ill look more cheerful in the bright
spring sunshine than it does now. But I will sketch it for you just as
it is, and it shall remind you of the first winter that we spent here
under your protection."

And Anton looked with shining eyes at the beautiful girl before him,
and, with the pencil in his hand, sketched her profile on a new board.
"You won't succeed," said Lenore; "you always make my mouth too large
and my eyes too small. Give me the pencil; I can do better. Stand
still. Look! that is your face--your good, true face; I know it by
heart. Hurrah! the postman!" cried she, throwing away the pencil and
hurrying to the castle. Anton followed her; for the postman and his
heavy bag were to the castle as a ship steering through the sandy deep,
and bringing the world's good things to the dwellers on a lonely island.
The man was soon relieved from his burden. Lenore gladly caught up the
drawing-paper that she had ordered from Rosmin. "Come, Wohlfart, we will
look out the best place for sketching the castle, and you shall hang up
the picture in your room instead of the old one, which saddens me
whenever I see it. Once you sketched our home, now I will sketch it for
you. I will take great pains, and you shall see what I can do."

She had spoken joyously, but Anton had not heard a word she said. He had
torn open Baumann's letter, and as he read it his face reddened with
emotion. Slowly, thoughtfully, he turned away, went up to his room, and
came down no more. Lenore snatched up the envelope, which he had
dropped. "Another letter from his friend in the firm!" said she, sadly;
"whenever he hears from him, he becomes gloomy and cold toward me." She
threw away the envelope, and hurried to the stable to saddle her trusty
friend the pony.

CHAPTER XXXII.

It was the weekly market in the little town of Rosmin. From time
immemorial this had been an important festival to the country people
around.

For five days of the week the peasant had to cultivate his plot, of
ground, or to render feudal service to his landlord, and on Sunday his
heart was divided between the worship of the Virgin, his family, and the
public house; but the market-day led him beyond the narrow confines of
his fields into the busy world. There, amid strangers, he could feel and
show himself a shrewd man in buying and selling; he greeted
acquaintances whom else he would never have met; saw new things and
strange people, and heard the news of other to