Johann Schmidt was shown into the room, and told his sorrowful tale in a quiet, manly way.
The pastor was much moved, and repeated with amazement the words, "A child lost in the Black Forest, and the father dead, you say? Certainly I will come and see. But why, my friend, should you think the man was an Evangelisch?" Then Johann told of the words he had repeated, of the child's prayer and her little brown book.
Suddenly a light seemed to dawn on the mind of the young pastor. "Oh!" he said, "I believe you are right. I think I have seen both the father and the child. Last Sunday there came into our church a gentleman and a lovely little girl, just such a one as you describe the child you speak of to be. I tried to speak to them after worship, but ere I could do so they had gone. And no one could tell me who they were or whither they had gone. I will now see the Bürgermeister about the funeral, and make arrangements regarding it. I think through some friends of mine I can get money sufficient to pay all expenses."
Johann thanked him warmly, and hastened back to tell what had been agreed on, and then got off to his work.
Late in the afternoon Pastor Langen took his way to the little hut in the Black Forest.
The Forest by the road he took was not well known to him, and the solemn quiet which pervaded it struck him much and raised his thoughts to God. It was as if he had entered the sanctuary and heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him. It was, as a poet has expressed it, as if
"Solemn and silent everywhere,
The trees with folded hands stood there,
Kneeling at their evening prayer."
Only the slight murmuring of the breeze amongst the leaves, or the flutter of a bird's wing as it flew from branch to branch, broke the silence. All around him there was
"A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
The feeling of a dream,
As when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow echo rings
O'er meadow, lake, and stream."
As he walked, he thought much of the child found in the Forest, and he wondered how he could help her or find out to whom she belonged. Oh, if only, he said to himself, he had been able to speak to the father the day he had seen him, and learned something of his history! Johann had told him that if no clue could be found to the child's relations, Wilhelm Hörstel had determined to bring her up; but Johann had added, "We will not, poor though we be, let the whole expense of her upbringing fall on the Hörstels. No; we will go share for share, and she shall be called the child of the wood-cutters."