He had accumulated his property by careful economy, but he gave out with the same conscientious spirit with which he gathered in. No matter when the summons might come, at nightfall or at cock-crowing, he was ready to give an account of his faithful stewardship. Not only had he divided his bread with the hungry, but he had given time and personal care, and a share in his own home-life, to those who were in need.
More than one young farmer, jogging past Herzenruhe in a wagon of his own, looked gratefully up the long lane, and remembered that he owed the steady habits of his manhood and his present prosperity to Gottlieb Hartmann. For in all the years since he had had a place of his own, there had seldom been a time when some homeless boy or another had not been a member of his household.
He was an old man now, white-haired and rheumatic, and called grandfather by all the country side; but he was still young at heart, sweet and sound to the very core, like a hardy winter apple. His children had all married and gone farther West, except his oldest daughter, Carlotta, whom no one had ever been able to lure away from her comfortable home-nest. She was an energetic, self-willed little body, and had gradually assumed control until the entire household revolved around her. Just now she had wheeled her sewing-machine beside the table, on which the evening lamp stood, and was preparing to dress a whole family of dolls to be packed in the Christmas boxes that were soon to be sent West.
Her mother sat on one side of the fireplace, her sweet, wrinkled old face bright with the loving thoughts that her needles were putting into a little red mitten, destined for one of the boxes.
"It will be the first Christmas since I can remember," said Carlotta, "that there will be no little ones here, and no tree to light. Ben's boy was here last year, and all of Mary's children the year before. It's a pity they are so far away. It will just spoil my Christmas."
Mr. Hartmann laid down the German Advocate he was reading.
"Ach, Lotta," he said, "I forgot to tell you. There will be a little lad here to-morrow to take dinner with us. When I was in town to-day I met our good friend, Frank Marion, and he had a boy with him whose father is just dead, and he is the guardian."
"How many years has it been since Mr. Marion first came here?" asked Carlotta. "Seems to me I was only a little girl, and now I have pulled out lots of gray hairs already."
"It has been twenty years at least," answered her mother. "It was while we were building the ice-house, I know."
"Yes," assented her husband, "I had gone into Ridgeville one Saturday to get some new boots, and I met him in the shoestore. He was just a young fellow making his first trip, and he seemed so strange and homesick that when I found he was a country boy and a strong Methodist, I brought him out here to stay over Sunday with us."