III.

The fountain leaps as if its nearest goal

Were sky, and shines as if its life were light.

No crystal prism flashes on our sight

Such radiant splendor of the rainbow's whole

Of color. Who would dream the fountain stole

Its tints, and if the sun no more were bright

Would instant fade to its own pallid white?

Who dream that never higher than the dole

Of its own source, its stream may rise?

Thus we

See often hearts of men that by love's glow

Are sudden lighted, lifted till they show

All semblances of true nobility;

The passion spent, they tire of purity,

And sink again to their own levels low!

The next time Willan Blaycke came to the Golden Pear he did not see

Victorine. This was by no device of hers, though if she had considered

beforehand she could not better have helped on the impression she had

made on him than by letting him go away disappointed, having come hoping

to see her. She was away on a visit at the home of Pierre Gaspard the

miller, whose eldest daughter Annette was Victorine's one friend in the

parish. There was an eldest son, also, Pierre second, on whom

Mademoiselle Victorine had cast observant glances, and had already

thought to herself that "if nothing else turned up--but there was time

enough yet." Not so thought Pierre, who was madly in love with

Victorine, and was so put about by her cold and capricious ways with him

that he was fast coming to be good for nothing in the mill or on the

farm. But he is of no consequence in this account of the career of

Mademoiselle, only this,--that if it had not been for him she had not

probably been away from the Golden Pear on the occasion of Willan

Blaycke's second visit. Pierre had not shown himself at the inn for some

weeks, and Victorine was uneasy about him. Spite of her plans about a

much finer bird in the bush, she was by no means minded to lose the bird

she had in hand. She was too clear-sighted a young lady not to perceive

that it would be no bad thing to be ultimately Mistress Gaspard of the

mill,--no bad thing if she could not do better, of which she was as yet

far from sure. So she had inveigled her aunt into taking the notion into

her head that she needed change, and the two had ridden over to

Gaspard's for a three days' visit, the very day before Willan arrived.

"I warrant me he was set aback when I did tell him as he alighted that I

feared me he would not be well served just at present, as there was no

woman about the house," said Victor, chuckling as he told Jeanne the

story. "He did give a little start,--not so little but that I saw it

well, though he fetched himself up with his pride in a trice, and said

loftily: 'I have no doubt all will be sufficient; it is but a bite of

supper and a bed that I require. I must go on at daybreak,' But Benoit

saw him all the evening pacing back and forth under the pear-tree, and

many times looking up at the shut casement of the window where he had

seen Victorine standing on the morning when he was last here."

"Did he ask aught about her?" said Jeanne.

"Bah!" said Victor, contemptuously. "Dost take him for a fool? He will

be farther gone than he is yet, ere he will let either thee or me see

that the girl is aught to him."

"I wish he had found her here," said Jeanne. "It was an ill bit of luck

that took her away; and that Pierre, he is like to go mad about her,

since these three days under one roof. I knew not he was so daft, or I

had not taken her there."

"She were well wed to Pierre Gaspard," said Victor; "mated with one's

own degree is best mated, after all. What shall we say if the lad come

asking her hand? He will not ask twice, I can tell you that of a

Gaspard."

"Trust the girl to keep him from asking till she be ready to say him yea

or nay," replied Jeanne. "I know not wherever the child hath learnt such

ways with men; surely in the convent she saw none but priests."

"And are not priests men?" sneered Victor, with an evil laugh. "Faith,

and I think there is nought which other men teach which they do not

teach better!"

"Fie, father! thou shouldst not speak ill of the clergy; it is bad

luck," said Jeanne. Jeanne was far honester of nature than either her

father or her child; she was not entirely without reverence, and as far

as she could, without too much inconvenience, kept good faith with her

religion.

When Victorine heard that Willan Blaycke had been at the inn in their

absence, she shrugged her pretty shoulders, and said, laughingly, "Eh,

but that is good!"

"Why sayest thou so?" replied Jeanne. "I say it is ill."

"And I say it is good," retorted Victorine; and not another word could

Jeanne get out of her on the matter.

Victorine was right. As Willan Blaycke rode away from the Golden Pear,

he was so vexed with the unexpected disappointment that he was in a mood

fit to do some desperate thing. He had tried with all his might to put

Victorine's face and voice and sweet little form out of his thoughts,

but it was beyond his power. She haunted him by day and by night,--worse

by night than by day,--for he dreamed continually of standing just the

other side of a window-sill across which Victorine reached snowy little

hands and laid them in his, and just as he was about to grasp them the

vision faded, and he waked up to find himself alone. Willan Blaycke had

never loved any woman. If he had,--if he had had even the least

experience in the way of passionate fancies, he could have rated this

impression which Victorine had produced on him for what it was worth and

no more, and taking counsel of his pride have waited till the discomfort

of it should have passed away. But he knew no better than to suppose

that because it was so keen, so haunting, it must last forever. He was

almost appalled at the condition in which he found himself. It more than

equalled all the descriptions which he had read of unquenchable love. He

could not eat; he could not occupy himself with any affairs: all

business was tedious to him, and all society irksome. He lay awake long

hours, seeing the arch black eyes and rosy cheeks and piquant little

mouth; worn out by restlessness, he slept, only to see the eyes and

cheeks and mouth more vividly. It was all to no purpose that he reasoned

with himself,--that he asked himself sternly a hundred times a day,--

"Wilt thou take the granddaughter of Victor Dubois to be the mother of

thy children? Is it not enough that thy father disgraced his name for

that blood? Wilt thou do likewise?"

The only answer which came to all these questions was Victorine's soft

whisper: "Oh, if thou didst but know, sir, how I wish myself safe back

in the convent!" and, "Thou seemest to me like the men of whom Sister

Clarice did tell me."

"Poor little girl!" he said; "she is of their blood, but not of their

sort. Her mother was doubtless a good and pure woman, even though she

had not good birth or breeding; and this child hath had good training

from the Sisters in the convent. She is of a most ladylike bearing, and

has a fine sense of all which is proper and becoming, else would she not

so dislike the ways of an inn, and have such fear of the men that gaze

on her there."

So touching is the blindness of those blinded by love! It is enough to

make one weep sometimes to see it,--to see, as in this instance of

Willan Blaycke, an upright, modest, and honest gentleman creating out of

the very virtues of his own nature the being whom he will worship, and

then clothing this ideal with a bit of common clay, of immodest and

ill-behaved flesh, which he hath found ready-made to his hand, and full

of the snare of good looks.

When Willan Blaycke rode away this time from the Golden Pear, he was, as

we say, in a mood ready to do some desperate thing, he was so vexed and

disappointed. What he did do, proved it; he turned his horse and rode

straight for Gaspard's mill. The artful Benoit had innocently dropped

the remark, as he was holding the stirrup for Willan to mount, that

Mistress Jeanne and her niece were at Pierre Gaspard's; that for his

part he wished them back,--there was no luck about a house without a

woman in it.

Willan Blaycke made some indifferent reply, as if all that were nothing

to him, and galloped off. But before he had gone five miles Benoit's

leaven worked, and he turned into a short-cut lane he knew which led to

the mill. He did not stop to ask himself what he should do there; he

simply galloped on towards Victorine. It was only a couple of leagues to

the mill, and its old tower and wheel were in sight before he thought of

its being near. Then he began to consider what errand he could make;

none occurred to him. He reined his horse up to a slow walk, and fell

into a reverie,--so deep a one that he did not see what he might have

seen had he looked attentively into a copse of poplars on a high bank

close to his road,--two young girls sitting on the ground peeling

slender willow stems for baskets. It was Annette Gaspard and Victorine;

and at the sound of a horse's feet they both leaned forward and looked

down into the road.

"Oh, see, Victorine!" Annette cried; "a brave rider goes there. Who can

he be? I wonder if he goes to the mill? Perhaps my father will keep him

to dinner."

At the first glance Victorine recognized Willan Blaycke, but she gave no

sign to her friend that she knew him.

"He sitteth his horse like one asleep," she said, "or in a dream. I call

him not a brave rider. He hath forgotten something," she added; "see, he

is turning about!" And with keen disappointment the girls saw the

horseman wheel suddenly, and gallop back on the road he had come. At the

last moment, by a mighty effort, Willan had wrenched his will to the

decision that he would not seek Victorine at the mill.

And this was why, when her aunt told her that he had been at the inn

during their absence, Victorine shrugged her shoulders, and said with so

pleased a laugh, "Eh! that is good." She understood by a lightning

intuition all which had happened,--that he had ridden towards the mill

seeking her, and had changed his mind at the last, and gone away. But

she kept her own counsel, told nobody that she had seen him, and said in

her mischievous heart, "He will be back before long."

And so he was; but not even Victorine, with all her confidence in the

strength of the hold she had so suddenly acquired on him, could have

imagined how soon and with what purpose he would return. On the evening

of the sixth day, just at sunset, he appeared, walking with his

saddle-bags on his shoulders and leading his horse. The beast limped

badly, and had evidently got a sore hurt. Old Benoit was standing in the

arched entrance of the courtyard as they approached.

"Marry, but that beast is in a bad way!" he exclaimed, and went to meet

them. Benoit loved a horse; and Willan Blaycke's black stallion was a

horse to which any man's heart might well go out, so knowing, docile,

proud, and swift was the creature, and withal most beautifully made. The

poor thing went haltingly enough now, and every few minutes stopped and

looked around piteously into his master's face.

"And the man doth look as distressed as the beast," thought Benoit, as

he drew near; "it is a good man that so loves an animal." And Benoit

warmed toward Willan as he saw his anxious face.

If Benoit had only known! No wonder Willan's face was sorrow-stricken!

It was he himself that had purposely lamed the stallion, that he might

have plain and reasonable excuse for staying at the Golden Pear some

days. He had not meant to hurt the poor creature so much, and his

conscience pricked him horribly at every step the horse took. He patted

him on his neck, spoke kindly to him, and did all in his power to atone

for his cruelty. That all was very little, however, for each step was

torture to the beast; his fore feet were nearly bleeding. This was what

Willan had done: the day before he had taken off two of the horse's

shoes, and then galloped fast over miles of rough and stony road. The

horse had borne himself gallantly, and shown no fatigue till nightfall,

when he suddenly went lame, and had grown worse in the night, so that

Willan had come very near having to lie by at an inn some leagues to the

north, where he had no mind to stay. A heavy price he was paying for the

delight of looking on Victorine's face, he began to think, as he toiled

along on foot, mile after mile, the saddle-bags on his shoulders, and

the hot sun beating down on his head; but reach the Golden Pear that day

he would, and he did,--almost as footsore as the stallion. Neither

master nor beast was wonted to rough ways.

"My horse is sadly lame," Willan said to Benoit as he came up. "He cast

two shoes yesterday, and I was forced to ride on, spite of it, for there

was no blacksmith on the road I came. I fear me thou canst not shoe him

to-night, his feet have grown so sore!"

"No, nor to-morrow nor the day after," cried Benoit, taking up the

inflamed feet and looking at them closely. "It was a sin, sir, to ride

such a creature unshod; he is a noble steed."

"Nay, I have not ridden a step to-day," answered Willan, "and I am

wellnigh as sore as he. We have come all the way from the north

boundary,--a matter of some six leagues, I think,--from the inn of Jean

Gauvois."

"But he is a farrier himself!" cried Benoit. "How let he the beast go

out like this?"

"It was I forbade him to touch the horse," replied the wily Willan. "He

did lame a good mare for me once, driving a nail into the quick. I

thought the horse would be better to walk this far and get thy more

skilful handling. There is not a man in this country, they tell me, can

shoe a horse so well as thou. Dost thou not know some secret of

healing," he continued, "by which thou canst harden the feet, so that

they will be fit to shoe to-morrow?"

Benoit shook his head. "Thy horse hath been too tenderly reared," he

said. "A hurt goes harder with him than with our horses. But I will do

my best, sir. I doubt not it will inconvenience thee much to wait here

till he be well. If thou couldst content thee with a beast sorry to look

at, but like the wind to go, we have a nag would carry thee along, and

thou couldst leave the stallion till thy return."

"But I come not back this way," replied Willan, strangely ready with his

lies, now he had once undertaken the rôle of a manoeuvrer. "I go far

south, even down to the harbors of the sound. I must bide the beast's

time now. He hath made time for me many a day, and I do assure you, good

Benoit, I love him as if he were my brother."

"Ay," replied the ostler; "so thought I when I saw thee bent under thy

saddle-bags and leading the horse by the rein. It's an evil man likes

not his beast. We say in Normandy, sir,--

"'Evil master to good beast,

Serve him ill at every feast!'"

"So he deserves," replied Willan, heartily; and in his heart he added,

"I hope I shall not get my deserts."

Benoit led the poor horse away toward the stables, and Willan entered

the house. No one was to be seen. Benoit had forgotten to tell him that

no one was at home except Victorine. It was a market-day at St. Urban's;

and Victor and Jeanne had gone for the day, and would not be back till

late in the evening.

Willan roamed on from room to room,--through the bar-room, the

living-room, the kitchen; all were empty, silent. As he retraced his

steps he stopped for a second at the foot of the stairs which led from

the living-room to the narrow passage-way overhead.

Victorine was in her aunt's room, and heard the steps. "Who is there?"

she called. Willan recognized her voice; he considered a second what he

should reply.

"Benoit! is it thou?" Victorine called again impatiently; and the next

minute she bounded down the stairway, crying, "Why dost thou terrify me

so, thou bad Benoit, not answering me when I--" She stopped, face to

face with Willan Blaycke, and gave a cry of honest surprise.

"Ah! but is it really thou?" she said, the rosy color mounting all over

her face as she recollected how she was attired. She had been asleep

all the warm afternoon, and had on only a white petticoat and a short

gown of figured stuff, red and white. Her hair was falling over her

shoulders. Willan's heart gave a bound as he looked at her. Before he

had fairly seen her, she had turned to fly.

"Yes, it is I,--it is I," he called after her. "Wilt thou not come

back?"

"Nay," answered Victorine, from the upper stair; "that I may not do, for

the house is alone." Victorine was herself now, and was wise enough not

to go quite out of sight. She looked entrancing between the dark wooden

balustrades, one slender hand holding to them, and the other catching up

part of her hair. "When my aunt returns, if she bids me to wait at

supper I shall see thee." And Victorine was gone.

"Then sing for me at thy window," entreated Willan.

"I know not the whole of any song," cried Victorine; but broke, as she

said it, into a snatch of a carol which seemed to the poor infatuated

man at the foot of the stairway like the song of an angel. He hurried

out, and threw himself down under the pear-tree where he had lain

before. The blossoms had all fallen from the pear-tree now, and through

the thinned branches he could see Victorine's window distinctly. She

could see him also.

"It would be no hard thing to love such a man as he, methinks," she said

to herself as she went on leisurely weaving the thick braids of her

hair, and humming a song just low enough for Willan to half hear and

half lose the words.

"Once in a hedge a bird went singing,

Singing because there was nobody near.

Close to the hedge a voice came crying,

'Sing it again! I am waiting to hear.

Sing it forever! 'T is sweet to hear.'

"Never again that bird went singing

Till it was surer that no one was near.

Long in that hedge there was somebody waiting,

Crying in vain, 'I am waiting to hear.

Sing it again! It was sweet to hear.'"

"I wonder if Sister Clarice's lover had asked her to sing, as Willan

Blaycke just now asked me, that she did make this song," thought

Victorine. "It hath a marvellous fitness, surely." And she repeated the

last three lines.

"Long in that hedge there was somebody waiting,

Crying in vain, 'I am waiting to hear.

Sing it again! It was sweet to hear.'"

"But I should be silent like the bird, and not sing," she reflected, and

paused for a while. Willan listened patiently for a few moments. Then

growing impatient, he picked up a handful of turf and flung it up at the

window. Victorine laughed to herself as she heard it, but did not sing.

Another soft thud against the casement; no reply from Victorine. Then in

a moment more, in a rich deep voice, and a tune far sweeter than any

Victorine had sung, came these words:--

"Faint and weary toiled a pilgrim,

Faint and weary of his load;

Sudden came a sweet bird winging

Glad and swift across his road.

"'Blessed songster!' cried the pilgrim,

'Where is now the load I bore?

I forget it in thy singing;

Hearing thee, I faint no more,'

"While he spoke the bird went winging

Higher still, and soared away;

'Cruel songster!' cried the pilgrim,

'Cruel songster not to stay!'

"Was the songster cruel? Never!

High above some other road

Glad and swift he still was singing,

Lightening other pilgrims' load!"

Victorine bent her head and listened intently to this song. It touched

the best side of her nature.

"Indeed, that is a good song," she said to herself, "but it fitteth not

my singing. I make choice for whom I sing; I am not minded so to give

pleasure to all the world."

She racked her brains to recall some song which would be as pertinent a

reply to Willan's song as his had been to hers; but she could think of

none. She was vexed; for the romance of this conversing by means of

songs pleased her mightily. At last, half in earnest and half in fun,

she struck boldly into a measure on which she would hardly have ventured

could she have seen the serious and tender expression on the face of her

listener under the pear-tree. As Willan caught line after line of the

rollicking measure, his countenance changed.

"An elfish mood is upon her," he thought. "She doth hold herself so safe

in her chamber that she may venture on words she had not sung nearer at

hand. She is not without mischief in her blood, no doubt." And Willan's

own look began to grow less reverential and more eager as he listened.

"The bee is a fool in the summer;

He knows it when summer is flown:

He might, for all good of his honey,

As well have let flowers alone.

"The butterfly, he is the wiser;

He uses his wings when they 're grown;

He takes his delight in the summer,

And dies when the summer is done.

"A heart is a weight in the bosom;

A heart can be heavy as stone:

Oh, what is the use of a lover?

A maiden is better alone."

Victorine was a little frightened herself, as she sang this last stanza.

However, she said to herself: "I will bear me so discreetly at supper

that the man shall doubt his very ears if he have ever heard me sing

such words or not. It is well to perplex a man. The more he be

perplexed, the more he meditateth on thee; and the more he meditateth on

thee, the more his desire will grow, if it have once taken root."

A very wise young lady in her generation was this graduate of a convent

where no men save priests ever came!

Just as Victorine had sung the last verse of her song, she heard the

sound of wheels and voices on the road. Victor and Jeanne were coming

home. Willan heard the sounds also, and slowly arose from the ground and

sauntered into the courtyard. He had an instinct that it would be better

not to be seen under the pear-tree.

Great was the satisfaction of Victor and Jeanne when they found that

Willan Blaycke was a guest in the inn; still greater when they learned

that he would be kept there for at least two days by the lameness of his

horse.

"Thou need'st not make great haste with the healing of the beast," said

Victor to Benoit; "it might be a good turn to keep the man here for a

space." And the master exchanged one significant glance with his man,

and saw that he need say no more.

There was no such specific understanding between Jeanne and Victorine.

From some perverse and roguish impulse the girl chose to take no counsel

in this game she had begun to play; but each woman knew that the other

comprehended the situation perfectly.

When Victorine came into the dining-room to serve Willan Blaycke's

supper, she looked, to his eyes, prettier than ever. She wore the same

white gown and black silk apron with crimson lace she had worn before.

Her cheeks and her eyes were bright from the excitement of the

serenading and counter-serenading in which she had been engaged. Her

whole bearing was an inimitable blending of shyness and archness,

tempered by almost reverential respect. Willan Blaycke would have been

either more or less than mortal man if he had resisted it. He did

not,--he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine;

and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor

Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,--

"Look you! your man tells me I am like to be kept here a matter of some

three days or more, before my horse be fit to bear me. Now, it irks me

to be the cause of so much trouble, seeing that I am the only traveller

in the house. I pray you that I may sit down with you all at meal-times,

as is your wont, and that you make no change in the manner of your

living by reason of my being in the house. I shall be better pleased

so."

There was about as much command as request in Willan's manner; and after

some pretended hesitancy Victor yielded, only saying, by way of

breaking down the last barrier,--

"My daughter hath desired not to see thee. I know not how she may take

this request of thine; it seemeth but reasonable unto me, and it will be

that saving of work for her. I think she may consent."

Nothing but her love for Victorine would have induced Jeanne to sit

again at meat with her stepson, but for Victorine's sake Jeanne would

have done much harder things; and indeed, after the first few moments of

awkwardness had passed by, she found that she was much less

uncomfortable in Willan's presence than she had anticipated.

Willan's own manner did much to bring this about. He was so deeply in

love with Victorine that it had already transformed his sentiments on

most points, and on none more than in regard to Jeanne. He thought no

better of her character than he had thought before; but he found himself

frequently recollecting, as he had never done before, or at least had

never done in a kindly way, that, after all, she had been his father's

wife for ten years, and it would perhaps have been a more dignified

thing in him to have attempted to make her continue in a style of living

suitable to his father's name than to have relegated her, as he had

done, to her original and lower social station.

Jeanne's behavior towards him was very judicious. Affection is the best

teacher of tact in many an emergency in life; we see it every day among

ignorant and untaught people.

Jeanne knew, or felt without knowing, that the less she appeared to be

conscious of anything unusual or unpleasant in this resumption of

familiar relations on the surface, between herself and Willan, the more

free his mind would be to occupy itself with Victorine; and she acted

accordingly. She never obtruded herself on his attention; she never

betrayed any antagonism toward him, or any recollection of the former

and different footing on which they had lived. A stranger sitting at the

table would not have dreamed, from anything in her manner to him, that

she had ever occupied any other position than that of the landlord's

daughter and landlady of the inn.

A clear-sighted observer looking on at affairs in the Golden Pear for

the next three days would have seen that all the energies of both Victor

and Jeanne were bent to one end,--namely, leaving the coast clear for

Willan Blaycke to fall in love with Victorine. But all that Willan

thought was that Victor and his daughter were far quieter and modester

people than he had supposed, and seemed disposed to keep themselves to

themselves in a most proper fashion. It never crossed his mind that

there was anything odd in his finding Victorine so often and so long

alone in the living-room; in the uniform disappearance of both Victor

and Jeanne at an early hour in the evening. Willan was too much in love

to wonder at or disapprove of anything which gave him an opportunity of

talking with Victorine, or, still better, of looking at her.

What he liked best was silently to watch her as she moved about, doing

her light duties in her own graceful way. He was not a voluble lover; he

was still too much bewildered at his own condition. Moreover, he had not

yet shaken himself free from the tormenting disapproval of his

conscience; he lost sight of that very fast, however, as the days sped

on. Victorine played her cards most admirably. She did not betray even

by a look that she understood that he loved her; she showed towards him

an open and honest admiration, and an eager interest in all that he said

or did,--an almost affectionate good-will, too, in serving his every

want, and trying to make the time of his detention pass pleasantly to

him.

"It must be a sore trial, sir, for thee to be kept in a poor place like

this so many days. Benoit says that he thinks not thy horse can go

safely for yet some days," she said to Willan one morning. "Would it

amuse thee to ride over to Pierre Gaspard's mill to-day? If thou couldst

abide the gait of my grandfather's nag, I might go on my pony, and show

thee the way. The river is high now, and it is a fair sight to see the

white blossoms along the banks."

Cunning Victorine! She had all sorts of motives in this proposition. She

thought it would be well to show Willan Blaycke to Pierre. "He may

discover that there are other men beside himself in the world," she

mused; and, "It would please me much to go riding up to the door for

Annette to see with the same brave rider she did so admire;" and, "There

are many ways to bring a man near one in riding through the woods." All

these and many more similar musings lay hid behind the innocent look she

lifted to Willan's face as she suggested the ride.

It was only the third morning of Willan's stay at the inn; but the time

had been put to very good use. Already it had become natural to him to

come and go with Victorine,--to stay where she was, to seek her if she

were missing. Already he had learned the way up the outside staircase to

the platform where she kept her flowers and sometimes sat. He was living

in a dream,--going the way of all men, head-long, blindfold, into a life

of which he knew and could know nothing.

"Indeed, and that is what I should like best of all things," he replied

to Victorine. "Will thy aunt let thee go?"

"Why not?" asked Victorine, opening her eyes wide in astonishment. "I

ride all over the parish on my pony alone."

"Stupid of me!" ejaculated Willan, inwardly: "as if these people could

know any scruples about etiquette!"

"These people," as Willan contemptuously called them, stood at the door

of the inn, and watched him riding away with Victorine with hardly

disguised exultation. Not till the riders were fairly out of sight did

Victor venture to turn his face toward Jeanne's. Then, bursting into a

loud laugh, he clapped Jeanne on the shoulder, and said: "We'll see thee

grandmother of thy husband's grandchildren yet, Jeanne. Ha! ha!"

Jeanne flushed. She was not without a sense of shame. Her love for

Victorine made her sensitive to the stain on her birth.

"Thinkest thou it could ever be known?" she asked anxiously.

"Never," replied her father,--"never; 'tis as safe as if we were all

dead. And for that, the living are safer than the dead, if there be

tight enough lock on their mouths."

"He doth seem to be as much in love as one need," said Jeanne.

"Ay," said Victor, "more than ever his father was with thee."

"Canst thou not let that alone?" said Jeanne, angrily. "Surely it is

long enough gone by, and small profit came of it."

"Not so, not so, daughter," replied Victor, soothingly; "if we can but

set the girl in thy shoes, thou didst not wear thine for nought, even

though they pinched thee for a time."

"That they did," retorted Jeanne; "it gives me a cramp now but to

remember them."

Willan and Victorine galloped merrily along the river road. The woods

were sweet with spring fragrances; great thickets of dogwood trees were

white with flowers; mossy hillocks along the roadside were pink with the

dainty bells of the Linnaea. The road was little more than a woodman's

path, and curved now right, now left, in seeming caprice; now forded a

stream, now came out into a cleared field, again plunged back into dense

groves of larch and pine.

"Never knew I that the woods were so beautiful thus early in the year,"

said the honest Willan.

"Nor I, till to-day," said the artful Victorine, who knew well enough

what Willan did not know himself.

"Dost thou ride here alone?" asked Willan. "It is a wild place for thee

to be alone."

"If I came not alone, I could not come at all," replied Victorine,

sorrowfully. "My grandfather is too busy, and my aunt likes not to ride

except she must, on a market day or to go to church. No one but thou

hast ever walked or ridden with me," she added in a low voice, sighing;

"and now after two days or three thou wilt be gone."

Willan sighed also, but did not speak. The words, "I will always ride by

thy side, Victorine," were on his lips, but he felt himself still

withheld from speaking them.

The visit at the mill was unsatisfactory. The elder Gaspard was away,

and young Pierre was curt and surly. The sight of Victorine riding

familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the

richest men in the country, and a young man at that,--and a young man,

moreover, who looked and behaved as if he were in love with his

companion,--how could the poor miller be expected to be cordial and

unconstrained with such a sight before his eyes! Annette also was more

overawed even than Victorine had desired she should be by the sight of

the handsome stranger,--so overawed, and withal perhaps a little

curious, that she was dumb and awkward; and as for _Mère_ Gaspard, she

never under any circumstances had a word to say. So the visit was very

stupid, and everybody felt ill at ease,--especially Willan, who had lost

his temper in the beginning at a speech of Pierre's to Victorine, which

seemed to his jealous sense too familiar.

"I thought thou never wouldst take leave," he said ill-naturedly to

Victorine, as they rode away.

Victorine turned towards him with an admirably counterfeited expression

of surprise. "Oh, sir," she said, "I did think I ought to wait for thee

to take leave. I was dying with the desire I had to be back in the woods

again; and only when I could not bear it any longer, did I bethink me to

say that my aunt expected us back to dinner."

Long they lingered on the river-banks on their way home. Even the

plotting brain of Victorine was not insensible to the charm of the sky,

the air, the budding foliage, and the myriads of blossoms. "Oh, sir,"

she said, "I think there never was such a day as this before!"

"I know there never was," replied Willan, looking at her with an

expression which was key to his words. But the daughter of Jeanne Dubois

was not to be wooed by any vague sentimentalisms. There was one sentence

which she was intently waiting to hear Willan Blaycke speak. Anything

short of that Mademoiselle Victorine was too innocent to comprehend.

"Sweet child!" thought Willan to himself, "she doth not know the speech

of lovers. I mistrust that if I wooed her outright, she would be

afraid."

It was long past noon when they reached the Golden Pear. Dinner had

waited till the hungry Victor and Jeanne could wait no longer; but a

very pretty and dainty little repast was ready for Willan and Victorine.

As she sat opposite him at the table, so bright and beaming, her whole

face full of pleasure, Willan leaned both his arms on the table and

looked at her in silence for some minutes.

"Victorine!" he said. Victorine started. She was honestly very hungry,

and had been so absorbed in eating her dinner she had not noticed

Willan's look. She dropped her knife and sprang up.

"What is it, sir?" she said; "what shall I fetch?" Her instantaneous

resumption of the serving-maid's relation to him jarred on Willan at

that second indescribably, and shut down like a floodgate on the words

he was about to speak.

"Nothing, nothing," said he. "I was only going to say that thou must

sleep this afternoon; thou art tired."

"Nay, I am not tired," said Victorine, petulantly. "What is a matter of

six leagues of a morning? I could ride it again between this and sunset,

and not be tired."

But she was tired, and she did sleep, though she had not meant to do so

when she threw herself on her bed, a little later; she had meant only to

rest herself for a few minutes, and then in a fresh toilette return to

Willan. But she slept on and on until after sunset, and Willan wandered

aimlessly about, wondering what had become of her. Jeanne saw him, but

forebore to take any note of his uneasiness. She had looked in upon

Victorine in her slumber, and was well content that it should be so.

"The girl will awake refreshed and rosy," thought Jeanne; "and it will

do no harm, but rather good, if he have missed her sorely all the

afternoon."

Supper was over, and the evening work all done when Victorine waked. It

was dusk. Rubbing her eyes, she sprang up and went to the window. Jeanne

heard her steps, and coming to the foot of the stairs called: "Thou

need'st not to come down; all is done. What shall I bring thee to eat?"

"Why didst thou not waken me?" replied Victorine, petulantly; "I meant

not to sleep."

"I thought the sleep was better," replied her aunt. "Thou didst look

tired, and it suits no woman's looks to be tired."

Victorine was silent. She saw Willan walking up and down under the

pear-tree. She leaned out of her window and moved one of the

flower-pots. Willan looked up; in a second more he had bounded up the

staircase, and eagerly said: "Art thou there? Wilt thou never come

down?"

Victorine was uncertain in her own mind what was the best thing to do

next; so she replied evasively: "Thou wert right, after all. I did not

feel myself tired, but I have slept until now."

"Then thou art surely rested. Canst thou not come and walk with me in

the pear orchard?" said Willan.

"I fear me I may not do that after nightfall," replied Victorine. "My

aunt would be angry."

"She need not know," replied the eager Willan. "Thou canst come down by

this stairway, and it is already near dark."

Victorine laughed a little low laugh. This pleased her. "Yes," she said,

"I have often come down by, that post from my window; but truly, I fear

I ought not to do it for thee. What should I say to my aunt if she

missed me?"

"Oh, she thinks thee asleep," said Willan. "She told me at supper that

she would not waken thee."

All of which Mistress Jeanne heard distinctly, standing midway on the

wide staircase, with Victorine's supper of bread and milk in her hand.

She had like to have spilled the whole bowlful of milk for laughing. But

she stood still, holding her breath lest Victorine should hear her, till

the conversation ceased, and she heard Victorine moving about in her

room again. Then she went in, and kissing Victorine, said: "Eat thy

supper now, and go to bed; it is late. Good-night. I'll wake thee early

enough in the morning to pay for not having called thee this afternoon.

Good-night."

Then Jeanne went down to her own room, blew out her candle, and seated

herself at the window to hear what would happen.

"My aunt's candle is out; she hath gone to bed," whispered Victorine, as

holding Willan's hand she stole softly down the outer stair. "I do doubt

much that I am doing wrong."

"Nay, nay," whispered Willan. "Thou sweet one, what wrong can there be

in thy walking a little time with me? Thy aunt did let thee ride with me

all the day." And he tenderly guided Victorine's steps down the steep

stairs.

"Pretty well! pretty well!" laughed Mistress Jeanne behind her casement;

and as soon as the sound of Willan's and Victorine's steps had died

away, she ran downstairs to tell Victor what had happened. Victor was

not so pleased as Jeanne; he did not share her confidence in Victorine's

character.

"Sacre!" he said; "what wert thou thinking of? Dost want another niece

to be fetched up in a convent? Thou mayst thank thyself for it, if thou

art grandmother to one. I trust no man out of sight, and no girl. The

man's in love with the girl, that is plain; but he means no marrying."

"That thou dost not know," retorted Jeanne. "I tell thee he is an

honorable, high-minded man, and as pure as if he were but just now

weaned. I know him, and thou dost not. He will marry her, or he will

leave her alone."

"We shall see," muttered the coarse old man as he walked away,--"we

shall see. Like mother, like child. I trust them not." And in a thorough

ill-humor Victor betook himself to the courtyard. What he heard there

did not reassure him. Old Benoit had seen Willan and Victorine going

down through the poplar copse toward the pear orchard. "And may the

saints forsake me," said Benoit, "if I do not think he had his arm

around her waist and her head on his shoulder. Think'st thou he will

marry her?"

"Nay," growled Victor; "he's no fool. That Jeanne hath set her heart on

it, and thinketh it will come about; but not so I."

"He seems of a rare fine-breeding and honorable speech," said Benoit.

"Ay, ay," replied Victor, "words are quick said, and fine manners come

easy to some; but a man looks where he weds."

"His father did not have chance for much looking," sneered Benoit.

"This is another breed, even if his father begot him," replied Victor.

"He goeth no such way as that." And thoroughly disquieted, Victor

returned to the house to report to Jeanne what Benoit had seen. She was

still undisturbed.

"Thou wilt see," was her only reply; and the two sat down together in

the porch to await the lovers' return. Hour after hour passed; even

Jeanne began to grow alarmed. It was long after midnight.

"I fear some accident hath befallen them," she said at last. "Would it

be well, thinkest thou, to go in search of them?"

"Not a step!" cried Victor. "He took her away, and he must needs bring

her back. We await them here. He shall see whether he may tamper with

the granddaughter of Victor Dubois."

"Hush, father!" said Jeanne, "here they come."

Walking very slowly, arm in arm, came Willan and Victorine. They had

evidently no purpose of entering the house clandestinely, but were

approaching the front door.

"Hoity, toity!" muttered Victor; "he thinks he can lord it over us,

surely."

"Be quiet, father!" entreated Jeanne. Her quick eye saw something new in

the bearing of both Willan and Victorine. But Victor was not to be

quieted. With an angry oath, he sprung forward from the porch, and began

to upbraid Willan in no measured tones.

Willan lifted his right hand authoritatively. "Wait!" he said. "Do not

say what thou wilt repent, Victor Dubois. Thy granddaughter hath

promised to be my wife."

So the new generation avenged the old; and Willan Blaycke, in the prime

of his cultured and fastidious manhood, fell victim to a spell less

coarsely woven but no less demoralizing than that which had imbittered

the last years of his father's life.

[Footnote: Note.--"The Inn of the Golden Pear" includes three chapters

of a longer story entitled "Elspeth Pynevor,"--a story of such

remarkable vigor and promise, and planned on such noble and powerful

lines as to deepen regret that its author's death left it but half

finished. A single sentence has been added by another hand to round the

episode of Willan Blaycke's infatuation to conclusion.]

The Mystery of Wilhelm Rütter.

It was long past dusk of an August evening. Farmer Weitbreck stood

leaning on the big gate of his barnyard, looking first up and then down

the road. He was chewing a straw, and his face wore an expression of

deep perplexity. These were troublous times in Lancaster County. Never

before had the farmers been so put to it for farm service; harvest-time

had come, and instead of the stream of laborers seeking employment,

which usually at this season set in as regularly as river freshets in

spring, it was this year almost impossible to hire any one.

The explanation of this nobody knew or could divine; but the fact was

indisputable, and the farmers were in dismay,--nobody more so than

Farmer Weitbreck, who had miles of bottom-lands, in grain of one sort

and another, all yellow and nodding, and ready for the sickle, and

nobody but himself and his son John to swing scythe, sickle, or flail on

the place.

"Never I am caught this way anoder year," thought he, as he gazed

wearily up and down the dark, silent road; "but that does to me no goot

this time that is now."

Gustavus Weitbreck had lived so long on his Pennsylvania farm that he

even thought in English instead of in German, and, strangely enough, in

English much less broken and idiomatic than that which he spoke. But his

phraseology was the only thing about him that had changed. In modes of

feeling, habits of life, he was the same he had been forty years ago,

when he farmed a little plot of land, half wheat, half vineyard, in the

Mayence meadows in the fatherland,--slow, methodical, saving, stupid,

upright, obstinate. All these traits "Old Weitbreck," as he was called

all through the country, possessed to a degree much out of the ordinary;

and it was a combination of two of them--the obstinacy and the

savingness--which had brought him into his present predicament.

In June he had had a good laborer,--one of the best known, and eagerly

sought by every farmer in the county; a man who had never yet been

beaten in a mowing-match or a reaping. By his help the haying had been

done in not much more than two thirds the usual time; but when John

Weitbreck, like a sensible fellow, said, "Now, we would better keep Alf

on till harvest; there is plenty of odds-and-ends work about the farm he

can help at, and we won't get his like again in a hurry," his father had

cried out,--

"Mein Gott! It is that you tink I must be made out of money! I vill not

keep dis man on so big wages to do vat you call odd-and-end vork. We do

odd-and-end vork ourself."

There was no discussion of the point. John Weitbreck knew better than

ever to waste his time and breath or temper in trying to change a

purpose of his father's or convince him of a mistake. But he bided his

time; and he would not have been human if he had not now taken secret

satisfaction, seeing his father's anxiety daily increase as the August

sun grew hotter and hotter, and the grain rattled in the husks waiting

to be reaped, while they two, straining their arms to the utmost, and in

long days' work, seemed to produce small impression on the great fields.

"The women shall come work in field to-morrow," thought the old man, as

he continued his anxious reverie. "It is not that they sit idle all day

in house, when the wheat grows to rattle like the peas in pod. They can

help, the mütter and Carlen; that will be much help; they can do." And

hearing John's steps behind him, the old man turned and said,--

"Johan, dere comes yet no man to reap. To-morrow must go in the field

Carlen and the mütter; it must. The wheat get fast too dry; it is more

as two men can do."

John bit his lips. He was aghast. Never had he seen his mother and

sister at work in the fields. John had been born in America; and he was

American, not German, in his feeling about this. Without due

consideration he answered,--

"I would rather work day and night, father, than see my mother and

sister in the fields. I will do it, too, if only you will not make them

go!"

The old man, irritated by the secret knowledge that he had nobody but

himself to blame for the present dilemma, still more irritated, also, by

this proof of what was always exceedingly displeasing to him,--his son's

having adopted American standards and opinions,--broke out furiously

with a wrath wholly disproportionate to the occasion,--

"You be tam, Johan Weitbreck. You tink we are fine gentlemen and ladies,

like dese Americans dat is too proud to vork vid hands. I say tam dis

country, vere day say all is alike, an' vork all; and ven you come here,

it is dat nobody vill vork, if he can help, and vimmins ish shame to be

seen vork. It is not shame to be seen vork; I vork, mein vife vork too,

an' my childrens vork too, py tam!"

John walked away,--his only resource when his father was in a passion.

John occupied that hardest of all positions,--the position of a

full-grown, mature man in a father's home, where he is regarded as

nothing more than a boy.

As he entered the kitchen and saw his pretty sister Carlen at the high

spinning-wheel, walking back and forth drawing the fine yarn between

her chubby fingers, all the while humming a low song to which the

whirring of the wheel made harmonious accompaniment, he thought to

himself bitterly: "Work, indeed! As if they did not work now longer than

we do, and quite as hard! She's been spinning ever since daylight, I

believe."

"Is it hard work spinning, Liebchen?" he asked.

Carlen turned her round blue eyes on him with astonishment. There was

something in his tone that smote vaguely on her consciousness. What

could he mean, asking such a question as that?

"No," she said, "it is not hard exactly. But when you do it very long it

does make the arms ache, holding them so long in the same position; and

it tires one to stand all day!"

"Ay," said John, "that is the way it tires one to reap; my back is near

broke with it to-day."

"Has no one come to help yet?" she said.

"No!" said John, angrily, "and that is what I told father when he let

Alf go. It is good enough for him for being so stingy and short-sighted;

but the brunt of it comes on me,--that's the worst of it. I don't see

what's got all the men. There have always been plenty round every year

till now."

"Alf said he shouldn't be here next year," said Carlen, each cheek

showing a little signal of pink as she spoke; but it was a dim light the

one candle gave, and John did not see the flush. "He was going to the

west to farm; in Oregon, he said."

"Ay, that's it!" replied John. "That's where everybody can go but me!

I'll be going too some day, Carlen. I can't stand things here. If it

weren't for you I'd have been gone long ago."

"I wouldn't leave mother and father for all the world, John," cried

Carlen, warmly, "and I don't think it would be right for you to! What

would father do with the farm without you?"

"Well, why doesn't he see that, then, and treat me as a man ought to be

treated?" exclaimed John; "he thinks I'm no older than when he used to

beat me with the strap."

"I think fathers and mothers are always that way," said the gentle,

cheery Carlen, with a low laugh. "The mother tells me each time how to

wind the warp, as she did when I was little; and she will always look

into the churn for herself. I think it is the way we are made. We will

do the same when we are old, John, and our children will be wondering at

us!"

John laughed. This was always the way with Carlen. She could put a man

in good humor in a few minutes, however cross he felt in the beginning.

"I won't, then!" he exclaimed. "I know I won't. If ever I have a son

grown, I'll treat him like a son grown, not like a baby."

"May I be there to see!" said Carlen, merrily,--

"And you remember free

The words I said to thee.

"Hold the candle here for me, will you, that's a good boy. While we have

talked, my yarn has tangled."

As they stood close together, John holding the candle high over Carlen's

head, she bending over the tangled yarn, the kitchen door opened

suddenly, and their father came in, bringing with him a stranger,--a

young man seemingly about twenty-five years of age, tall, well made,

handsome, but with a face so melancholy that both John and Carlen felt a

shiver as they looked upon it.

"Here now comes de hand, at last of de time, Johan," cried the old man.

"It vill be that all can vel be done now. And it is goot that he is from

mine own country. He cannot English speak, many vords; but dat is

nothing; he can vork. I tolt you dere vould be mans come!"

John looked scrutinizingly at the newcomer. The man's eyes fell.

"What is your name?" said John.

"Wilhelm Rütter," he answered.

"How long have you been in this country?"

"Ten days."

"Where are your friends?"

"I haf none."

"None?"

"None."

These replies were given in a tone as melancholy as the expression of

the face.

Carlen stood still, her wheel arrested, the yarn between her thumb and

ringer, her eyes fastened on the stranger's face. A thrill of

unspeakable pity stirred her. So young, so sad, thus alone in the world;

who ever heard of such a fate?

"But there were people who came with you in the ship?" said John. "There

is some one who knows who you are, I suppose."

"No, no von dat knows," replied the newcomer.

"Haf done vid too much questions," interrupted Farmer Weitbreck. "I haf

him asked all. He stays till harvest be done. He can vork. It is to be

easy see he can vork."

John did not like the appearance of things. "Too much mystery here," he

thought. "However, it is not long he will be here, and he will be in the

fields all the time; there cannot be much danger. But who ever heard of

a man whom no human being knew?"

As they sat at supper, Farmer Weitbreck and his wife plied Wilhelm with

questions about their old friends in Mayence. He was evidently familiar

with all the localities and names which they mentioned. His replies,

however, were given as far as possible in monosyllables, and he spoke no

word voluntarily. Sitting with his head bent slightly forward, his eyes

fixed on the floor, he had the expression of one lost in thoughts of the

gloomiest kind.

"Make yourself to be more happy, mein lad," said the farmer, as he bade

him good-night and clapped him on the shoulder. "You haf come to house

vere is German be speaked, and is Germany in hearts; dat vill be to you

as friends."

A strange look of even keener pain passed over the young man's face, and

he left the room hastily, without a word of good-night.

"He's a surly brute!" cried John; "nice company he'll be in the field! I

believe I'd sooner have nobody!"

"I think he has seen some dreadful trouble," said Carlen. "I wish we

could do something for him; perhaps his friends are all dead. I think

that must be it, don't you think so, mütter?"

Frau Weitbreck was incarnate silence and reticence. These traits were

native in her, and had been intensified to an abnormal extent by thirty

years of life with a husband whose temper and peculiarities were such as

to make silence and reticence the sole conditions of peace and comfort.

To so great a degree had this second nature of the good frau been

developed, that she herself did not now know that it was a second

nature; therefore it stood her in hand as well as if she had been

originally born to it, and it would have been hard to find in Lancaster

County a more placid and contented wife than she. She never dreamed that

her custom of silent acquiescence in all that Gustavus said--of waiting

in all cases, small and great, for his decision--had in the outset been

born of radical and uncomfortable disagreements with him. And as for

Gustavus himself, if anybody had hinted to him that his frau could

think, or ever had thought, any word or deed of his other than right, he

would have chuckled complacently at that person's blind ignorance of the

truth.

"Mein frau, she is goot," he said; "goot frau, goot mütter. American

fraus not goot so she; all de time talk and no vork. American fraus,

American mans, are sheep in dere house."

But in regard to this young stranger, Frau Weitbreck seemed strangely

stirred from her usual phlegmatic silence. Carlen's appeal to her had

barely been spoken, when, rising in her place at the head of the table,

the old woman said solemnly, in German,--

"Yes, Liebchen, he goes with the eyes like eyes of a man that saw always

the dead. It must be as you say, that all whom he loves are in the

grave. Poor boy! poor boy! it is now that one must be to him mother and

father and brother."

"And sister too," said Carlen, warmly. "I will be his sister."

"And I not his brother till he gets a civiller tongue in his head," said

John.

"It is not to be brother I haf him brought," interrupted the old man.

"Alvays you vimmen are too soon; it may be he are goot, it may be he are

pad; I do not know. It is to vork I haf him brought."

"Yes," echoed Frau Weitbreck; "we do not know."

It was not so easy as Carlen and her mother had thought, to be like

mother and sister to Wilhelm. The days went by, and still he was as much

a stranger as on the evening of his arrival. He never voluntarily

addressed any one. To all remarks or even questions he replied in the

fewest words and curtest phrases possible. A smile was never seen on his

face. He sat at the table like a mute at a funeral, ate without lifting

his eyes, and silently rose as soon as his own meal was finished. He had

soon selected his favorite seat in the kitchen. It was on the right-hand

side of the big fireplace, in a corner. Here he sat all through the

evenings, carving, out of cows' horns or wood, boxes and small figures

such as are made by the peasants in the German Tyrol. In this work he

had a surprising skill. What he did with the carvings when finished, no

one knew. One night John said to him,--

"I do not see, Wilhelm, how you can have so steady a hand after holding

the sickle all day. My arm aches, and my hand trembles so that I can but

just carry my cup to my lips."

Wilhelm made no reply, but held his right hand straight out at arm's

length, with the delicate figure he was carving poised on his

forefinger. It stood as steady as on the firm ground.

Carlen looked at him admiringly. "It is good to be so steady-handed,"

she said; "you must be strong, Wilhelm."

"Yes," he said, "I haf strong;" and went on carving.

Nothing more like conversation than this was ever drawn from him. Yet he

seemed not averse to seeing people. He never left the kitchen till the

time came for bed; but when that came he slipped away silent, taking no

part in the general good-night unless he was forced to do so. Sometimes

Carlen, having said jokingly to John, "Now, I will make Wilhelm say

good-night to-night," succeeded in surprising him before he could leave

the room; but often, even when she had thus planned, he contrived to

evade her, and was gone before she knew it.

He slept in a small chamber in the barn,--a dreary enough little place,

but he seemed to find it all sufficient. He had no possessions except

the leather pack he had brought on his back. This lay on the floor

unlocked; and when the good Frau Weitbreck, persuading herself that she

was actuated solely by a righteous, motherly interest in the young man,

opened it, she found nothing whatever there, except a few garments of

the commonest description,--no book, no paper, no name on any article.

It would not appear possible that a man of so decent a seeming as

Wilhelm could have come from Germany to America with so few personal

belongings. Frau Weitbreck felt less at ease in her mind about him after

she examined this pack.

He had come straight from the ship to their house, he had said, when he

arrived; had walked on day after day, going he knew not whither, asking

mile by mile for work. He did not even know one State's name from

another. He simply chose to go south rather than north,--always south,

he said.

"Why?"

He did not know.

He was indeed strong. The sickle was in his hand a plaything, so

swift-swung that he seemed to be doing little more than simply striding

up and down the field, the grain falling to right and left at his steps.

From sunrise to sunset he worked tirelessly. The famous Alf had never

done so much in a day. Farmer Weitbreck chuckled as he looked on.

"Vat now you say of dat Alf?" he said triumphantly to John; "vork he as

dis man? Oh, but he make swing de hook!"

John assented unqualifiedly to this praise of Wilhelm's strength and

skill; but nevertheless he shook his head.

"Ay, ay," he said, "I never saw his equal; but I like him not. What

carries he in his heart to be so sour? He is like a man bewitched. I

know not if there be such a thing as to be sold to the devil, as the

stories say; but if there be, on my word, I think Wilhelm has made some

such bargain. A man could not look worse if he had signed himself away."

"I see not dat he haf fear in his face," replied the old man.

"No," said John, "neither do I see fear. It is worse than fear. I would

like to see his face come alive with a fear. He gives me cold shivers

like a grave underfoot. I shall be glad when he is gone."

Farmer Weitbreck laughed. He and his son were likely to be again at

odds on the subject of a laborer.

"But he vill not go. I haf said to him to stay till Christmas, maybe

always."

John's surprise was unbounded.

"To stay! Till Christmas!" he cried. "What for? What do we need of a man

in the winter?"

"It is not dat to feed him is much, and all dat he make vid de knife is

mine. It is home he vants, no oder ting; he vork not for money."

"Father," said John, earnestly, "there must be something wrong about

that man. I have thought so from the first. Why should he work for

nothing but his board,--a great strong fellow like that, that could make

good day's wages anywhere? Don't keep him after the harvest is over. I

can't bear the sight of him."

"Den you can turn de eyes to your head von oder way," retorted his

father. "I find him goot to see; and," after a pause, "so do Carlen."

John started. "Good heavens, father!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, you need not speak by de heavens, mein son!" rejoined the old man,

in a taunting tone. "I tink I can mine own vay, vidout you to be help. I

was not yesterday born!"

John was gone. Flight was his usual refuge when he felt his temper

becoming too much for him; but now his steps were quickened by an

impulse of terrible fear. Between him and his sister had always been a

bond closer than is wont to link brother and sister. Only one year apart

in age, they had grown up together in an intimacy like that of twins;

from their cradles till now they had had their sports, tastes, joys,

sorrows in common, not a secret from each other since they could

remember. At least, this was true of John; was he to find it no longer

true of Carlen? He would know, and that right speedily. As by a flash of

lightning he thought he saw his father's scheme,--if Carlen were to wed

this man, this strong and tireless worker, this unknown, mysterious

worker, who wanted only shelter and home and cared not for money, what

an invaluable hand would be gained on the farm! John groaned as he

thought to himself how little anything--any doubt, any misgiving,

perhaps even an actual danger--would in his father's mind outweigh the

one fact that the man did not "vork for money."

As he walked toward the house, revolving these disquieting conjectures,

all his first suspicion and antagonism toward Wilhelm revived in full

force, and he was in a mood well calculated to distort the simplest

acts, when he suddenly saw sitting in the square stoop at the door the

two persons who filled his thoughts, Wilhelm and Carlen,--Wilhelm

steadily at work as usual at his carving, his eyes closely fixed on it,

his figure, as was its wont, rigidly still; and Carlen,--ah! it was an

unlucky moment John had taken to search out the state of Carlen's

feeling toward Wilhelm,--Carlen sitting in a posture of dreamy reverie,

one hand lying idle in her lap holding her knitting, the ball rolling

away unnoticed on the ground; her other arm thrown carelessly over the

railing of the stoop, her eyes fixed on Wilhelm's bowed head.

John stood still and watched her,--watched her long. She did not move.

She was almost as rigidly still as Wilhelm himself. Her eyes did not

leave his face. One might safely sit in that way by the hour and gaze

undetected at Wilhelm. He rarely looked up except when he was addressed.

After standing thus a few moments John turned away, bitter and sick at

heart. What had he been about, that he had not seen this? He, the loving

comrade brother, to be slower of sight than the hard, grasping parent!

"I will ask mother," he thought. "I can't ask Carlen now! It is too

late."

He found his mother in the kitchen, busy getting the bountiful supper

which was a daily ordinance in the Weitbreck religion. To John's

sharpened perceptions the fact that Carlen was not as usual helping in

this labor loomed up into significance.

"Why does not Carlen help you, mütter?" he said hastily. "What is she

doing there, idling with Wilhelm in the stoop?"

Frau Weitbreck smiled. "It is not alvays to vork, ven one is young," she

said. "I haf not forget!" And she nodded her head meaningly.

John clenched his hands. Where had he been? Who had blinded him? How had

all this come about, so soon and without his knowledge? Were his father

and his mother mad? He thought they must be.

"It is a shame for that Wilhelm to so much as put his eyes on Carlen's

face," he cried. "I think we are fools; what know we about him? I doubt

him in and out. I wish he had never darkened our doors."

Frau Weitbreck glanced cautiously at the open door. She was frying sweet

cakes in the boiling lard. Forgetting everything in her fear of being

overheard, she went softly, with the dripping skimmer in her hand,

across the kitchen, the fat falling on her shining floor at every step,

and closed the door. Then she came close to her son, and said in a

whisper, "The fader think it is goot." At John's angry exclamation she

raised her hand in warning.

"Do not loud spraken," she whispered; "Carlen will hear."

"Well, then, she shall hear!" cried John, half beside himself. "It is

high time she did hear from somebody besides you and father! I reckon

I've got something to say about this thing, too, if I'm her brother.

By----, no tramp like that is going to marry my sister without I know

more about him!" And before the terrified old woman could stop him, he

had gone at long strides across the kitchen, through the best room, and

reached the stoop, saying in a loud tone: "Carlen! I want to see you."

Carlen started as one roused from sleep. Seeing her ball lying at a

distance on the ground, she ran to pick it up, and with scarlet cheeks

and uneasy eyes turned to her brother.

"Yes, John," she said, "I am coming."

Wilhelm did not raise his eyes, or betray by any change of feature that

he had heard the sound or perceived the motion. As Carlen passed him her

eyes involuntarily rested on his bowed head, a world of pity,

perplexity, in the glance. John saw it, and frowned.

"Come with me," he said sternly,--"come down in the pasture; I want to

speak to you."

Carlen looked up apprehensively into his face; never had she seen there

so stern a look.

"I must help mütter with the supper," she said, hesitating.

John laughed scornfully. "You were helping with the supper, I suppose,

sitting out with yon tramp!" And he pointed to the stoop.

Carlen had, with all her sunny cheerfulness, a vein of her father's

temper. Her face hardened, and her blue eyes grew darker.

"Why do you call Wilhelm a tramp," she said coldly.

"What is he then, if he is not a tramp?" retorted John.

"He is no tramp," she replied, still more doggedly.

"What do you know about him?" said John.

Carlen made no reply. Her silence irritated John more than any words

could have done; and losing self-control, losing sight of prudence, he

poured out on her a torrent of angry accusation and scornful reproach.

She stood still, her eyes fixed on the ground. Even in his hot wrath,

John noticed this unwonted downcast look, and taunted her with it.

"You have even caught his miserable hangdog trick of not looking anybody

in the face," he cried. "Look up now! look me in the eye, and say what

you mean by all this."

Thus roughly bidden, Carlen raised her blue eyes and confronted her

brother with a look hardly less angry than his own.

"It is you who have to say to me what all this means that you have been

saying," she cried. "I think you are out of your senses. I do not know

what has happened to you." And she turned to walk back to the house.

John seized her shoulders in his brawny hands, and whirled her round

till she faced him again.

"Tell me the truth!" he said fiercely; "do you love this Wilhelm?"

Carlen opened her lips to reply. At that second a step was heard, and

looking up they saw Wilhelm himself coming toward them, walking at his

usual slow pace, his head sunk on his breast, his eyes on the ground.

Great waves of blushes ran in tumultuous flood up Carlen's neck, cheeks,

forehead. John took his hands from her shoulders, and stepped back with

a look of disgust and a smothered ejaculation. Wilhelm, hearing the

sound, looked up, regarded them with a cold, unchanged eye, and turned

in another direction.

The color deepened on Carlen's face. In a hard and bitter tone she said,

pointing with a swift gesture to Wilhelm's retreating form: "You can see

for yourself that there is nothing between us. I do not know what craze

has got into your head." And she walked away, this time unchecked by her

brother. He needed no further replies in words. Tokens stronger than any

speech had answered him. Muttering angrily to himself, he went on down

to the pasture after the cows. It was a beautiful field, more like New

England than Pennsylvania; a brook ran zigzagging through it, and here

and there in the land were sharp lifts where rocks cropped out, making

miniature cliffs overhanging some portions of the brook's-course. Gray

lichens and green mosses grew on these rocks, and belts of wild flag and

sedges surrounded their base. The cows, in a warm day, used to stand

knee-deep there, in shade of the rocks.

It was a favorite place of Wilhelm's. He sometimes lay on the top of one

of these rocks the greater part of the night, looking down into the

gliding water or up into the sky. Carlen from her window had more than

once seen him thus, and passionately longed to go down and comfort his

lonely sorrow.

It was indeed true, as she had said to her brother, that there was

"nothing between" her and Wilhelm. Never a word had passed; never a look

or tone to betray that he knew whether she were fair or not,--whether

she lived or not. She came and went in his presence, as did all others,

with no more apparent relation to the currents of his strange veiled

existence than if they or he belonged to a phantom world. But it was

also true that never since the first day of his mysterious coming had

Wilhelm been long absent from Carlen's thoughts; and she did indeed find

him--as her father's keen eyes, sharpened by greed, had observed--good

to look upon. That most insidious of love's allies, pity, had stormed

the fortress of Carlen's heart, and carried it by a single charge. What

could a girl give, do, or be, that would be too much for one so

stricken, so lonely as was Wilhelm! The melancholy beauty of his face,

his lithe figure, his great strength, all combined to heighten this

impression, and to fan the flames of the passion in Carlen's virgin

soul. It was indeed, as John had sorrowfully said to himself, "too late"

to speak to Carlen.

As John stood now at the pasture bars, waiting for the herd of cows,

slow winding up the slope from the brook, he saw Wilhelm on the rocks

below. He had thrown himself down on his back, and lay there with his

arms crossed on his breast. Presently he clasped both hands over his

eyes as if to shut out a sight that he could no longer bear. Something

akin to pity stirred even in John's angry heart as he watched him.

"What can it be," he said, "that makes him hate even the sky? It may be

it is a sweetheart he has lost, and he is one of that strange kind of

men who can love but once; and it is loving the dead that makes him so

like one dead himself. Poor Carlen! I think myself he never so much as

sees her."

A strange reverie, surely, for the brother who had so few short moments

ago been angrily reproaching his sister for the disgrace and shame of

caring for this tramp. But the pity was short-lived in John's bosom. His

inborn distrust and antagonism to the man were too strong for any

gentler sentiment toward him to live long by their side. And when the

family gathered at the supper-table he fixed upon Wilhelm so suspicious

and hostile a gaze that even Wilhelm's absent mind perceived it, and he

in turn looked inquiringly at John, a sudden bewilderment apparent in

his manner. It disappeared, however, almost immediately, dying away in

his usual melancholy absorption. It had produced scarce a ripple on the

monotonous surface of his habitual gloom. But Carlen had perceived all,

both the look on John's face and the bewilderment on Wilhelm's; and it

roused in her a resentment so fierce toward John, she could not forbear

showing it. "How cruel!" she thought. "As if the poor fellow had not all

he could bear already without being treated unkindly by us!" And she

redoubled her efforts to win Wilhelm's attention and divert his

thoughts, all in vain; kindness and unkindness glanced off alike,

powerless, from the veil in which he was wrapped.

John sat by with roused attention and sharpened perception, noting all.

Had it been all along like this? Where had his eyes been for the past

month? Had he too been under a spell? It looked like it. He groaned in

spirit as he sat silently playing with his food, not eating; and when

his father said, "Why haf you not appetite, Johan?" he rose abruptly,

pushed back his chair, and leaving the table without a word went out and

down again into the pasture, where the dewy grass and the quivering

stars in the brook shimmered in the pale light of a young moon. To John,

also, the mossy rocks in this pasture were a favorite spot for rest and

meditation. Since the days when he and Carlen had fished from their

edges, with bent pins and yarn, for minnows, he had loved the place:

they had spent happy hours enough there to count up into days; and not

the least among the innumerable annoyances and irritations of which he

had been anxious in regard to Wilhelm was the fact that he too had

perceived the charm of the field, and chosen it for his own melancholy

retreat.

As he seated himself on one of the rocks, he saw a figure gliding

swiftly down the hill.

It was Carlen.

As she drew near he looked at her without speaking, but the loving girl

was not repelled. Springing lightly to the rock, she threw her arms

around his neck, and kissing him said: "I saw you coming down here,

John, and I ran after you. Do not be angry with me, brother; it breaks

my heart."

A sudden revulsion of shame for his unjust suspicion filled John with

tenderness.

"Mein Schwester," he said fondly,--they had always the habit of using

the German tongue for fond epithets,--"mein Schwester klein, I love you

so much I cannot help being wretched when I see you in danger, but I am

not angry."

Nestling herself close by his side, Carlen looked over into the water.

"This is the very rock I fell off of that day, do you remember?" she

said; "and how wet you got fishing me out! And oh, what an awful beating

father gave you! and I always thought it was wicked, for if you had not

pulled me out I should have drowned."

"It was for letting you fall in he beat me," laughed John; and they

both grew tender and merry, recalling the babyhood times.

"How long, long ago!" cried Carlen.

"It seems only a day," said John.

"I think time goes faster for a man than for a woman," sighed Carlen.

"It is a shorter day in the fields than in the house."

"Are you not content, my sister?" said John.

Carlen was silent.

"You have always seemed so," he said reproachfully.

"It is always the same, John," she murmured. "Each day like every other

day. I would like it to be some days different."

John sighed. He knew of what this new unrest was born. He longed to

begin to speak of Wilhelm, and yet he knew not how. Now that, after

longer reflection, he had become sure in his own mind that Wilhelm cared

nothing for his sister, he felt an instinctive shrinking from

recognizing to himself, or letting it be recognized between them, that

she unwooed had learned to love. His heart ached with dread of the

suffering which might be in store for her.

Carlen herself cut the gordian knot.

"Brother," she whispered, "why do you think Wilhelm is not good?"

"I said not that, Carlen," he replied evasively. "I only say we know

nothing; and it is dangerous to trust where one knows nothing."

"It would not be trust if we knew," answered the loyal girl. "I believe

he is good; but, John, John, what misery in his eyes! Saw you ever

anything like it?"

"No," he replied; "never. Has he never told you anything about himself,

Carlen?"

"Once," she answered, "I took courage to ask him if he had relatives in

Germany; and he said no; and I exclaimed then, 'What, all dead!' 'All

dead,' he answered, in such a voice I hardly dared speak again, but I

did. I said: 'Well, one might have the terrible sorrow to lose all one's

relatives. It needs only that three should die, my father and mother and

my brother,--only three, and two are already old,--and I should have no

relatives myself; but if one is left without relatives, there are always

friends, thank God!' And he looked at me,--he never looks at one, you

know; but he looked at me then as if I had done a sin to speak the word,

and he said, 'I have no friends. They are all dead too,' and then went

away! Oh, brother, why cannot we win him out of this grief? We can be

good friends to him; can you not find out for me what it is?"

It was a cruel weapon to use, but on the instant John made up his mind

to use it. It might spare Carlen grief, in the end.

"I have thought," he said, "that it might be for a dead sweetheart he

mourned thus. There are men, you know, who love that way and never smile

again."

Short-sighted John, to have dreamed that he could forestall any

conjecture in the girl's heart!

"I have thought of that," she answered meekly; "it would seem as if it

could be nothing else. But, John, if she be really dead--" Carlen did

not finish the sentence; it was not necessary.

After a silence she spoke again: "Dear John, if you could be more

friendly with him I think it might be different. He is your age. Father

and mother are too old, and to me he will not speak." She sighed deeply

as she spoke these last words, and went on: "Of course, if it is for a

dead sweetheart that he is grieving thus, it is only natural that the

sight of women should be to him worse than the sight of men. But it is

very seldom, John, that a man will mourn his whole life for a

sweetheart; is it not, John? Why, men marry again, almost always, even

when it is a wife that they have lost; and a sweetheart is not so much

as a wife."

"I have heard," said the pitiless John, "that a man is quicker healed of

grief for a wife than for one he had thought to wed, but lost."

"You are a man," said Carlen. "You can tell if that would be true."

"No, I cannot," he answered, "for I have loved no woman but you, my

sister; and on my word I think I will be in no haste to, either. It

brings misery, it seems to me."

If Carlen had spoken her thought at these words, she would have said,

"Yes, it brings misery; but even so it is better than joy." But Carlen

was ashamed; afraid also. She had passed now into a new life, whither

her brother, she perceived, could not follow. She could barely reach

his hand across the boundary line which parted them.

"I hope you will love some one, John," she said. "You would be happy

with a wife. You are old enough to have a home of your own."

"Only a year older than you, my sister," he rejoined.

"I too am old enough to have a home of my own," she said, with a gentle

dignity of tone, which more impressed John with a sense of the change in

Carlen than all else which had been said.

It was time to return to the house. As he had done when he was ten, and

she nine, John stood at the bottom of the steepest rock, with

upstretched arms, by the help of which Carlen leaped lightly down.

"We are not children any more," she said, with a little laugh.

"More's the pity!" said John, half lightly, half sadly, as they went on

hand in hand.

When they reached the bars, Carlen paused. Withdrawing her hand from

John's and laying it on his shoulder, she said: "Brother, will you not

try to find out what is Wilhelm's grief? Can you not try to be friends

with him?"

John made no answer. It was a hard thing to promise.

"For my sake, brother," said the girl. "I have spoken to no one else but

you. I would die before any one else should know; even my mother."

John could not resist this. "Yes," he said; "I will try. It will be

hard; but I will try my best, Carlen. I will have a talk with Wilhelm

to-morrow."

And the brother and sister parted, he only the sadder, she far happier,

for their talk. "To-morrow," she thought, "I will know! To-morrow! oh,

to-morrow!" And she fell asleep more peacefully than had been her wont

for many nights.

On the morrow it chanced that John and Wilhelm went separate ways to

work and did not meet until noon. In the afternoon Wilhelm was sent on

an errand to a farm some five miles away, and thus the day passed

without John's having found any opportunity for the promised talk.

Carlen perceived with keen disappointment this frustration of his

purpose, but comforted herself, thinking, with the swift forerunning

trust of youth: "To-morrow he will surely get a chance. To-morrow he

will have something to tell me. To-morrow!"

When Wilhelm returned from this errand, he came singing up the road.

Carlen heard the voice and looked out of the window in amazement. Never

before had a note of singing been heard from Wilhelm's voice. She could

not believe her ears; neither her eyes, when she saw him walking

swiftly, almost running, erect, his head held straight, his eyes gazing

free and confident before him.

What had happened? What could have happened? Now, for the first time,

Carlen saw the full beauty of his face; it wore an exultant look as of

one set free, triumphant. He leaped lightly over the bars; he stooped

and fondled the dog, speaking to him in a merry tone; then he whistled,

then broke again into singing a gay German song. Carlen was stupefied

with wonder. Who was this new man in the body of Wilhelm? Where had

disappeared the man of slow-moving figure, bent head, downcast eyes,

gloom-stricken face, whom until that hour she had known? Carlen clasped

her hands in an agony of bewilderment.

"If he has found his sweetheart, I shall die," she thought. "How could

it be? A letter, perhaps? A message?" She dreaded to see him. She

lingered in her room till it was past the supper hour, dreading what she

knew not, yet knew. When she went down the four were seated at supper.

As she opened the door roars of laughter greeted her, and the first

sight she saw was Wilhelm's face, full of vivacity, excitement. He was

telling a jesting story, at which even her mother was heartily laughing.

Her father had laughed till the tears were rolling down his cheeks. John

was holding his sides. Wilhelm was a mimic, it appeared; he was

imitating the ridiculous speech, gait, gestures, of a man he had seen in

the village that afternoon.

"I sent you to village sooner as dis, if I haf known vat you are like

ven you come back," said Farmer Weitbreck, wiping his eyes.

And John echoed his father. "Upon my word, Wilhelm, you are a good

actor. Why have you kept your light under a bushel so long?" And John

looked at him with a new interest and liking. If this were the true

Wilhelm, he might welcome him indeed as a brother.

Carlen alone looked grave, anxious, unhappy. She could not laugh. Tale

after tale, jest after jest, fell from Wilhelm's lips. Such a

story-teller never before sat at the Weitbreck board. The old kitchen

never echoed with such laughter.

Finally John exclaimed: "Man alive, where have you kept yourself all

this time? Have you been ill till now, that you hid your tongue? What

has cured you in a day?"

Wilhelm laughed a laugh so ringing, it made him seem like a boy.

"Yes, I have been ill till to-day," he said; "and now I am well." And he

rattled on again, with his merry talk.

Carlen grew cold with fear; surely this meant but one thing. Nothing

else, nothing less, could have thus in an hour rolled away the burden of

his sadness.

Later in the evening she said timidly, "Did you hear any news in the

village this afternoon, Wilhelm?"

"No; no news," he said. "I had heard no news."

As he said this a strange look flitted swiftly across his face, and was

gone before any eye but a loving woman's had noted it. It did not escape

Carlen's, and she fell into a reverie of wondering what possible double

meaning could have underlain his words.

"Did you know Mr. Dietman in Germany?" she asked. This was the name of

the farmer to whose house he had been sent on an errand. They were

new-comers into the town, since spring.

"No!" replied Wilhelm, with another strange, sharp glance at Carlen. "I

saw him not before."

"Have they children?" she continued. "Are they old?"

"No; young," he answered. "They haf one child, little baby."

Carlen could not contrive any other questions to ask. "It must have been

a letter," she thought; and her face grew sadder.

It was a late bedtime when the family parted for the night. The

astonishing change in Wilhelm's manner was now even more apparent than

it had yet been. Instead of slipping off, as was his usual habit,

without exchanging a good-night with any one, he insisted on shaking

hands with each, still talking and laughing with gay and affectionate

words, and repeating, over and again, "Good-night, good-night." Farmer

Weitbreck was carried out of himself with pleasure at all this, and

holding Wilhelm's hand fast in his, shaking it heartily, and clapping

him on the shoulder, he exclaimed in fatherly familiarity: "Dis is goot,

mein son! dis is goot. Now are you von of us." And he glanced meaningly

at John, who smiled back in secret intelligence. As he did so there went

like a flash through his mind the question, "Can Carlen have spoken with

him to-day? Can that be it?" But a look at Carlen's pale, perplexed face

quickly dissipated this idea. "She looks frightened," thought John. "I

do not much wonder. I will get a word with her." But Carlen had gone

before he missed her. Running swiftly upstairs, she locked the door of

her room, and threw herself on her knees at her open window. Presently

she saw Wilhelm going down to the brook. She watched his every motion.

First, he walked slowly up and down the entire length of the field,

following the brook's course closely, stopping often and bending over,

picking flowers. A curious little white flower called "Ladies'-Tress"

grew there in great abundance, and he often brought bunches of it to

her.

"Perhaps it is not for me this time," thought Carlen, and the tears came

into her eyes. After a time Wilhelm ceased gathering the flowers, and

seated himself on his favorite rock,--the same one where John and Carlen

had sat the night before. "Will he stay there all night?" thought the

unhappy girl, as she watched him. "He is so full of joy he does not want

to sleep. What will become of me! what will become of me!"

At last Wilhelm arose and came toward the house, bringing the bunch of

flowers in his hand. At the pasture bars he paused, and looked back over

the scene. It was a beautiful picture, the moon making it light as day;

even from Carlen's window could be seen the sparkle of the brook.

As he turned to go to the barn his head sank on his breast, his steps

lagged. He wore again the expression of gloomy thought. A new fear arose

in Carlen's breast. Was he mad? Had the wild hilarity of his speech and

demeanor in the evening been merely a new phase of disorder in an

unsettled brain? Even in this was a strange, sad comfort to Carlen. She

would rather have him mad, with alternations of insane joy and gloom,

than know that he belonged to another. Long after he had disappeared in

the doorway at the foot of the stairs which led to his sleeping-place in

the barn-loft, she remained kneeling at the window, watching to see if

he came out again. Then she crept into bed, and lay tossing, wakeful,

and anxious till near dawn. She had but just fallen asleep when she was

aroused by cries. It was John's voice. He was calling loudly at the

window of their mother's bedroom beneath her own.

"Father! father! Get up, quick! Come out to the barn!"

Then followed confused words she could not understand. Leaning from her

window she called: "What is it, John? What has happened?" But he was

already too far on his way back to the barn to hear her.

A terrible presentiment shot into her mind of some ill to Wilhelm.

Vainly she wrestled with it. Why need she think everything that happened

must be connected with him? It was not yet light; she could not have

slept many minutes. With trembling hands she dressed, and running

swiftly down the stairs was at the door just as her father appeared

there.

"What is it? What is it, father?" she cried. "What has happened?"

"Go back!" he said in an unsteady voice. "It is nothing. Go back to bed.

It is not for vimmins!"

Then Carlen was sure it was some ill to Wilhelm, and with a loud cry she

darted to the barn, and flew up the stairway leading to his room.

John, hearing her steps, confronted her at the head of the stairs.

"Good God, Carlen!" he cried, "go back! You must not come here. Where is

father?"

"I will come in!" she answered wildly, trying to force her way past

him. "I will come in. You shall not keep me out. What has happened to

him? Let me by!" And she wrestled in her brother's strong arms with

strength almost equal to his.

"Carlen! You shall not come in! You shall not see!" he cried.

"Shall not see!" she shrieked. "Is he dead?"

"Yes, my sister, he is dead," answered John, solemnly. In the next

instant he held Carlen's unconscious form in his arms; and when Farmer

Weitbreck, half dazed, reached the foot of the stairs, the first sight

which met his eyes was his daughter, held in her brother's arms,

apparently lifeless, her head hanging over his shoulder.

"Haf she seen him?" he whispered.

"No!" said John. "I only told her he was dead, to keep her from going

in, and she fainted dead away."

"Ach!" groaned the old man, "dis is hard on her."

"Yes," sighed the brother; "it is a cruel shame."

Swiftly they carried her to the house, and laid her on her mother's

bed, then returned to their dreadful task in Wilhelm's chamber.

Hung by a stout leathern strap from the roof-tree beam, there swung the

dead body of Wilhelm Rütter, cold, stiff. He had been dead for hours; he

must have done the deed soon after bidding them good-night.

"He vas mad, Johan; it must be he vas mad ven he laugh like dat last

night. Dat vas de beginning, Johan," said the old man, shaking from head

to foot with horror, as he helped his son lift down the body.

"Yes!" answered John; "that must be it. I expect he has been mad all

along. I do not believe last night was the beginning. It was not like

any sane man to be so gloomy as he was, and never speak to a living

soul. But I never once thought of his being crazy. Look, father!" he

continued, his voice breaking into a sob, "he has left these flowers

here for Carlen! That does not look as if he was crazy! What can it all

mean?"

On the top of a small chest lay the bunch of white Ladies'-Tress, with a

paper beneath it on which was written, "For Carlen Weitbreck,--these,

and the carvings in the box, all in memory of Wilhelm."

"He meant to do it, den," said the old man.

"Yes," said John.

"Maybe Carlen vould not haf him, you tink?"

"No," said John, hastily; "that is not possible."

"I tought she luf him, an' he vould stay an' be her mann," sighed the

disappointed father. "Now all dat is no more."

"It will kill her," cried John.

"No!" said the father. "Vimmins does not die so as dat. She feel pad

maybe von year, maybe two. Dat is all. He vas great for vork. Dat Alf

vas not goot as he."

The body was laid once more on the narrow pallet where it had slept for

its last few weeks on earth, and the two men stood by its side,

discussing what should next be done, how the necessary steps could be

taken with least possible publicity, when suddenly they heard the sound

of horses' feet and wheels, and looking out they saw Hans Dietman and

his wife driving rapidly into the yard.

"Mein Gott! Vat bring dem here dis time in day," exclaimed Farmer

Weitbreck. "If dey ask for Wilhelm dey must all know!"

"Yes," replied John; "that makes no difference. Everybody will have to

know." And he ran swiftly down to meet the strangely arrived neighbors.

His first glance at their faces showed him that they had come on no

common errand. They were pale and full of excitement, and Hans's first

word was: "Vere is dot man you sent to mine place yesterday?"

"Wilhelm?" stammered Farmer Weitbreck.

"Wilhelm!" repeated Hans, scornfully. "His name is not 'Wilhelm.' His

name is Carl,--Carl Lepmann; and he is murderer. He killed von

man--shepherd, in our town--last spring; and dey never get trail of

him. So soon he came in our kitchen yesterday my vife she knew him; she

wait till I get home. Ve came ven it vas yet dark to let you know vot

man vas in your house."

Farmer Weitbreck and his son exchanged glances; each was too shocked to

speak. Mr. and Mrs. Dietman looked from one to the other in

bewilderment. "Maype you tink ve speak not truth," Hans continued.

"Just let him come here, to our face, and you will see."

"No!" said John, in a low, awe-stricken voice, "we do not think you are

not speaking truth." He paused; glanced again at his father. "We'd

better take them up!" he said.

The old man nodded silently. Even his hard and phlegmatic nature was

shaken to the depths.

John led the way up the stairs, saying briefly, "Come." The Dietmans

followed in bewilderment.

"There he is," said John, pointing to the tall figure, rigid, under the

close-drawn white folds; "we found him here only an hour ago, hung from

the beam."

A horror-stricken silence fell on the group.

Hans spoke first. "He know dat we know; so he kill himself to save dat

de hangman have trouble."

John resented the flippant tone. He understood now the whole mystery of

Wilhelm's life in this house.

"He has never known a happy minute since he was here," he said. "He

never smiled; nor spoke, if he could help it. Only last night, after he

came back from your place, he laughed and sang, and was merry, and

looked like another man; and he bade us all good-night over and over,

and shook hands with every one. He had made up his mind, you see, that

the end had come, and it was nothing but a relief to him. He was glad to

die. He had not courage before. But now he knew he would be arrested he

had courage to kill himself. Poor fellow, I pity him!" And John smoothed

out the white folds over the clasped hands on the quiet-stricken breast,

resting at last. "He has been worse punished than if he had been hung in

the beginning," he said, and turned from the bed, facing the Dietmans as

if he constituted himself the dead man's protector.