pale figure approached
him: it was Rosalie--old Rosalie.

"We have here no abiding-place, we all hasten toward futurity!" said
the old preacher. "Strengthen yourself now with meat and drink! The body
cannot suffer like the soul. We have accompanied him to His sleeping
chamber; his bed was well prepared! I have prayed the evening prayer; he
sleeps in God, and will awaken to behold His glory. Amen!"

"Otto! thou dear Otto!" said Rosalie. "The bitterest day brings me this
joy! How have I thought of thee! Amongst strangers shouldst thou receive
the tidings of his death! with no one who could feel for thy sorrow!
where thou shouldst see no eye weep for what thou hast lost! Now thou
art here! now, when I believed thee so far distant--it is a miracle!
Thou couldst only have received the letter to-day which carried the
intelligence of thy grandfather's death to thee!"

"I wished to surprise you," said Otto. "A melancholy surprise awaited
me!"

"Sit down, my child!" said the preacher, and drew him toward the covered
table. "When the tree falls which gave us shade and fruit, from which
we, in our own little garden, have planted shoots and sown seeds, we may
well look on with sadness and feel our loss: but we must not forget our
own garden, must not forget to cherish that which we have won from the
fallen tree: we must not cease to live for the living! I miss, like you,
the proud tree, which rejoiced my soul and my heart, but I know that it
is planted in a better garden, where Christ is the gardener."

The preacher's invitation to remain with him, during his stay, in his
house, Otto declined. Already this first night he wished to establish
himself in his own little chamber in the house of mourning. Rosalie also
would return.

"We have a deal to say to each other," said the old preacher, and laid
his hand upon Otto's shoulder. "Next summer you will hardly press my
hand, it will be pressed by the turf."

"To-morrow I will come to you," said Otto, and drove back with the old
Rosalie to the house.

The domestics kissed the hand and coat of the young master--he wished to
prevent this; the old woman wept. Otto stepped into the room; here had
stood the corpse, on account of which the furniture had been removed,
and the void was all the more affecting. The long white mourning
curtains fluttered in tire wind before the open window. Rosalie led
him by the hand into the little sleeping-room where the grandfather had
died. Here ever