rwise, and yet how bitter have
not my feelings been towards her!"

Years passed on. Anthon's father was dead, and strangers dwelt in his
paternal home. Anthon, however, was to see it once more; for his
wealthy master sent him on an errand of business, which obliged him to
pass through his native town, Eisenach. The old WARTBURG stood
unchanged, high up on the hill above, with "the monk and the nun" in
unhewn stone. The mighty oak trees seemed as imposing as in his
childish days. The Venus mount looked like a grey mass frowning over
the valley. He would willingly have cried,--

"Fru Holle! Fru Holle! open the hill, and let me stay there, upon the
soil of my native home!"

It was a sinful thought, and he crossed himself. Then a little bird
sang among the bushes, and the old Minnesong came back to his
thoughts:--

"Beyond the wood, in the quiet dale,
Tandaradai!
Sang the melodious nightingale."

How remembrances rushed upon him as he approached the town where his
childhood had been spent, which he now saw through tears! His father's
house remained where it used to be, but the garden was altered; a
field footpath was made across a portion of the old garden; and the
apple tree that he had not uprooted stood there, but no longer within
the garden: it was on the opposite side of the road, though the sun
shone on it as cheerfully as of old, and the dew fell on it there. It
bore such a quantity of fruit that the branches were weighed down to
the ground.

"It thrives!" he exclaimed. "Yes, _it_ can do so."

One of its well-laden boughs was broken. Wanton hands had done this,
for the tree was now on the side of the public road.

"Its blossoms are carried off without thanks; its fruit is stolen, its
branches are broken. It may be said of a tree as of a man, 'It was not
sung at the tree's cradle that things should turn out thus.' This one
began its life so charmingly; and what has now become of it? Forsaken
and forgotten--a garden tree standing in a common field, close to a
public road, and bending over a miserable ditch! There it stood now,
unsheltered, ill-used, and disfigured! It was not, indeed, withered by
all this; but as years advanced its blossoms would become fewer--its
fruit, if it bore any, late; and so it is all over with it."

Thus thought Anthon under the tree, and thus he thought many a night
in the little lonely chamber of the wooden house in the "Small Houses'
Street," in Copenhagen, whithe