thrill of
unspeakable pity stirred her. So young, so sad, thus alone in the world;
who ever heard of such a fate?

"But there were people who came with you in the ship?" said John. "There
is some one who knows who you are, I suppose."

"No, no von dat knows," replied the newcomer.

"Haf done vid too much questions," interrupted Farmer Weitbreck. "I haf
him asked all. He stays till harvest be done. He can vork. It is to be
easy see he can vork."

John did not like the appearance of things. "Too much mystery here," he
thought. "However, it is not long he will be here, and he will be in the
fields all the time; there cannot be much danger. But who ever heard of
a man whom no human being knew?"

As they sat at supper, Farmer Weitbreck and his wife plied Wilhelm with
questions about their old friends in Mayence. He was evidently familiar
with all the localities and names which they mentioned. His replies,
however, were given as far as possible in monosyllables, and he spoke no
word voluntarily. Sitting with his head bent slightly forward, his eyes
fixed on the floor, he had the expression of one lost in thoughts of the
gloomiest kind.

"Make yourself to be more happy, mein lad," said the farmer, as he bade
him good-night and clapped him on the shoulder. "You haf come to house
vere is German be speaked, and is Germany in hearts; dat vill be to you
as friends."

A strange look of even keener pain passed over the young man's face, and
he left the room hastily, without a word of good-night.

"He's a surly brute!" cried John; "nice company he'll be in the field! I
believe I'd sooner have nobody!"

"I think he has seen some dreadful trouble," said Carlen. "I wish we
could do something for him; perhaps his friends are all dead. I think
that must be it, don't you think so, muetter?"

Frau Weitbreck was incarnate silence and reticence. These traits were
native in her, and had been intensified to an abnormal extent by thirty
years of life with a husband whose temper and peculiarities were such as
to make silence and reticence the sole conditions of peace and comfort.
To so great a degree had this second nature of the good frau been
developed, that she herself did not now know that it was a second
nature; therefore it stood her in hand as well as if she had been
originally born to it, and it would have been hard to find in Lancaster
County a more placid and contented wife than she. She never dreamed that
her custom of sile