t the car at
the next station, and he remained alone. He felt some repentance, and
some doubt whether he had not acted wrongly and unwisely in not
concluding an arrangement with Sonnenkamp, but he soon took courage
again and cast his regret behind him.

We are rapidly rolled along by the power of steam. And in spirit? How
far are we masters of our destiny?

At several stations, school-boys, with their satchels on their backs,
entered Eric's car. He learned, in answer to his questions, that they
lived with their parents in country-houses and distant villages, but
went every day to school in the city, returning home in the evening.
Eric thought long on the new race of youths which is growing up; taking
their places in the noisy railway-train in the early morning, then
assembling for instruction, and going home again over the railroad;
these boys must and will learn to guard, in the restlessness and tumult
of the new age, their own inner life, which is, indeed, quite different
from ours. And then he looked farther on into a future, when the
alarming growth of the great cities shall cease, and men shall again
live outside of them, where the green fields, the rushing streams, and
the blue sky shall be daily before their eyes, and yet it shall be
granted them to make their own the elements of culture, and all which
is now supplied by the union of men in large towns. Then again will
country air force its way into the soul.

At the time when Eric and the doctor were setting out, the justice's
wife sat with her husband and her daughter over their morning coffee.
The conversation turned on the evening walk with Eric, and the lady
repeated his frank apologies.

"Very good, very good," said the justice. "He is polite and clever, but
it's well that he has gone; he's a dangerous man."

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

THE STRUGGLE IN A CHILD'S HEART.

The sparrows in the alders and willows on the shore of the
convent-island twittered and chattered noisily together, they had so
much to say to each other about what they had experienced during the
day; and who knows whether their to-day was not a much longer interval
of time than ours? One puffed up by his experience--perhaps we should
say _her_ experience, for the feathers had lost their colors from
age--sat quietly in the crotch of a bough, comfortably resting against
the trunk; he echoed