a gloom about him. Despite the eight months that
had elapsed, he professed that his old wound was still open. Tita
treated him with the kindest maternal solicitude, which was a great
mistake; tonics, not sweets, are required in such cases. Yet he was very
grateful, and he said, with a blush, that, in any case, he would not
rail against all women because of the badness of one. Indeed, you would
not have fancied he had any great grudge against womankind. There were
a great many English abroad that autumn, and we met whole batches of
pretty girls at every station and at every _table d'hote_ on our route.
Did he avoid them, or glare at them savagely, or say hard things of
them? Oh no! quite the reverse. He was a little shy at first; and when
he saw a party of distressed damsels in a station, with their bewildered
father in vain attempting to make himself understood to a porter, he
would assist them in a brief and businesslike manner as if it were a
duty, lift his cap, and then march off relieved. But by-and-by he
began to make acquaintances in the hotel; and as he was a handsome,
English-looking lad, who bore a certificate of honesty in his clear gray
eyes and easy gait, he was rather made much of. Nor could any fault be
decently found with his appetite.

So we passed on from Konigswinter to Coblenz, and from Coblenz to
Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg south to Freiburg, where we bade adieu
to the last of the towns, and laid hold of a trap with a pair of ancient
and angular horses, and plunged into the Hollenthal, the first great
gorge of the Black Forest mountains. From one point to another we slowly
urged our devious course, walking the most of the day, indeed, and
putting the trap and ourselves up for the night at some quaint roadside
hostelry, where we ate of roe-deer and drank of Affenthaler, and
endeavoured to speak German with a pure Waldshut accent. And then, one
evening, when the last rays of the sun were shining along the hills and
touching the stems of the tall pines, we drove into a narrow valley and
caught sight of a large brown building of wood, with projecting eaves
and quaint windows, that stood close by the forest.

"Here is my dear inn!" cried Tita, with a great glow of delight and
affection in her face. "Here is _mein gutes Thal! Ich gruss' dich ein
tausend Mal!_ And here is old Peter come out to see us; and there is
Franziska!"

"Oh, this is Franziska, is it?" said Charlie.

Yes, this was Franziska. S