c had to sing, "We
meet again." He deeply regretted that he could not take Knopf with him;
but the latter had promised Lilian that he would come to America, and
do something there. He did not specify what it was to be.

After the Prince had left, they drew closer together. Roland, Manna,
and Eric were sitting in Roland's room when the latter said,--

"Manna, if it comes to war in our native land, I shall go there. I have
decided, and no one can deter me."

The words were upon Manna's lips, "And what if our father is fighting
on the other side?" but she checked herself, and only said,--

"If you go to the New World, I shall go with you."

"And then Eric will go too. I have talked with Herr Weidmann about it.
He has consented; and the thing which he sanctions is, beyond question,
right and safe. But I have promised him that I will not go until he
says, 'Now is the time.'"

Manna was comforted. She saw that her brother's life was in safe
keeping.

On their way home, Aunt Claudine expressed the general feeling, when
she said,--

"It seems to me as if these days had been all music and feasting."

"Yes," cried Lina; "one could eat there enough for the whole year."

And they drove on their way laughing.

CHAPTER XII.

FETTERED HANDS UPLIFTED.

The great law of our time, that of the unity of all existence, asserted
itself with peculiar and perpetual force in the busy home at
Mattenheim. A man of mature years had deliberately concentrated his
thoughts upon the movement in the New World; and the destiny of a youth
was bound up in the same.

Papers and despatches from America came thicker and faster.

They lived a twofold life, immersed in pressing and manifold business
here, but intent, meanwhile, upon the sharp crisis so rapidly
approaching in a remote quarter of the world.

Roland devoured the letters and journals in which the so-called
slavery-question was discussed. Doctor Fritz wrote doubtfully of
Lincoln. The man's nature was so simple, and his faith in men's
goodness so thorough, that he feared he would not be decided enough
with the chivalry of the South.

For the first time, Roland heard the slaveholders called _chivalry_;
and Weidmann declared that it was no mere form of speech, but a
perfectly explicit term. The slave-owners wanted to live merely for the
nobler passions, as they were called: other men must toil for their
subsistence, an