t, sprung up and we left the
wood.

Oh, far back, by-gone day! There was a soft light over you shed by a
kindly sun. That was a time in which joy ran a golden thread through the
gray homespun of every-day life.

Back to the restauration at the foot of the _berg_, where Sigmund was
supplied with milk and Eugen and I with beer, where we sat at a little
wooden table in a garden and the pleasant clack of friendly conversation
sounded around; where the women tried to make friends with Sigmund, and
the girls whispered behind their coffee-cups or (_pace_, elegant
fiction!) their beer-glasses, and always happened to be looking up if
our eyes roved that way. Two poor musiker and a little boy; persons of
no importance whatever, who could scrape their part in the symphony with
some intelligence and feel they had done their duty. Well, well! it is
not all of us who can do even so much. I know some instruments that are
always out of tune. Let us be complacent where we justly can. The
opportunities are few.

We took our way home. The days were long, and it was yet light when we
returned and found the reproachful face of Frau Schmidt looking for us,
and her arms open to receive the weary little lad who had fallen asleep
on his father's shoulder.

I went upstairs, and, by a natural instinct, to the window. Those facing
it were open; some one moved in the room. Two chords of a piano were
struck. Some one came and stood by the window, shielded her eyes from
the rays of the setting sun which streamed down the street and looked
westward. Eugen was passing behind me. I pulled him to the window, and
we both looked--silently, gravely.

The girl dropped her hand; her eyes fell upon us. The color mounted to
her cheek; she turned away and went to the interior of the room. It was
May Wedderburn.

"Also!" said Eugen, after a pause. "A new neighbor; it reminds me of one
of Andersen's 'Maerchen,' but I don't know which."

CHAPTER XX.

"For though he lived aloof from ken,
The world's unwitnessed denizen,
The love within him stirs
Abroad, and with the hearts of men
His own confers."

The story of my life from day to day was dull enough, same enough for
some time after I went to live at the Wehrhahn. I was studying hard, and
my only variety was the letters I had from home; not very cheering,
these. One, which I received from Adelaide, puzzled me somewhat. After
speaking of her coming marriage in a way which made me sad an