This form of salutation is especially common in the south of
Germany.

By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.

"And is it really you?" said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of
the grave face of his old school-fellow.

"It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost
look cheerier than you ever did before."

At these words a glad smile made Eric's plain features all the more
cheerful.

"Yes, brother Reinhard," he said, as he once more held out his hand to
him, "but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but
you know that well enough."

Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: "This _will_ be a
surprise! You are the last person she expects to see."

"A surprise?" asked Reinhard. "For whom, pray?"

"Why, for Elisabeth."

"Elisabeth! You haven't told her a word about my visit?"

"Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her
mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the
pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet
schemes of my own."

Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the
nearer they approached the house.

On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave
place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as
the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding
solemnly between the vegetable beds.

"Hullo!" cried Eric, clapping his hands together, "if that long-legged
Egyptian isn't stealing my short pea-sticks again!"

The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which
ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered
with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained
over them.

"That's the distillery," said Eric. "I built it only two years ago. My
late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was
built as far back as my grandfather's time. So we go ever forward a
little bit at a time."

Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by
farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of
which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark
hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their
blossoming branches over into the courtyard.

Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking
over the open space and gave a gr