the door. The screaming child was probably carried to a back room, for
it grew still next door, and we talked on. Then I once heard that his
wife was dead; I have never seen any outward tokens of affliction on
him, but the child seems to be alive."

"And now, Klaus?"

The tall man had turned, and was looking absently at the little wooden
cradle.

"And now, Anna Maria? I owe him so much"--he spoke almost
imploringly--"may I impose such a burden upon you?"

"Klaus, what a question! Of course! Please take the necessary steps at
once, and have the child come."

"The child, Anna Maria? Why, I think she must have reached the limits of
childhood now!"

"That doesn't matter, Klaus. Then I will instruct her in housekeeping,
and all sorts of things which she may find useful in her life."

"I thank you sincerely, Anna Maria," he replied; "I hope you will take
pleasure in the girl." He said this with a sigh of relief, which did not
escape Anna Maria's ear.

"You act exactly as if you had been afraid of me, Klaus," she remarked,
with a passing smile; "as if I should not always wish anything that
seemed desirable to you."

"Just because I know that, Anna Maria," he said, grasping her hands
affectionately, "I wish, too, that you might do it gladly, that it might
be no sacrifice to you----"

"I am really and truly glad the child is coming," she said honestly. And
so they stood opposite each other in the forsaken lumber-room; it was
now flooded with sunshine, and the two strong figures stood out from a
golden background. The shadows of the young leaves about the window
played lightly over them, and the call of the thrush echoed from the
woods far away without.

"A sacrifice!" he had said, and yet they had each already made the
greatest sacrifice of which a human heart is capable, and each thought
it unknown to the other. And at their feet rocked the heavy cradle,
moved by Anna Maria's dress, and it rocked on, long after the two had
left the room.

CHAPTER VI.

Thirty years had passed away, and on a stormy autumn evening a young
couple sat before a crackling fire, in Buetze Manor-house--she, a
slender, girlish figure, fair, with pleasant blue eyes; he, tall, or
seeming so from a certain delicacy of form, and also fair; but a pair of
bright brown eyes contrasted strangely with his light hair.

Without, the wind was raging about the old house, as it had done many
years before, and sang of past times; now and the