e in the convent shall not be burdened with my
desertion, which they must consider as apostasy."

Manna wished that Aunt Claudine should accompany her; but Eric thought
it more fitting that she should travel with Roland. The brother and
sister would thus be alone together, out in the world; and Roland would
have to protect his sister, to render her services which would lift him
out of his state of dead dejection, out of his heavy, monotonous
sorrow.

"You can scarcely imagine how happy it makes me to let you command me,"
said Manna, as Eric arranged every thing.

Roland agreed at once.

"But you must ask your parents' leave," was the next order; and the
children felt painfully that this was but a form: every thing was torn
asunder and rent to shreds; all obedience and all dependence.

"Manna, now is the time," said Roland, in great agitation.

"For what?"

"You ask father; perhaps he will tell you whether we have no
blood-relations in Europe. Whoever they may be, they ought to come to
us now. It is hard enough that we have never troubled ourselves about
them."

Manna looked imploringly up to Eric, who, rightly discerning in the
youth the instinctive longing for family ties, begged them to abstain
from urging the matter for the present, saying that the time for it
would come by and by.

Manna went to her father, and said that she wished to go to the
convent.

Sonnenkamp was alarmed, but quickly regained his composure on Manna's
adding that she went thither for the last time, in order to bid
farewell forever, as she had decided never to become a nun.

In spite of all its distortion, a gleam of triumphant satisfaction
lighted up Sonnenkamp's face.

"Do you see at last? They knew--I now have certain evidence that they
knew--what money, and in what manner earned, you brought them. Did they
ever say a word to you about being unable to accept it?"

Manna avoided this view of the question. She would gladly have
confessed all to her father at once, but had not yet the courage.
Moreover, she had promised Eric to follow his guidance implicitly.

The weather was foggy and cold, as the brother and sister, and Fraeulein
Perini, went down the river: yet the journey refreshed them, for Roland
said after a short time,--

"Ah! There _is_ a world outside after all!"

Towards noon, the sun pierced through the mist, which melted away, and
every thing became suddenly bright. The vessel steamed down the stream,
shooting