aid her
handsomely for her services. But Anna Sophia declared proudly that,
though she was willing to work, she would be no slave; that she would
sell her hands, but not her freedom.

Another house had been built and furnished for the school-teacher,
because there was danger of the old one, in which the Detzloff family
had lived, falling to pieces.

Anna Sophia, by the sale of some of the furniture, had bought the old,
dilapidated hut for herself. And there, in her hours of leisure, she
lived over the happy past. There she felt that she was still with her
parents, and not alone and orphaned. In the morning, before leaving her
home to go at her daily work, she entered the little garden at the back
of the hut, where in the arbor, laden with dark-red blossoms, were
the three chairs her father had woven in his idle moments, and the
roughly-hewn deal table made by his axe. She took her seat for a moment
upon the chair standing in the centre, and laid one hand upon the one to
either side of her Thus she had sat in the past, with her hands clasped
in those of her parents. The Rhine flowed on as melodiously as before in
the dim distance, the trees were as green, the flowers and blossoms as
sweet, the sky as blue. There was no change; all around her was as in
former days, except these empty chairs. But Anna had only to close
her eyes to see the beloved forms of her departed parents, to feel the
pressure of their hands, and to hear them addressing her, in tones which
love alone could have uttered, love alone understood. Then saying aloud,
"Good-morning, mother! Good-morning, father!" she rose, with closed
eyes, from her seat, and hastened from the arbor with the pleasant
thought that she was followed by the loving gaze of her parents. She did
not turn once, for then she would have seen that the arbor was empty,
and she wished to preserve the sweet delusion to be the brighter and
happier at her day's work. When, during the day, she saw the burgher's
wife surrounded by her blooming daughters, she would say to herself, "I
also have a father and mother at home, and they await me!" Then, when
her day's work was finished, she hastened with a flying step to her
home, whose solemn stillness resounded for her with the dear-loved
voices of the past. Opening the bedroom of her parents, she cried,
"Good-night, mother! Good-night, father!" Then she climbed up to her
little attic, which had been her father's favorite room, and which, when
sh