"Where is he? For he's mine, you know. He belongs to Sobrante just
as much the sunshine does. If he'd loved us as we love him he'd not
have ridden away in the night time just because of one little bit o'
note. Wherever you've hidden him you must find him for me, and he's to
go straight away back with me. With us, I mean, for here comes a--a
friend of ours; I guess he is. Any way he's a guest and you must make
him a cup of your very best coffee, and Otto must show him his carved
clock that he is making. He's a pleasant gentleman, and so interested
in everything, it's fun to tell him things. In that New York, where
he came from, they don't have much of anything nice. No ostriches,
nor mines, nor orange groves. Fancy! and he doesn't know--he's only
just learning to ride a horse!"

As Mr. Hale now approached, this description ceased and Jessica presented
him to her mountain friends:

"This is dear Elsa Winkler, and 'her man,' Wolfgang. And
Otto--where's Otto gone? He needn't be shy. Mr. Hale would like to
see the carvings and the knittings, and maybe, go down the shaft.
But first of all, he'd like the coffee, Elsa, dear."

The portly Dutchwoman, whose needles could click as fast as her tongue,
now thrust the stocking, at which she had resumed working the moment
Jessica left her lap, into her apron pocket and waddled inside the cabin.
Already she was beaming with hospitality and calling in harsh chiding to
the invisible Otto:

"You bad little boy, where are you at already? Come by, soon's-ever,
and lay the dishes. Here's company come to the house and nobody but the
old mother got a grain of sense left to mind them. Wolfgang! Wolfgang!
Hunt the child and set him drawing a tether o' milk from Gretchen, the
goat. Ach! but it shames my good heart when my folks act so foolish, and
the Lady Jess just giving the orders so sweet."

Wolfgang heard his wife's commands and obeyed them after his own manner,
by lifting his mighty voice and shouting in his native _patois_--"Little
heart! Son of my love! Come, come hither."

But he did not, for all that, cease from his respectful attention to the
stranger, for whom he had promptly brought out the best chair he owned,
and whose horse he had taken to a shaded spot and carefully rubbed down
with a handful of dried grass.

Presently, the "child" appeared, and the Easterner flashed a smile
toward Jessica, whose own face was dimpled with mirth; for the "child,"
Otto, proved to be a g