consequences.

"Father," began Thoma, "you cannot wish that Peter should be ruined; he
is your child. We cannot excuse to him what he has done; but we can
help him. And the best help, the only help is, that we two, whom it has
hurt, should forgive him."

"You are right, child. You are brave-hearted. We will do it. We will
strive to keep things from ruin. We will stand by Peter; he must not
utterly sink. I know how a man sinks. Come, let us go to him."

Father and daughter went hand in hand to Peter's room; he was not
there. They went to the stable, and there he sat on the fodder bin,
beside the new-born colt.

If his dead mother had come to life and walked toward him, Peter would
not have been more astonished than now, when he saw his father and
Thoma coming hand in hand.

"Peter," said the father, "I forgive you everything as I pray to God to
be forgiven myself. And do not fret your heart out. You are not to
blame for your mother's death; she was very sick; the doctor
acknowledged it to me. Do speak! Do say one word!"

"All right," said Peter; "all right. I thank you."

"Will you not go with us?"

"No! I will stay here. I am best off here. I wish I were a horse; such
a creature has the best time, after all."

"Oh come, dear brother!"

"I am not your dear brother; let me alone."

Father and daughter went into the living-room, and there the father
related what his sainted wife--he sobbed aloud when he spoke this
word--had said while Thoma was gone; and Thoma told about the judge's
wife, and about Anton.

All night long father and daughter sat by the body. At daybreak
Landolin said, "Your mother can never see the day again."

The father now tried to rest; and Thoma too went to her room, but she
could not sleep.

CHAPTER LXVI.

The rain had passed over and had come back again, and now seemed to
make itself quite at home in the valley and on the height.

When Landolin followed his wife's coffin down the outer stairs, he
caught, step by step, with his left hand at the wall of the house, as
though he needed support. The school children, who were in the yard
singing the funeral hymn, looked up at the changed man.

At the burial, at which one could hardly hear the words of the pastor,
for the pattering of the rain on the open umbrellas, there was only a
small attendance, although she was honored and loved by the whole
neighborhood. For at the same hour that the bells we