wn the
room impatiently. She is too eager to sit still!

Mouser, our old friend the cat, is curled up in a round ball between
Gelert's paws on the rug in front of the stove; while, as for Lorischen,
she is bustling in and out of the room, placing things on the well-
spread table and then immediately taking them away again, quite
forgetful of what she is about in her absence of mind and anxiety of
expectancy.

Burgher Jans, too, now and again, keeps popping his head through the
doorway, to ask if "the high, well-born and noble Herren" have yet
come--the little fat man then retiring, with an humble apology for
intruding, only to intrude again the next instant!

Madame Dort had received, late that afternoon, a telegram from Fritz,
stating that he had reached Bremerhaven; and that he and Eric were just
going to take the train, hoping to be with them in Lubeck ere nightfall.

Cause enough, is there not, for all this excitement and expectancy in
the household?

Presently, a party of singers pass down the street, singing a plaintive
Volkslieder, that sounds, oh so tender and touching in the frosty
evening air; and then, suddenly, there is a sound of footsteps crunching
the snow on the outside stairway.

Gelert, shaking off poor Mouser's fraternal embrace most
unceremoniously, starts up with a growl, rushing the moment afterwards
with a whine and yelp of joy to the rapidly thrown open door; and, here
he jumps affectionately up upon a stalwart, bearded individual who
enters, trying to lick his face in welcome.

"Fritz!" cries Madaleine.

"Eric!" echoes the mother, the same instant.

"Madaleine!" bursts forth from Fritz's lips; while Eric, close behind,
cries out joyously, "Mother--mutterchen--dear little mother mine!"

The long-expected meeting is over, and the "Brother Crusoes" are safe at
home again.

Little remains to be told.

Early in the new year, when winter had given place to spring and the
earth was budding forth into fresh life, Fritz and Madaleine were
married. The happy pair live on still with good Madame Dort in the
little house of the Gulden Strasse as of yore; for, Fritz has settled
down into the old groove he occupied before the war, having gone back to
rejoin his former employer, Herr Grosschnapper--although, mind you,
instead of being only a mere clerk and book-keeper, he is now a partner
in the shipbroker's business:-- the little capital which he and Eric
gained in their sealing venture to In