e called out. "Hanserl! Hans, I
say! Well, it's a fine way to keep a shop! How does the creature know
but I'm a lady that would buy half the gimcracks in the place, and he's
not to be found! That's what makes these devils so poor,--they never
mind their business. 'Tis nothing but fun and diversion they think of
the whole day long. There's no teaching them that there's nothing like
indhustry! What makes us the finest people under the sun? Work--nothing
but work! I 'm sure I 'm tired of telling him so! Hans, are you asleep,
Hans Roeckle?" No answer followed this summons, and now Dalton, after
some vain efforts to unbolt the door, strode over it into the shop.
"Faix! I don't wonder that you had n't a lively business," said he,
as he looked around at the half-stocked shelves, over which dust and
cobwebs were spread like a veil. "Sorrow a thing I don't know as well
as I do my gaiters! There's the same soldiers, and that's the woodcutter
with the matches on his back, and there's the little cart Frank mended
for him! Poor Frank, where is he now, I wonder?" Dalton sighed heavily
as he continued to run his eye over the various articles all familiar to
him long ago. "What's become of Hans?" cried he at last, aloud; "if it
was n't an honest place, he would n't have a stick left! To go away and
leave everything at sixes and sevens--well, well, it's wonderful!"

Dalton ascended the stairs--every step of which was well known to
him--to the upper story where he used to live. The door was unfastened,
and the rooms were just as he had left them--even to the little table
at which Nelly used to sit beside the window. Nothing was changed; a
bouquet of faded flowers--the last, perhaps, she had ever plucked in
that garden--stood in a glass in the window-sill; and so like was all
to the well-remembered past, that Dalton almost thought he heard her
footstep on the floor.

"Well, it was a nice little quiet spot, any way!" said he, as he sank
into a chair, and a heavy tear stole slowly along his cheek. "Maybe it
would have been well for me if I never left it! With all our poverty we
spent many a pleasant night beside that hearth, and many's the happy day
we passed in that wood there. To be sure, we were all together, then!
that makes a difference! instead of one here, another there, God knows
when to meet, if ever!

"I used to fret many a time about our being so poor, but I was wrong,
after all, for we divided our troubles amongst us, and that