aul Rieter, the town physician and our doctor, came to see me,
he stayed a long time, as though he could not bear to depart, standing
in front of the portrait; and when he turned to me again, his face was
quite red with sorrowful feeling--for he had been a favorite friend of
my father, at Padua--and he exclaimed: "What a fortunate child art thou,
little Margery!"

I must have looked at him puzzled enough, for no one had ever esteemed
me fortunate, unless it were Cousin Maud or the Waldstromers in the
forest; and Master Paul must have observed my amazement, for he went on.
"Yea, a happy child art thou; for so are all babes, maids or boys, who
come into the world after their father's death." As I gazed into his
face, no less astonished than before, he laid the gold knob of his cane
against his nose and said: "Remember, little simpleton, the good God
would not be what he is, would not be a man of honor--God forgive the
words--if he did not take a babe whom He had robbed of its father before
it had seen the light or had one proof of his love under His own special
care. Mark what I say, child. Is it a small thing to be the ward of a
guardian who is not only Almighty but true above all truth?" And those
words have followed me through all my life till this very hour.

CHAPTER II.

Thus passed our childhood, as I have already said, in very great
happiness; and by the time that my brothers had left the leading strings
far behind them, and were studying their 'Donatus', Cousin Maud was
teaching me to read and write, and that with much mirth and the most
frolicsome ways. For instance, she would stamp four copies of each
letter out of sweet honey-cakes, and when I knew them well she gave me
these tiny little A. B. C. cakes, and one I ate myself, and gave the
others to my brothers, or Susan, or my cousin. Often I put them in my
satchel to carry them into the woods with me, and give them to my Cousin
Gotz's favorite hound or his cross-beak; for he himself did not care
for sweets. I shall have many things to tell of him and the forest; even
when I was very small it was my greatest joy to be told that we were
going to the woods, for there dwelt the dearest and most faithful of
all our kinsmen: my uncle Waldstromer and his family. The stately
hunting-lodge in which he dwelt as head forester of the Lorenzerwald in
the service of the Emperor and of our town, had greater joys for me than
any other, since not only were there the woo