est more abundant than he had dared to hope for, and the remaining
half-year would complete the transformation of the worthless moorland
into a veritable Australian gold mine. He regarded his property now
with a parental tenderness, as if it were some living being whom he had
trained and educated. The first harvest had given him experience, and
opportunity for new work, and he stayed through the autumn and winter
in his house in the midst of his workmen, whom he felt inclined to
canonize. The men now formed a little colony with their wives and
children, and Paul was as happy as possible within the limited boundary
of his horizon, between the Suderelbe and the Seeve.

These two years had been outwardly uneventful for Wilhelm. In the
mornings he worked in the Physical Institute, in the afternoons he
worked at home, in the evenings he gossiped with Schrotter--a journey
to Hamburg and a fortnight's visit to the house on the Friesenmoor had
given him change. Paul came pretty often to Berlin, and found in the
society of his old friends the enjoyment of his early years renewed,
and Wilhelm with his girlish face, his enthusiastic eyes, and his
unworldly manner did not seem a year older. The professor of physics,
who had frequently been invited to go abroad to direct the teaching in
other European and foreign schools, asked Wilhelm to go with him to
Turkey, Japan, and Chili--as professor. He had the highest opinion of
Wilhelm, and deeply regretted that his misadventure with Herr von
Pechlar made an appointment in Germany impossible. Wilhelm, however,
declined, on the ground that he did not feel an aptitude for teaching,
only for learning.

He had scarcely any intercourse now with Barinskoi, whose immoral views
at last became unbearable; he rarely saw him except when he came to
borrow money. Of late a new acquaintance had come into his limited
social circle. This was a man of about thirty-five, called Dorfling, an
overgrown thin creature, with long, straight gray hair, and deep
intellectual eyes in his thin face. He came from the Rhine, and was the
son of a rich merchant, into whose business he should have gone.
However, when he was twenty-six he boldly told his father that the
world outside was of deeper and wider interest to him than account
books. The father died, and Dorfling hastened to put the business into
liquidation, and devote himself to philosophical studies. For a year he
drifted from one school to another, sitting a