“Devil,” said Mr. Kretschmer, majestically, “here is my article; run as fast as you can to the printing-office with it, and impress upon the compositor the necessity of haste, and, above all things, not to make such mistakes as he did lately, when, in speaking of the Russians, he put ‘friends’ instead of ‘fiends,’ which was an unpardonable and most treasonable error of expression.”

The little boy took the paper and laid it in his portfolio.

“The printer told me to ask you,” said he, “if you had written nothing yet for the ‘Miscellaneous.’ Spener’s Journal had yesterday such a beautiful ‘Miscellaneous,’ and told about a woman who had four children at a birth, and a stork which had arrived and built its nest, although it was the month of October.”

Mr. Kretschmer frowned. “Spener’s Journal always has some wonderful news, and amuses the Berlin people with all kinds of stupid gossip,” grumbled he.  “The rivalry of such a paper is unbearable.”

“Well, how about the miscellaneous intelligence?” asked the printer’s boy.

Mr. Kretschmer stamped his foot angrily.  “Go to the devil!” said he.

At this moment there was heard a loud crying and shouting; and while the printer’s boy pitched out of the door, Mr. Kretschmer hurried to the window to find out the cause of the uproar.

A heaving, noisy crowd filled the street below, and had halted right under the editor’s window.  In the midst thereof was seen the tall, lank figure of a man, whose extraordinary appearance enchained the attention of the multitude, and excited afresh their shouts and derisive laughter.  And, in fact, nothing could be more striking or fantastic than this man.  Notwithstanding the cool October weather, his gigantic figure was clothed from head to foot in gray linen, harmonizing strangely with the gray color of his skin and hair, which latter fell in long locks from his uncovered head down on his shoulders, and gave to the apparition the semblance of a pyramidical ash-heap, out of which his eyes shone like two burning coals.  Around his shoulders hung a long cloak of gray linen, which, in addressing the multitude, he sometimes threw around him in picturesque folds, sometimes spread out wide, enveloping his long arms in it, so that he looked like an expanded bat.

“Ah! it is Pfannenstiel, our prophetic linen-weaver,” said Mr. Kretschmer, smiling, as he opened his window, and exchanged a look of recognition with the man who was gazing up at him.

The linen-weaver and prophet had rapidly acquired some renown in Berlin by his prophecies and predictions.  The people believed in his mystic words and soothsayings and mistaken fanaticism.  He related to them his visions and apparitions; he told about the angels and the Lord Jesus, who often visited him; about the Virgin Mary, who appeared in his room every night, and inspired him with what he was to say to the people, and gave him pictures whose mystic signification he was to