r went first to the lady of the
house, and then to the master and then again to the lady, and every time
he took each by both their hands with indescribable heartiness and kept
on saying: "I have no words, but thanks, eternal thanks!" And all at
once he saw Sally's head peeping out from behind her mother. He suddenly
took it between his two hands and cried: "There is, I believe, the great
friend and defender of my boy. Well, now will you forgive me?"

Sally pulled one of his hands down and pressed a hearty kiss on it, and
now the colonel tenderly stroked her hair and said: "Such good friends
are worth a great deal!"

But when he expressed his intention to start at once with Erick, there
arose great opposition, and this time the mother distinguished herself
in opposition against such quick separation. The grandfather of her
Erick ought to spend at least one night beneath her roof, and give the
family the chance of learning to know him a little better and to have
Erick another day in their midst.

All the children as well as Erick supported, louder and always louder,
the mother's request, and the beleaguered grandfather had to give in.
Ritz and Edi ran with much delight and noise down the stairs to seat
themselves proudly in the coach, and thus drive to the inn, where both
must tell to the guests present, who had changed their consultation
place from the church to the inn, what they knew of the strange
gentleman. And so it came about that on the same Sunday afternoon, all
Upper and Lower Wooders, as well as the Middle Lotters, knew Erick's
family and fate, and they had to talk loud and zealously before every
door, over this change of luck that had come to Erick.

In the parsonage, too, the evening was spent with unusually animated
conversation. How much had to be told to the grandfather of the
happenings of the last and all former days, and Erick had to throw in a
question now and then, which referred to the distant estate, for his
thoughts always travelled back to that spot.

"Is Mother's white pony still alive, Grandfather?" he once suddenly
asked.

The beautiful pony had long been put away, was the answer. "But you
shall have one just like your mother's, my boy. I can now bear the sight
of it again," the grandfather said.

"Does old John still live, who made the barge and scraped the
pebble-walks so nicely?" Erick asked another time.

"What, you know of that too? Yes, indeed, he is still living, but the
joy o