herhood. I ask for the
sister of your betrothed, dear brother-in-law, and desire to take her
home with me as my christian wife.'

'I regret, my brother,' said Alf, encircling Clara with his arms, 'that
you come too late. In obedience to the new law, I have asked the maiden
to become my second wife, and have obtained her consent.'

'Indeed!' escaped from the proud Eliza, while she bit her lips and
darted a not altogether sisterly glance at the poor Clara.

'Heigh!' stammered Tuiskoshirer, in a tone of mingled fear and anger.

'Your courtship take precedence of that of the great prophet
Tuiskoshirer!' cried one of the ragged bridal train, springing towards
Clara, seizing her by the arm and endeavoring forcibly to drag her to
her detested suitor. Alf instantly seized him by the body and with a
powerful swing threw him over the garden fence. 'Who else will
interfere?' cried he, lustily, making after the multitude, who in great
trepidation were seeking the door.

'An insolent reply was all that I wanted,' snarled Tuiskoshirer, as he
followed his retreating rabble.

'Sister and sister-in-law at the same time?' asked Eliza in a tone of
bitterness, pointing towards Clara. 'I might at least have been
previously informed of it,' said she, leaving the garden in a rage.

'Necessity knows no law, dear Eliza,' pleaded Alf, following her.

'It is a heavy duty which I have taken upon me,' said Clara to herself,
'to preserve the appearance of coldness toward the man whom I love
better than all the world beside; but God will help me.'

CHAPTER XII.

In the course of the next week Alf had sufficiently softened Eliza's
anger: she had with a heavy heart learned to share her beloved
husband's name with her unloved sister, and Alf now went to his worthy
kinsman, the former burgomaster Kippenbrock, to invite him to the
marriage feast. He found the good man a perfect contrast to his
terrible ex-colleague; in the short brown butcher's jacket and white
apron, with his sleeves rolled up, he was standing in his shop, making
sausages;--his full, red, contented face covered with glistening drops
of perspiration, a proof that he pursued his occupation with right good
will.

'I am rejoiced, good kinsman, that you have so easily submitted to the
loss of political greatness.'

'Yes, kinsman,' answered Gerhard familiarly, laying down his
sausage-knife, 'to thee I may say it; thou wilt keep clean lips, an