thrill his own heart with a feverish excitement, and make it beat with a mixed enthusiasm and distress.
But it was with no mixed distress that his eye fell on the page where he had just placed his finger, and which had evidently been the centre point of poor little Violet's interest. On one side of the open book was a plate, divided by the old-fashioned style into three consecutive pictures, one above, one in the middle, and one at the foot of the page. On the opposite side was a short poem, consisting of three verses, each verse explanatory of the plate opposite it.
It was called "The Hunchbacked Girl;" and as his eyes fell on the name and the pictures which accompanied it, he closed the book hurriedly, and said in a voice straining between anger and tears, "How wicked! They shall answer to me for this."
But by-and-by, making a strong effort over himself, he opened at the page again and stared at the plates and the print until he saw them no more.
The first picture represented a woman lying, evidently at the verge of death, in one of the garret rooms of a house situated in a large town; for one could see through the open window the roofs of houses opposite and the top of a church steeple. By her side knelt a man with a child in his arms, which he was holding up towards its mother to receive from her a last embrace; for her hands were outstretched also: and underneath were written the words, "Auf wiedersehen" (To meet again).