had written me. My love went up the chimney in the smoke."

Franzl always concluded her story with the selfsame words. To-day she
had had a good listener,--the best of listeners. He had but one fault,
that of not hearing a word she said. His eyes were fixed on her and his
thoughts on Annele. Out of gratitude Franzl came at last to speak of
her. "I will tell Annele what you are. No one knows you as well as I
do. In all your life you never harmed a child; and how good you have
always been to me! Don't look so sorrowful. Be merry! I know,--ah, too
well I know!--when so great happiness comes to us, we feel crushed
under it. But, thank God! you are in earnest; you will stay quietly at
home together and bid each other good morning and good night every day
that God gives you. And now I must say good night, for it is late."

It was past midnight before Lenz went to bed, and then with a "Good
night, Annele! good night, dear heart!" he fell asleep.

He awoke the next morning with a strange weight on his heart. He
remembered he had dreamed, and in his dream he stood upon the high
mountain ridge behind his house with one foot raised to step off into
space.

"I never let a dream trouble me before," he said, and tried to forget
it in admiration of his yesterday's gold coin, and of the still greater
treasure he possessed in Annele's little shoes and first frock. They
were holy relics, to be carefully preserved with those he had received
from his mother.

A message came from the landlady that he was to be at the Lion at
eleven o'clock. He put on his Sunday clothes and hastened to his uncle
Petrovitsch's. After pulling the bell several times he was admitted and
received by his uncle in no very amiable mood.

"What do you want so early?"

"Uncle, you are my father's brother--"

"To be sure I am, and when I went abroad I left everything to your
father. All I now have I earned for myself."

"I have not come for money, but to ask you to fulfil the office of a
father for me."

"How? What?"

"Uncle, Annele of the Lion and I love one another. Her mother knows it
and sanctions it. Now I am to ask her of her father, according to the
custom, and I want you to go with me as my father's brother."

"So?" said Petrovitsch, putting a lump of white sugar in his mouth and
walking up and down the carpeted room.

"So?" he repeated as he faced about. "You will have an energetic wife,
and I must say you have good courage. I should not have