"Dead! dear me! and we never heard a word of it, so that we might——"
"Don't press the subject," said the young man, deprecatingly; "the distance between this and the river is great, how could you hear of it? Besides, these worthy people helped me kindly with the burial. But," he continued, while he passed his hands lightly across his eyes, "I think it is better for me, and for all of us, if we let alone the melancholy past. We have business to attend to, and activity is the best preservative against sorrow."
"But your wife——" said Stevenson.
"Was an angel," Wolfgang interrupted him, in a low voice, "and I shall never, never forget her, so long as this poor heart beats; still, do me the favour not to wake the old sorrow. I have, Heaven knows! suffered enough already.—When are you going to clear out, Stevenson?"
The old man reached him his hand in silence, grasped heartily that which was offered him, and then changed his tone, in order not to sadden his friend yet more.
"It will be next year first," said he, as he drew one of his large mastiffs towards him, and patted his head; "there are always on those occasions so many things to look after, that one hardly knows where to begin or when one has done, and as I have got to cross the Mississippi, why I intend to take my time, and to get done with it all at once. To go back such a distance for something forgotten would be too tedious. How many cattle will you have—a hundred perhaps? The more you can get at first, the more advantageous for you, for the more rapidly and the more numerously does it increase, and it costs you little or nothing."
"That is very true," Wolfgang now took up the discourse; "if one is minded to stay in the place, or at all events in the neighbourhood where one is; but I would by no means advise the gentlemen to do that. The soil is good, but the location is unhealthy, and it will be fortunate for them if they can stand it during the summer; next fall they must seek out a healthier climate, and much cattle would only be an incumbrance to them. Where do you go to?"
"Into the Ozark Hills; but why will you not at once quit this part of the country, if you are already firmly convinced that you will not remain here long? I should go at once, for time here is money. Calculate merely the produce in cattle that you would gain by it."
"You are right," Siebert now said; "but where are we to find a neighbourhood directly that would suit us, particularly as we are unacquainted with the country; and then a removal with such a number of people is easier spoken of than executed."