ister seemed quite disposed to
do without him, gave Walter his instructions, wrote to the capital for
more assistance, and sent the truant's things after him to the Star,
without wasting any words upon the subject.

Thus a few days elapsed. The atmosphere of the house was lowering;
never a laugh now, nor a gay word. These three inmates--for Helen too,
had begun to wear a graver face--lived on together, without exchanging
more than a necessary word. When Walter came home in the evening--for
he did not even leave his work for dinner--he would swallow down the
food that had been kept for him, and then go straight to his room, on
plea of fatigue, regardless of the questions asked by poor Helen's
melancholy eyes. She well knew that if he left her, it was not to go to
bed; for in the morning she always found his light burned down.

And if he left home weary, it was not from over-eagerness to get to his
work. The villa was situated at about two miles' distance from the
town, just where the forest began and the country became more
undulated. It had originally been built as a ducal shooting-box. It had
passed through the hands of numerous owners--through some very careless
ones; and at last, in a farmer's, had been turned to more profitable
purposes. When the Burgermeister bought it, he found it dignified to
boast that he had a mere country-seat--a villa that cost so much and
rented nothing; and so he decided on having it entirely renovated in
the original style, and on opening the gardens to the admiration of the
public in the summer season. The distance was no more than a pleasant
walk for the townspeople. Yet Walter had been known to take two hours
to it and more. The boy apprentices enjoyed a game of ball in the
shell-gallery, or a little mischief in the gardens; while their young
taskmaster, in his meditations, loitered about among the leafless
glades, until the sun, darting into every nook and thicket, would rise
so high, as to remind him that he had been sent there in some other
capacity than that of overseer to the building of the birds'-nests.

Then he would hurry back to the house, scare the lads with a harshness
they had never seen in him before, and fall as violently to work as
though he meant to do in a day, or in half a day, what would be the
work of weeks. But he would soon let his brush drop, and sit motionless
upon the scaffolding, staring at some vacant spot on the opposite wall,
where his fancy had conjured