inally from the Thuringian forest, she spoke the Saxon
dialect "shockingly well."

Kirtley laughed it off as a part of the ribald fun.

The young Germans wound up their list of salutations with Der Tag!

"What do you mean by Der Tag?" he inquired. The others grinned
significantly.

"Wait and see. It will be something _kolossal_." And they called out
after him:

"Don't forget about Fritzi!"

That night Gard, laden with heavy feelings, tumbled into his German
bed piled with its equatorial bolsters. Could Elsa marry a man like
Friedrich? Ought she to be permitted to? Could she really love him?
Wouldn't she be horrified if she knew fully about him? Or would she,
like German women in general, seem to care little about the morals
of her future mate? Likely, as Gard fancied, it was this knowledge
of him that sent her now and then in evident unhappiness to her
room.

She was a pure and very worth-while girl. He could not ignore that
her healthful, productive example was a stimulus to him. It would be
a sturdy prop in his long sensitive, susceptible physical
recovery--and afterward. Was it really not a kind of _duty_ to try
to save her from sharing the fate of Von Tielitz, and win her if he
could?

CHAPTER XIX

JIM DEMING OF ERIE, PAY.

The Americanization of the Bucher home Kirtley naturally thought
beyond all attempts. Its detestation of the low-born Yankee, with
only his sorry millions, seemed too deeply planted there, especially
in the brain and bosom of the Frau. Could Villa Elsa have been
transferred to the United States, such a viewpoint might perhaps
have been altered after a time. But this representative boorish
German family, stuck here on the rainy banks of the mid-continent
Elbe and so rooted and clamorous in the presumption that they and
their kind were eclipsing the earth--how impossible of any
conversion?

Gard had at first the idea of getting together some American
statistics and showing the Buchers a few facts. Then he saw this was
hopeless. They accepted nothing that did not come through their own
official channels. And why should he waste time on these obscure
people? Why should he undertake to upset their racial happiness?
Nobody, least of all he, could change their attitude about the
upstart Yankee and his upstart dollars. The Buchers held themselves
too far above mere money and its filth.

But the miracle was, nevertheless, to be accomplished, at least for
awhile, in a manner as s