“Yes, he is twenty-one years old; he knows all about tree-clipping, which is the most necessary thing of all—he knows how to read and how to write; but that is not all; he must have influence.”
“Well, Master Yeri, I still have some influence in the Department of Forests and Rivers. This day fortnight, or three weeks at the latest, Karl Imnant shall be Assistant Forester of the Grinderwald, and I ask the hand of your daughter Charlotte for this brave young man.”
At this request, Charlotte, who had blushed and trembled with fear, uttered a cry and fell back into her mother’s arms.
Her father looking at her severely, said: “What is the matter, Charlotte? Do you refuse?”
“Oh, no, no, father—no!”
“That is as it should be! As for myself, I should never have refused any request of Mr. Zacharias Seiler’s! Come here and embrace your benefactor.”
Charlotte ran toward him and the old man pressed her to his heart, gazing long and earnestly at her, with eyes filled with tears. Then pleading business he started home, with only a crust of bread in his basket for breakfast.
Fifteen days afterward, Karl Imnant received the appointment of forester, taking his father’s place. Eight days later, he and Charlotte were married.
The guests drank the rich Rikevir wine, so highly esteemed by Yeri Foerster, and which seemed to him to have arrived so opportunely for the feast.
Mr. Zacharias Seiler was not present that day at the wedding, being ill at home. Since then he rarely goes fishing—and then, always to the Brünnen—toward the lake—on the other side of the mountain.