e congregation festival
had taken place.

CHAPTER VII.

THE BOOK.

In the morning the master of the house rapped on Leonhard's door and
said: "When you come down I have something to show you." The voice
of Mr. Loretz had almost its accustomed cheerfulness of tone, and he
ended his remark with a brief "Ha! ha!" peculiar to him, which not
only expressed his own good-humor, but also invited good-humored
response.

Leonhard answered cheerily, and in a few moments he had descended the
steep uncovered stair to the music-room.

"Now for the book," Loretz called out as Leonhard entered.

How handsome our young friend looked as he stood there shaking hands
with the elderly man, whose broad, florid face now actually shone with
hospitable feeling!

"Is father going to claim you as one of us, Mr. Marten?" asked the
wife of Loretz, who answered her husband's call by coming into the
room and bringing with her a large volume wrapped in chamois skin.

"What shall I be, then?" asked Leonhard. "A wiser and a better man, I
do not doubt."

"What! you do not know?" the good woman stayed to say. "Has nobody
told you where you are, my young friend?"

"I never before found myself in a place I should like to stay in
always; so what does the rest signify?" answered Leonhard. "What's in
a name?"

"Not much perhaps, yet something," said Loretz. "We are all Moravians
here. I was going to look in this book here for the names of your
ancestors. I thought perhaps you knew about Spenersberg."

"I am as new to it all as Christopher Columbus was to the West India
islands. If you find the names of my kinsmen down in your book, sir,
it--it will be a marvelous, happy sight for me," said Leonhard.

"I'll try my hand at it," said Loretz. "Ha! ha!" and he opened the
volume, which was bound in black leather, the leaves yellowed with
years. "This book," he continued, "is one hundred and fifty years
old. You will find recorded in it the names of all my grandfather's
friends, and all my father's. See, it is our way. There are all the
dates. Where they lived, see, and where they died. It is all down.
A man cannot feel himself cut off from his kind as long as he has a
volume like that in his library. I have added a few names of my own
friends, and their birthdays. Here, you see, is Sister Benigna's,
written with her own hand. A most remarkable woman, sir. True as
steel--always the same. But"--he paused a moment and looked at
Leonhard with