Fresh evidences of this unaccountable tendency of the boy's thoughts
were constantly appearing. One day he asked Eric to go with him to the
huntsman's, to see how his wife and children were faring. He said he
had met the man's son, a cooper in the service of the Wine-count, a
little while ago, and had offered to shake hands with him, telling him
the son was not to blame for what the father had done, even if he had
done anything wrong, which he certainly had not; but that the cooper
had stared at him, and instead of taking his offered hand, had drawn
his hammer from his leather apron, swung it back and forth for a while,
and finally walked off.

When Eric and Roland approached the huntsman's house, the birds in the
cages were singing, busiest among them the blackbird, with his
incessant chirp of thanksgiving, and the dogs were bounding merrily.
The wife looked ill and slatternly, and was full of complaints. She
told how she had wanted to let all the birds out after her husband was
taken to prison, but her son, the cooper, insisted on everything being
left as it was till his father came back, which was sure to be very
soon; Sevenpiper had in the mean while undertaken to do part of her
husband's work, and the cooper attended to the night duties, though he
had to work so hard through the day. Everything should be done
properly, that the place might be kept open for her husband.

Eric offered her a sum of money, which she refused, saying that her
son, the cooper, had forbidden her to accept anything from Sonnenkamp's
family.

"If this man is innocent, as I believe he is," said Roland, when they
were in the villa again, "what can make up to him for all the anxiety
and distress he has had to suffer?"

Eric had no satisfactory answer to give; he could only say that this
was another proof of the fact that the best things in life could not be
supplied by money.

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW ALLIES, AND A SUMMER FETE.

Hardly two weeks had gone by before the lessons were interrupted again.
Frau Ceres, who was generally very quiet and took no interest in
anything, often referred to a promise she had made to take Roland to
see the Cabinetsraethin, (wife of the _cabinet-minister_), whose
acquaintance she had formed at the Baths.

A grand excursion to the capital was decided upon, which Eric alone was
not invited to join. The party set out in two carriages. Frau Ceres,
Fraeul