range town."

"You shall not remain in this room," said Anton, "if I can help it.
There is such an atmosphere of disease here that a man in health becomes
quite faint; I shall ask permission to have you moved into my lodging."

"Dear Mr. Anton!" cried Karl, overjoyed.

"Hush!" said the other; "I do not yet know whether we shall get leave."

"I have one other request to make," said the soldier, at parting, "and
that is, that you will write the circumstance off to Goliath, so as not
to make him too uneasy. If he first heard of it from a stranger, he
would go on like a madman, I know."

Anton promised to do this, and then hurried to the surgeon of the
regiment, and next to his kind friend the captain.

"I will answer for his getting leave," said the latter. "And as, from
the account of his wound, his dismissal from the service seems to me
unavoidable, he may as well stay with you till he receives it."

Three days later, Karl, with his arm in a sling, entered Anton's room.
"Here I am," said he. "Adieu my gay uniform! adieu Selim, my gallant
bay! You must have patience with me, Mr. Anton, for one other week, then
I shall be able to use my arm again."

"Here is an answer from your father," said Anton, "directed to me."

"To you?" inquired Karl, in amazement. "Why to you? why has he not
written to me?"

"Listen." Anton took up a great sheet of folio paper, which was covered
over with letters half an inch long, and read as follows: "Worshipful
Mr. Wohlfart, this is a great misfortune for my poor son. Two fingers
from ten--eight remain. Even though they were but small fingers, the
pain was all the same. It is a great misfortune for both of us that we
can no longer write to each other. Therefore I beg of you to have the
goodness to tell him what follows: 'He is not to grieve overmuch. Boring
can still perhaps be done, and a good deal with the hammer. And even if
it be Heaven's will that this too should be impossible, still he is not
to grieve overmuch. He is provided for by an iron chest. When I am dead,
he will find the key in my waistcoat pocket. And so I greet him with my
whole heart. As soon as he can travel, he must come to me; all the more,
as I can no longer tell him in writing that I am his true and loving
father, Johann Sturm.'" Anton gave the letter to the invalid.

"It is just like him," said Karl, between smiles and tears; "in his
first sorrow he has imagined that he can no longer write to me, because
I ha