otion of what
has happened to her?"

As Roland was still silent, the child continued, very seriously,--

"Don't you want to be a husbandman, and have my uncle teach you? Then
you can have my room. It's beautiful there!"

The maiden found words sooner than Roland, who still did not open his
lips.

She continued,--

"Why haven't you been to see us before?"

"I did not know where you lived, nor who you were."

"Ah! That was why!"

And now they talked of their first meeting, how Lilian was carried away
by her uncle, and how Roland wandered on to find Eric. Then it was
spring, and now it is autumn.

"Just think! In your lilies there were some pretty little flies, which
went along with us in the carriage, and didn't stir."

"Have you kept the flowers?"

"No. I don't like withered flowers, Give me something--give me
something, that doesn't wither."

"I have nothing," replied Roland. "But I will send you my photograph,
taken as a page--no. That's not fit for you. Oh, if I only had my rings
now! I should like to give a ring, but Herr Eric has taken them all off
my fingers."

"I don't want any ring. Well, give me that--give me the pebble that's
now under your foot."

Roland stooped down, and giving her the pebble, begged she would also
give him one.

She did so, saying,--

"Yes, this is dearer to me. I'd rather have that than anything else.
Now I shall take a part of Germany with me over the ocean. Oh, Herr
Knopf is right; it is all one whether you have a pebble or a diamond,
if you only hold it dear; and it's very stupid for people to wear
pearls and think that it's something very fine, because they must be
got away down deep in the sea. Herr Knopf is right; it doesn't make a
thing beautiful or good to cost a great deal."

Roland was silent; his heart beat fast.

"You are the Roland then, of whom the good Herr Knopf is always
talking? You can't think how much he loves you."

"Probably he loves you as much?"

"Yes, he loves me too, and he has promised to come to America to see
us."

"I am from America, too."

"Ah, yes! Welcome, my dear countryman; come with me into the garden,
and help me get a nosegay to take away with me to-morrow."

"But where are you going to-morrow?"

"Very early we start for home."

The children were confronted, as it were, by a riddle. These children
of the New World met each other to welcome the arrival in the Old
World, and now to bid each other farewell.

"We see on