John Conroy Hutcheson

"Fritz and Eric"

Chapter One.

“Good-Bye!”

“Time is getting on, little mother, and we’ll soon have to say farewell!”

“Aye, my child. The parting is a sad one to me; but I hope and trust the good God will hold you in His safe keeping, and guide your footsteps back home to me again!”

“Never you fear, little mother. He will do that, and in a year’s time we shall all meet again under the old roof-tree, I’m certain. Keep your heart up, mother mine, the same as I do; remember, it is not a ‘Farewell’ I am saying for ever, it is merely ‘Auf wiedersehen!’”

“I hope so, Eric, surely; still, we cannot tell what the future may bring forth!” said the other sadly.

Mother and son were wending their way through the quaint, old-fashioned, sleepy main street of Lubeck that led to the railway station—a bran-new modern structure that seemed strangely incongruous amidst the antique surroundings of the ancient town. Although it was past the midday hour, hardly a soul was to be seen moving about; and the western sun lighted up the green spires of the churches and red-tiled pointed roofs of the houses, glinting from the peculiar eye-shaped dormer windows of some of the cottages with the most grotesque effect and making them appear as if winking at the onlooker. It seemed like a scene of a bygone age reproduced on the canvas of some Flemish artist; and, but that Eric and his mother were accustomed to it, they must have rubbed their eyes, like Rip Van Winkle when he came down from the goblin-haunted mountain into the old village of his youth, in doubt whether all was real, thinking it might be a dream. Presently, however, they were at the railway station, and they would have been convinced, if they had felt inclined to believe otherwise, that they were living in the present. But, even here, amid all the hissing of steam, and creaking of carriages, and whirr of moving machinery, the queer old-world costumes of the peasantry, with their quaint hats and mantles, which more resembled the stage properties of a Christmas pantomime than the known dress of any people of the period, all spoke of the past—a past when the great Barbarossa reigned in Central Europe, and when there were “Robbers of the Rhine,” and “Forty thousand virgins,” in company with Saint Ursula, canonising the sainted and scented city of Cologne. Ah, those days of long ago!

“Here we are at last, mother,” said Eric, slinging the bag containing his sea kit on to the railway platform. “The old engine is getting its steam up, and we’ll soon be off. Cheer up, little mother! As I’ve told you, it is not a good-bye for ever!”

“So you say, my son. The young ever look forward; but old people like myself look back, and it makes us reflect how few of the noble aspirations and longing anticipations of our youth are ever realised!”

“Old people like yourself indeed, little mother!” said Eric indignantly, tossing up his lion-like head, and looking as if he would like to see any one else who would dare to make such an assertion, the next moment throwing his arms round her neck, and hugging her fondly. “I won’t have you calling yourself old, you dear little mother, with your nice glossy brown hair, and beautiful bright blue eyes and handsome face—a face which I fail not to see Burgher Jans gaze on with eloquent expression every Sunday when we go to the Dom Kirche. Ah, I know—”

“Fie, my son!” exclaimed Madame Dort, interrupting him by placing her hand across his mouth, a process which soon stopped his indiscreet impetuosity, a warm blush the while mantling her comely countenance; for she was yet in the bloom of middle-aged womanhood. “Suppose, now, any one were to overhear you, audacious child!”

“Ah, but I know, though,” repeated the boy triumphantly, when he had again regained his freedom of speech. “I won’t tell, little mother; still, I must make a bargain with you, as I don’t intend that fusty old Burgher Jans to have my handsome young mutterchen, that’s poz! But, to change the subject, why are you so despondent about my leaving you now, dear mother? I’ve been already away from you two voyages, and yet have returned safe and sound to Lubeck.”

“You forget, my child, that the pitcher sometimes goes once too often to the well. The ocean is treacherous, and the perils of the sea are great, although you, in boy-like fashion, may laugh at them. Strong men have but too often to acknowledge the supremacy of the waves when they bear them down to their watery grave, leaving widows and orphans, alas! to mourn their untimely fate with sad and bitter tears! Don’t you remember your poor father’s end, my son?”

“I do, mother,” answered the boy gravely; “still, all sailors are not drowned, nor is a seafaring life always dangerous.”

“Granted, my child,” responded his mother to this truism; “but, those who go down to the sea in ships, as the Psalmist says, see the perils of the deep, and lead a venturesome calling! Besides, Eric, I must tell you that I—I do not feel myself so strong as I was when you first left home and became a sailor boy; and, although I have no doubt a good Providence will watch over you, and preserve you in answer to my heartfelt prayers, yet you are now starting on a longer voyage than you have yet undertaken, and perchance I may not live to greet you on your return!”

“Oh, mother, don’t say that, don’t say that!” exclaimed Eric in a heart-broken voice; “you are not ill, you are not ailing, mother dear?” and he peered anxiously with a loving gaze into her eyes, to try and read some meaning there for the sorrowful presage that had escaped thus inadvertently from her lips, drawn forth by the agony of parting.

“No, my darling, nothing very alarming,” she said soothingly, wishing to avoid distressing him needlessly by communicating what might really be only, as she hoped, a groundless fear on her part. “I do not feel exactly ill, dear. I was only speaking about the natural frail tenure of this mortal life of ours. This saying ‘Good-bye’ to you too, my darling, makes me infected with morbid fear and nervous anxiety. Fancy me nervous, Eric—I whom you call your strong-minded mother, eh?” and the poor lady smiled bravely, so as to encourage the lad, and banish his easily excited fears on her account. It was but a sickly smile, however, for it did not come genuinely from the heart, prompted though the latter was with the fullest affection. Still, Eric did not perceive this, and the smile quickly dismissed his fears.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed in his light-hearted, ringing way. “The idea of your being nervous, like I remember old grandmother Grimple was when I used to jump suddenly in at the door or fire my popgun! I would never believe it, not even if you yourself said it. Ah, now you look better already, and like my own dear little mother who will keep safe and well, and welcome me back next year, surely; and then, dear one, we’ll have no end of a happy time!”

“I hope so, Eric; I hope so with all my heart,” said she, pressing the eager lad to her bosom in a fond embrace; “and you may be sure that none will be so glad to welcome you back as I!”

“Think, mother,” said Eric presently, after a moment’s silence, in which the feelings of the two seemed too great to find expression in words of common import. “Why, by that time I will have nearly sailed round the world; for in my voyage to Java and back I will have to ‘double the Cape,’ as sailors say!”

“Yes, that you will, my boy,” chimed in his mother, anxious to sustain this buoyant change in his humour, and drive away the somewhat melancholy tone she had unwittingly introduced into their last parting conversation. “You’ll be a regular little travelled monkey, like the one belonging to the Dutchman that we were reading about the other day which could do everything almost but speak, although I don’t think anybody would accuse you of any want of ability on the latter score, you chatterbox!”

“No, no, little mother; I think not likewise,” chuckled Eric complacently. “I’m not one of your silent ones, not so! But, hurrah!—There comes Fritz turning in under the old gateway. He said he would try and get away for half an hour in the afternoon from the counting-house to wish me another good-bye and see me off, if Herr Grosschnapper could spare him. Ah ha, Master Fritz,” shouted out the sailor lad, as his brother drew nigh, “you’re just in time to see the last of me. I thought the worthy Herr would not let you come, you are so very late.”

“Better late than never,” said the other, smiling, coming up beside the pair, who were standing in front of one of the railway carriages, into which Eric had already bundled his bag. “The old man did growl a bit about my ‘idling away the afternoon,’ as he called it; but when I impressed him with the fact that you were going away to sea, he relented and let me come, saying that it was a good job such a circumstance did not occur every day!”

“Much obliged to him, I’m sure!” said Eric, with that usual toss of his head which threw back his mane-like locks of yellow hair. “He would have been a fine old curmudgeon to have refused you leave to wish good-bye to your only brother!” And he put one of his arms round Fritz’s neck as he spoke.

“Hush, my son,” interposed Madame Dort. “You must not speak ill of the good merchant who has been such a kind friend to Fritz and given him regular employment in his warehouse!”

“All right, mutterchen, I won’t mention again the name of the old cur—, I mean dear old gentleman, little mother, there!” And then catching the twinkling eye of Fritz, the two burst into a simultaneous laugh at the narrow escape there had been of his repeating the obnoxious epithet; while Madame Dort could not help smiling too, as she gazed fondly into the merry face of the roguish boy, standing by his brother’s side and clinging to him with that deep fraternal affection which is so rarely seen, alas! in members of the same family.

Truly, they were sons of whom any mother might have been proud.

Fritz was tall and manly, by virtue of his two-and-twenty years and a small fringe of dark down that covered his upper lip; Eric was shorter by some inches, but more thick-set and with broader shoulders, predicting that he would be the bigger of the two as time rolled on.

The firstborn, Fritz, with his closely cropped hair and swarthy complexion, took after his dead father, who had been a Holsteiner—a mariner by profession, who had sailed his ship from the Elbe some years before for the last time, and left his wife to bring up her fatherless boys by the sweat of her brow and her own exertions; for Captain Dort had left but little worldly goods behind him, his all being embarked with himself in his ship, which was lost, with all hands on board, in the North Sea. Fritz and Eric had both been too young at the time to appreciate the struggles of their mother to support herself and them, until she had achieved a comfortable competency by teaching music and languages in several rich Hanoverian families; and now she had no longer to battle for her bread.

Eric took after her in face and expression, having the same light-coloured hair and bright blue eyes; but there the resemblance ceased, as hardly had he grown to boyhood than he evinced that desire for a sea life which he must have inherited with his father’s blood—he would, he must be a sailor!

Being the youngest, he naturally was her pet; and thus, although the recollection of her husband’s fate was ever before her, and Madame Dort had a dread of the sea which only those who have suffered a similar bereavement can fully understand, she could not resist the boy’s continual pleadings, backed up as they were by his evident and unaffected bias of mind towards everything connected with ships and shipping; for, Eric never seemed so happy as when frequenting the quays and talking with the sailors and sea-captains who came to the old port of Lubeck, where of late years the mother had taken up her residence, in order to be near Fritz, who had obtained a clerkship in a merchant’s house there, through the friendly offices of the parents of one of the music-teacher’s pupils.

Eric had already received his ‘sea-baptism,’ so to speak, having been on a trip to England in a Hamburgh cattle-boat, and on a cruise up the Baltic in a timber-ship; but he was now going away in a Dutch vessel to the East Indies, the voyage promising to occupy more than a year, so there is no wonder that his mother was anxious on his account, thinking she would never live to see him again. It seemed so terrible to her as she stood on the railway platform, surrounded by all the bustle and preparation of the train about to depart, to fancy, as she gazed with longing eyes at her brave and gallant Eric, with his lion-like head and curling locks of golden hair, that she might never look on her sailor laddie’s merry, loving face any more; and, tears dropped from the widow’s eyes as she drew him towards her, clasping him to her, as if she could not bear to let him go.

“Come, mother,” said Fritz, after a moment’s interval. “Time is up! The guard is calling out for the passengers to take their seats. Eric, old fellow, good-bye, and God bless you! You will write to the mother and me from every port you touch at?”

“Aye, surely,” said the boy, a sob breaking his voice and banishing the mannish composure which he had tried to maintain to the last. “Good-bye, Fritz; you’ll take care of mother?”

“Don’t you fear, that will I, brother!” was the answer in those earnest tones which Fritz always used when he was making a promise and giving his word to anything he undertook—a word which he never broke.

“And now, good-bye, mutterchen, my own darling little mother,” said Eric, clasping his mother in a last clinging hug; “you’ll never forget me, but will keep strong and well till I come back.”

“I will try, my child, with God’s help,” sobbed out the poor lady. “But, may He preserve you and bring you back safe to my arms! Good-bye, my darling. You must never forget Him or me; my consolation in your absence will be that your prayers will ascend to heaven along with mine.”

“You may trust me, mother, indeed you may. Good-bye, little mother! God bless you, mutterchen! Good-bye!” cried out the sailor lad from the carriage window; and then, the train moved off, puffing and panting out of the station, leaving Fritz and his mother standing on the platform, and waving their handkerchiefs in farewell to Eric, who was as busily engaged gesticulating, with his hat in one hand and in the other a newspaper that his brother had brought him, shouting out, ‘Lebewohl!’—a sobbing farewell it was—for the last time, and still waving adieux when his voice failed him!

“Never mind, my mother,” said Fritz softly, giving his arm to the heart-stricken lady, and leading her away with tender care from the railway station to their now sadly bereaved home. “Cheer up, and hope, mutterchen! You have a son still left you, who will never desert you or quit his post of looking after you, till Eric, the dear boy, comes back.”

“I know, my son, I know your love and affection,” replied Madame Dort, pressing his arm to her side affectionately; “but, who can tell what the future may have in store for us? Ah, it’s a wise proverb that, dear son, which reminds us that ‘man proposes, but God disposes!’”

“It is so,” murmured Fritz, more to himself than to her; “still, I trust we’ll all meet again beneath the old roof-tree.”

“And I the same, from the bottom of my heart!” said his mother, in cordial sympathy with his wish, as she began to ascend the steps leading up to her dwelling; while Fritz returned to the counting-house of his employer, Herr Grosschnapper, to finish those duties which had been interrupted by his having to see Eric off.

Chapter Two.

A Thunderclap!

It was late in the autumn when Eric left Lubeck on his way to Rotterdam, where he was to go on board the good ship Gustav Barentz, bound on a trading voyage to the eastern isles of the Indian Ocean; and, as the year rolled on, bringing winter in its train—a season which the Dort family had hitherto always hailed with pleasure on account of its festive associations—the hours lagged with the now sadly diminished little household in the Gulden Strasse; for, the merry Christmas-tide reminded them more than ever of the absent sailor boy, who had always been the very life and soul of the home circle, and the eagerly sought-for guest at every neighbourly gathering.

“It does not seem at all the same now the dear lad is away on the seas,” said old Lorischen, the whilom nurse, and now part servant, part companion of Madame Dort. “Indeed, I cannot fancy him far-distant at all. I feel as if he were only just gone out skating on the canal, and that we might expect him in again at any moment!”

“Ah, I miss him every minute of the day,” replied Madame Dort, who was sitting on one side of the white porcelain stove that occupied a cosy corner of the sitting-room, facing the old nurse, who was busily engaged knitting a pair of lambs-wool stockings on the other.

“It is now—aye, just two months since the dear lad left us,” continued Lorischen, “and we’ve never had a line from him yet. I hope no evil has befallen the ship!”

“Oh, don’t say such a thing as that,” said Madame Dort nervously. “The vessel has a long voyage to make, and would only touch at the Cape of Good Hope on her way; so we cannot expect to hear yet. I wonder at you, Lorischen, alarming me with your misgivings! I am sure I am anxious enough already about poor Eric.”

“Ach himmel! I meant no harm, dear lady,” rejoined the other; “but, when one has thoughts, you know, they must find vent, and I’ve been dreaming of him the last three nights. I do wish he were safe back again. The house is not itself without him.”

“You are not the only one that thinks that,” said Madame Dort. “Why, even the very birds that come to be fed at the gallery window miss him! They won’t take their bread crumbs from my hand as they used to do last winter from his; you remember how tame they were, and how they would hop on his shoulder when he opened the window and called them?”

“Aye, that do I, well! He was a kind lad to bird and beast alike. There is my old cat, which another boy would have tormented according to the nature of all boys where poor cats are concerned; but Eric loved it, and petted it like myself! Many a time I see Mouser looking up at that model of his ship there, blinking his eyes as if he knew well where the young master is, for cats have deeper penetration than human folk give them credit for. I heard him miaow-wowing this morning; and, when I went to look for him, there he was on the top of the stove, if you please, gazing up at the little ship, with his tail up in the air as stiff as a hair-brush! I couldn’t make it out at all, and that’s what made me so thoughtful to-day about the dear lad, especially as I’d dreamt of him, too.”

“My dear Lorischen, you absurd creature,” laughed out Madame Dort. “I’m glad you said that. Don’t you know what was old Mouser’s grievance? Was I not close behind you at the time the cat was making the noise, and did not Burgher Jans’ dog rush out of the room as the door was opened? Of course, Mouser got on the stove to be out of his way, and that was why you thought he was speaking in cat language to poor Eric’s little model ship. What a superstitious old lady you are, to be sure!”

“Ah well, you may think so, and explain it away, madame,” said Lorischen, in no way convinced; “but I have my beliefs all the same; and I think that cat knows more than you and I do. Dear, dear! There, I declare it is snowing again. What a Christmas we will have, and how the dear lad would have enjoyed it, eh?”

“Yes, that he would,” rejoined the other. “He did love to watch the snowflakes come down, and talk of longing to see an Arctic winter; but I hope it will not fall so heavily as to block the railway, and prevent us from getting any letters.”

“I hope not,” replied Lorischen sympathisingly. “That would be a bad look-out, especially at Christmas time! Look, the roof of the Marien Kirche is covered already: what must it not be in the open country!”

The old town presented a very different aspect now to what it had done when Madame Dort had walked by Eric’s side to the railway station, for the red tiles of the houses were hidden from view by the white covering which now covered the face of nature everywhere—the frozen canal ways and river, with the ice-bound ships along the quays and the tall poplar trees and willows on the banks, as well as the streets and market-place, being thickly powdered, like a gigantic wedding-cake, with snow-dust; while icicles hung pendent, as jewels, from the masts of the vessels and the boughs of the trees alike, and from the open-work galleries of the market hall and groined carvings of the archways and outside staircases that led to the upper storeys of the ancient buildings around. These latter glittered in every occasional ray of sunshine that escaped every now and then from the overhanging clouds, flashing out strange radiant shades of colouring to light up the monotonous tone of the landscape.

Madame Dort rose from her chair and went to the window where she remained for some little time watching the fast descending flakes that came down in never-ceasing succession.

“I’m afraid it is going to be a very heavy fall,” said she presently, after gazing at the scene around in the street below. Then, lifting her eyes, she noticed that the heavy mass of snow-clouds on the horizon had now crept up to the zenith, totally obscuring the sun, and that the wind had shifted to the north-east—a bad quarter from whence to expect a change at that time of year.

“But, dear me, there is Fritz! I wonder what brings him home so early to-day?” she exclaimed again after another pause. “See,” she added, “the dear child! He has got something white in his hand, and is waving it as he comes up the stairway. It’s a letter, I’m sure; and it must be from Eric!”

Old Lorischen bounced out of her chair at this announcement and was at the door of the room almost as soon as her mistress; but, before either could touch the handle, it was opened from without, and Fritz came into the apartment.

“Hurrah, mother!” he shouted out in joyful tones. “Here’s news from Eric at last! A letter in his own dear handwriting. I have not opened it yet; but it must have been put on board some passing vessel homewards bound, as it is marked ‘ship’s letter,’ and I’ve had to pay two silbergroschen for it. Open it and read, mother dear; I’m so anxious to hear what our boy says.”

With trembling hands Madame Dort tore the envelope apart, and soon made herself mistress of the contents of the letter. It was only a short scrawl which the sailor lad had written off hurriedly to take advantage of the opportunity of sending a message home by a passing ship, as his brother had surmised—Eric not expecting to have been able to forward any communication until the vessel reached the Cape; and, the stranger only lying-to for a brief space of time to receive the despatches of the Gustav Barentz, he could merely send a few hasty lines, telling them that he was well and happy, although he missed them all very much, and sending his “dearest love” to his “own little mother” and “dear brother Fritz,” not forgetting “darling, cross old Lorischen,” and the “cream-stealing Mouser.”

“Just hear that, the little fond rascal!” exclaimed the worthy old nurse, when Madame Dort read out this postscript. “To think of his calling me cross, and accusing Mouser of stealing; it is just like his impudence, the rogue! I only wish he were here now, and I would soon tell him a piece of my mind.”

Eric added that they had had a rough passage down the North Sea, his vessel having to put into Plymouth, in the English Channel, for repairs; and that, as she was a bad sailer, they expected to be much longer on the voyage than had been anticipated. He said, too, that if the wind was fair, the captain did not intend to stop at the Cape, unless compelled to call in for provisions and water, but to push on to Batavia so as not to be late for the season’s produce. He had overheard him telling the mate this, and now informed those at home of the fact that they might not be disappointed at not receiving another letter from him before he reached the East Indies, which would be a most unlikely case, unless they had the lucky chance of communicating a second time with a homeward-bound ship—a very improbable contingency, vessels not liking to stop on their journey and lay-to, except in answer to a signal of distress or through seeing brother mariners in peril.

“So, you see,” said Madame Dort, as soon as she had reached the end of the sheet, “we must not hope to hear from the dear boy again for some time, and can only trust that all will go well with him on the voyage!” She heaved a heavy sigh from the bottom of her mother’s heart as she spoke, and her face looked sad again, like it had been before Eric’s letter came.

“Yes, that’s right enough, mutterchen,” answered Fritz hopefully; “but, you can likewise see that Providence has watched over our Eric so far, in preserving him safely, and there is now no reason for our feeling any alarm on his account. We shall hear from him in the spring, without doubt, telling us of his safe arrival at Java, and saying what time we may look forward to expecting him home. At any rate, this dear letter comes welcome enough now, and it will enable us to have a happier Christmas-tide than we should otherwise have passed.”

“Ach, that it does,” put in old Lorischen, beginning again to bustle about the room with all her former zest in making preparations for the coming festival, which her melancholy forebodings about Eric and superstitious, fears anent the cat’s colloquy in the morning had somewhat interrupted: “we shall have a right merry Christmas in spite of the dear lad’s absence. We must remember that he will be with us in spirit, at least, and it would grieve him if we were down-hearted!”

This wise reflection of the old nurse, coupled with Fritz’s hopeful words, appeared to have a cheering influence on Madame Dort, whom many trials had made rather more despondent than could have been expected from her bright, handsome face, which did not seem sometimes to have ever known what sorrow was; although, like Eric’s, it exhibited for the moment every passing mood, so that those familiar with her disposition could almost read her very thoughts, her nature being so open. Banishing her gloom away, apparently by the mere effort of will, she now proceeded to assist Lorischen in getting the room decorated for the Christmas Eve feast, of which all partook with more merriment and content than the little household in the Gulden Strasse had known since the sailor boy left. Nay, it seemed to them, happy with the tidings of his safety and well-being, that Eric was there too in their midst; for they drank his health before separating for the night, and his mother, when placing the surprise presents, which were to tell the members of the family in the morning that they had not been overlooked in the customary distribution of those little gifts that form the most pleasing remembrances of the festive season in Germany, did not omit also to fill the stocking which Eric had suspended from the head of his bedstead before leaving—he having laughingly said that he expected to find it chock-full when he returned home in time for the next Christmas feast, as he was certain that Santa Claus would never be so unkind as to forget him because he chanced to be away and so missed his turn in the usual visit of the benevolent patron of the little ones!

Time passed on at Lubeck, the same as it does everywhere else. The year turned and the months flew by. Winter gave place to spring, when the adamantine chains with which the ice-king had bound the rivers and waters of the north were loosed asunder by the mighty power of the exultant sun; the snow melted away from the earth, which decked itself in green to rejoice at its freedom, smiling in satisfaction with flowers; while the trees began to clothe their ragged limbs and branches in dainty apparel, and the birds to sing at the approach of summer.

June came, when Madame Dort had fully expected to hear of Eric’s arrival at Batavia; but the month waned to its close without any letter coming to gladden the mother’s heart again, nor was there any news to be heard of the good ship Gustav Barentz in the commercial world—not a single telegram having been received to report her having reached her destination, nor was there any mention of her having been seen and signalled by some passing vessel, save that time when she was met off the Cape de Verde Islands in the previous November. It began to look ominous!

But, while Madame Dort was filled with apprehension as to the fate of her younger son, a sudden conjuncture of circumstances almost made her forget Eric. This was, the unexpected summons of Fritz from her side, to battle with the legions of Germany against the threatened invasion of “the Fatherland” by France.

At the time, it looked sudden enough. A little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, had arisen on the horizon of European politics, which, each moment, grew blacker and more portentous; and, in a brief while, it burst into a war that deluged the vine-clad slopes of Rhineland and the fair plains of Lorraine with blood and fire, making havoc everywhere. Now, however, looking back on all the events of that terrible struggle and duly weighing the surroundings and impelling forces leading up to it, allowing also for all temporary excuses and pretexts, and admitting all that can be said for partisanship on either side, there can be no use in blinking at the pregnant fact that the real cause of the war arose from a desire to settle whether the French or the Germans were the strongest in sheer brute force—just in the same way as two men, or boys, fight with nature’s weapons in a pugilistic encounter to strive for the mastery, thus indulging in passions which they share with the beasts of the field!

The long, steady, complete preparation for war on each side shows that this very simple and intelligible motive was at the bottom of it all; and it is pitiable to think, for the sake of human nature, when recapitulating the history of this fearful conflict of fifteen years ago which caused such misery and murderous loss of life, that two of the most polished, advanced, educated, and representative nations of Europe at that time should not have apparently attained a higher code of civilised morality than that adopted by the natives of Dahomey - one, ruled over by the blood-stained fetish of human sacrifice! As the world advances, looking at the matter in this light, we seem to have exchanged one sort of barbarism for another, and the present one appears almost the worse of the two, by the very reason of its being mixed up with so much scientific advancement, cultural refinement, and the higher development of man. It is like the old devil returning and bringing with him seven other devils more powerful for evil than their original prototype, this prostitution of learning, intellect, and philosophy to the most debasing influences of human nature!

These thoughts, however, did not affect either Fritz or his mother at the time.

Not being the only son of a widow, in which case he might have been exempted from service, Fritz, when he had reached his eighteenth year, had been compelled to join the ranks of the national army; and, after completing the ordinary course of drill, had been relegated to the Landwehr and allowed to return home to his civic occupation. But, when the order was promulgated throughout the German empire to mobilise the vast human man-slaying machine which General Moltke and Prince Bismark had constructed with such painstaking care that units could be multiplied into tens, and tens into hundreds, and hundred into thousands—swelling into a gigantic host of armed men almost at a moment’s notice, ready either to guard the frontier from invasion, or to hurl its resistless battalions on the hated foe whose defeat had been such a long-cherished dream—the young clerk received peremptory orders to join the headquarters of the regiment to which he was attached. The very place and hour at which he was to report himself to his commanding officer were named in the general order forwarded along with his railway pass, so comprehensive were the details of the Prussian military organisation. This latter so thoroughly embraced the entire country after the absorption of the lesser states on the collapse of Koniggratz, that each separate individual could be moved at any given moment to a certain defined point; while the instructions for his guidance were so complete and perfect, that they could not fail to be understood.

Fritz had to proceed, in the first instance, to the capital city of his state, Hanover, now no longer a kingdom, but only a small division of the great empire into which it was incorporated. For him there was no chance of evasion or getting out of the obligation to serve, for the whilom “kingdom” having withstood to the last during the six weeks’ war the onward progress to victory of the all-devouring Prussians, her citizens would be at once suspected of disloyalty on the least sign of any defection. Besides, a keen official eye was kept on the movements of all Hanoverians, their patriotism to the newly formed empire being diligently nourished by a military rule as stern and strict as that of Draco.

“Oh, my boy, my firstborn! and must I lose thee too?” exclaimed Madame Dort, when Fritz made her acquainted with the news of his summons to headquarters. “Truly Providence sees fit to afflict me for my sins, to try me with this fresh calamity!”

“Pray do not take such a sombre view of my departure, dear mother,” said Fritz. “Why, probably, in a month’s time I will be back again in old Lubeck; for, I’m sure, we’ll double up the French in a twinkling.”

“Ah, my child, you do not know what a campaign is, yet! The matter will not be settled so easily as you think. War is a terrible thing, and the Prussians may not be able to crush the whole power of the French nation in the same way in which they conquered Austria and Saxony, and subdued our own little state four years ago.”

“But, mother recollect, that now we shall be fighting all together for the Fatherland,” said Fritz, who like most young Germans was well read in his country’s history, and to him the remembrance of the old war time, when Buonaparte trampled over central Europe, was as fresh as if it were only yesterday. “We’ve long been waiting for this day, and it has come at last! Besides, dear mutterchen, you forget that the Landwehr, to which I belong, will only act as a reserve, and will not probably take any part in the fighting—worse luck!” He added the latter words under his breath, for it was not so long since he had abandoned his barrack-room life for him to have lost the soldierly instincts there implanted into him; and, truth to say, he longed for the strife, the summons to arms making him “sniff the battle from afar like a young war-horse!” The French declaration of war and the proclamation of the German emperor had roused the people throughout the country into a state of patriotic frenzy; so that, from the North Sea to the Danube, from the Rhine to the Niemen, the summons to meet the ancient foe was responded to with an alacrity and devotion which none who witnessed the stirring scenes of that period can ever forget.

Fritz was no less eager than his comrades; and, considerably within the interval allowed him for preparation, he and the others of his corps living in the same vicinity were on their way to Hanover.

This second parting with another of her children almost wrung poor Madame Dort’s heart in twain; but, like the majority of German mothers at the time, she sent off her son, with a blessing, “to fight for his country, his Fatherland”; for, noble and peasant alike, every wife and mother throughout the length and breadth of the land seemed to be infected with the patriotism of a Roman matron. Madame Dort would be second to none.

“Good-bye, my son,” she said, “be brave, although I need hardly tell your father’s son that, and do your duty to God and your country!”

“I will, mother; I will,” said Fritz, giving her a last kiss, as the train rolled away with him out of the station to the martial strains of “Der Deutsche Vaterland,” which a band was playing on the platform in honour of the young recruits going to the war.

The widow had to-day no son left to support her steps homeward to the desolate house in the Gulden Strasse, now bereaved of her twin hopes, Fritz and Eric both; only old Lorischen was by her side, and she felt sadly alone.

“Both gone, both gone!” she murmured to herself as she ascended the outside stairway that led to her apartments in the upper part of the house. “It will be soon time for me to go, too!”

“Ach nein, dear mistress,” said the faithful servant and friend who was now the sole companion left to share the deserted home. “What would become of me in that case, eh? We will wait and watch for the truants in patience and hope. They’ll come back to us again in God’s good time; and they will be all the more precious to us by their being taken from us now. Himmel! mistress, why we’ve lots of things to do to get ready for their return!”

Chapter Three.

Gravelotte.

The actual declaration of war by France against Germany was not made until the 15th of July, 1870, reaching Berlin some four days later; but, for some weeks prior to that date, there is not the slightest doubt that both sides were busily engaged in mobilising their respective armies and making extensive preparations for a struggle that promised at the outset to be “a war to the knife”—the cut-and-dried official announcement of hostilities only precipitating the crisis and bringing matters to a head, so to speak.

On the general order being given throughout the states of the Empire to place the national army on a war footing, in a very few days the marvellous system by which the German people can be marshalled for battle, “each tribe and family according to its place, and not in an aggregate of mere armed men,” was in full operation throughout the land; and, under the influence of fervid zeal, of well-tested discipline, and of skilful arrangement, the Teuton hosts became truly formidable. From the recruiting ground allotted to it, each separate battalion speedily called in its reserves, expanding into full strength, the regiments so formed being at once arrayed into divisions and corps under proved commanders, furnished with every appliance which modern military science deemed necessary. These battalions composed the first line of defence for the Fatherland; while behind them, to augment the regular troops, again following out local distinctions and keeping up “the family arrangement,” the Landwehr stood in the second line; the additional reserve of the Landsturm—yet to be called out in the event of fresh levies being required for garrisoning the fortresses with this militia force, so as to enable the trained soldiery to move onward and fill up the casualties of the campaign—forming a third line of defence.

These gigantic masses were organised with the celerity and precision of clockwork, and then sent forward westward, perfectly equipped—in the highest sense a national army, being over four hundred thousand strong!

Day after day, up to the end of July, the different railway lines of Germany bore the mighty host onward to the banks of the Rhine in endless succession of train-loads. Mass after mass of armed men, duly supplied with all the material of war, advanced rapidly, yet in due pre-arranged order, to the points selected for their gathering; while, in the meantime, the fortresses along the line of the river, where the first French attack was expected to be made, were put in a proper state of defence, and now, with strong garrisons, repaired works, ditches filled, and ramparts crowned with Krupp cannon, were prepared to defy the invader. By the first week of August three great armies had taken possession of the strip of territory, lying between the lower stream of the Moselle and the Rhine, which had for centuries been a battlefield between the German and French races, and which was now to witness fighting on a scale which put every previous campaign into the shade. The first army, under the veteran General Steinmetz, who had won his spurs at Waterloo, had been moved from the north down the valley of the Moselle and along the railway from Bingen, with its headquarters at the strongly fortified town of Coblentz. The second, or “central army,” under Prince Frederick Charles, “the Red Prince,” as his enthusiastic soldiers styled him, occupied Mannheim and Mayence, guarding the Vosges, through which was the principal avenue to the heart of the coveted Rhineland provinces; while the third army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, who, as is well-known, is married to our own “Princess Royal,” had its headquarters at Landau, where also the Baden and Wurtemberg contingents had to rendezvous.

“The ball was opened”—to use the light-hearted expression of a French journalist in describing the commencement of the murderous struggle for supremacy between the two nations—at Saarbruck on the 2nd of August, 1870, when the late ill-fated Prince Imperial of France received his “baptism of fire”; but the first real engagement of the war did not occur till two days later, at Weissembourg, this being succeeded by the terrible battle of Woerth on the 6th of the month, when the German army under the Crown Prince of Prussia crumpled up the forces of Mcmahon, and thus effectually disposed of the previously much-vaunted superiority of the French military system, with its chassepot rifle and mitrailleuse.

With these initial victories of Germany we have not much to do, however; for Fritz belonged to the Hanoverian division, which formed one of the units of the Tenth Army Corps, under the command of Steinmetz, which did not come into action until later on.

On joining his regiment at headquarters, our young recruit from Lubeck, hastily summoned to exchange the pen and desk of a Dutch merchant’s counting-house for the needle-gun and camp of the soldier, discovered to his great joy, that, instead of having to go through the tedious routine of garrison duty—which he had expected would have mainly composed his experiences of the war—the French invasion of Rhineland had so suddenly collapsed, that the Teuton forces, which had been assembled for the original purpose of defending the native soil, were now able to take the offensive and in their turn invade the territory of the foe; and, thus, he would be able to see active service on the field. This was a consummation dearly desired on his part, for he was young and ardent; although, perhaps, the order to go forwards was not quite so much relished by some of his comrades, who were married men and preferred the quiet of their home fireside to the many risks and discomforts of a campaign, which, at the beginning, they did not look upon so hopefully as their leaders.

“Hurrah!” he exclaimed one morning at Coblentz, when the division in which he served was paraded on the Platz in heavy marching order, the men hurriedly falling into the ranks. “No more sentry rounds now and guard-mounting; we’re off to Paris!”

“Don’t you crow too loudly, my young bantam,” said a veteran near him; “we’ll have a long march first, and then perhaps one of those confounded chassepot bullets we’ve heard so much of will put you feet foremost, in a way you won’t like!”

“Bah!” replied Fritz; “I’ll run the chance of that. Anything is better than stopping here kicking our heels in this old town, while our brothers are gaining laurels in the battlefield!”

“Ach, mein lieber,” said the other; “wait till you’ve seen a little of the reality of war, the same as I did four years ago at Sadowa; you’ll then think differently. It all looks very well now, with your smart new uniform and bright helmet; but, when the one is ragged with bayonet cuts and bloody and dirty, and the other doesn’t preserve you from a leaden headache, you will prefer, like me, barrack life—aye, even in Coblentz!”

“Hush there! order in the ranks!” sang out an officer at this moment, stopping Fritz’s answer; and, the word of command being presently given to march, the conversation was not renewed.

After the fearful loss they had suffered at Woerth, which battle was followed up by the sanguinary defeat of Frossard at Forbach, to the left of their line, on the same day, the French fell back on Metz as their rallying point, hoping by means of the vast entrenched camp there and its facilities of communication with Chalons and Verdun, to be able to make a stand against the enemy, now pressing them so sore. Military critics say that this was the greatest mistake made by the Emperor Napoleon’s advisers; and that, had the forces under Bazaine retreated farther to the west—after throwing a sufficient garrison into Metz—they might have been able to effect a junction with the defeated army of Mcmahon, which that general was withdrawing into the interior and from which they were now completely cut off.

Be that as it may, however, during this interval of inactivity, when the shattered fragments of the magnificent French army—which had so proudly assumed the offensive but a bare fortnight before along the frontiers of the Rhine—were idling away precious moments that were fraught with peril and disaster to the Gallic race, the huge German masses, animated by a sense of victory and the consciousness of a superiority in arms as well as in numbers, were sweeping forward like a whirlwind of destruction. The Crown Prince, who had routed Mcmahon at Woerth and driven the wedge in that separated him from Bazaine, continued his onward march on the left of the German line through the passes of the Vosges into the fertile plains of Champagne. At the same time, Prince Frederick Charles, with the main portion of the second army, had crossed the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson; and, moving northwards, was already in a position to threaten the line of the French retreat on Verdun, while the remainder of the Red Prince’s forces were advancing to the eastward of Metz. The columns, too, of Steinmetz, moving with mathematical regularity at an equal rate of progression, were also being echelonned along the northern face of the fortress, just within striking distance.

To put it concisely, some two hundred and fifty thousand unbeaten German soldiers, with an artillery numbering over eight hundred guns, almost surrounded the stronghold of Lorraine and the far weaker and partly demoralised force which the French had gathered together beneath its walls, only, as it turned out subsequently, to court defeat and annihilation.

It was not until the 14th of August that the series of battles that were to rage round Metz, began.

Early in the morning of that day—apparently for the first time struck with an apprehension of having his retreat on Chalons by way of Verdun interfered with and his communications with his base of supply cut off, thus appreciating his critical position only when it was too late to remedy it—the French Marshal commenced crossing the Moselle with his vanguard. The entire body of troops, however, did not reach the river; for, three corps, which had been encamped to the eastward of the fortress, delayed their departure until the afternoon—a tardiness that enabled Steinmetz to attack their rear and detain them on the spot, until the flanking movement of Prince Frederick Charles’ army beyond the Moselle towards Pont-à-Mousson had been completed. A bloody and indecisive action was the result, in which, if the Germans did not gain a victory, they succeeded in accomplishing their object—that of detaining the French troops before Metz, until their retreat on Verdun should be impossible of achievement.

On the 16th occurred the battle of Vionville; and, two days later, that of Gravelotte, the bloodiest contest that took place between the opposing forces throughout the entire war—the first general engagement, too, in which our friend Fritz really “smelt powder” and became an active participant.

The rough skirmishing work which some of the divisions of the army corps under Steinmetz had already had, during the intervening days since the 14th, somewhat prepared the soldiers of the Waterloo veteran for butchery. They could plainly perceive from his tactics that their general was one who would spare no sacrifice of human life in order to gain his end and defeat the enemy. The corpses piled high on the field of Vionville of the Cuirassiers and Ziethen Hussars, who had been ordered to charge batteries of artillery in Balaclava fashion, afforded proof enough of that; and the men said, with a laugh and a shrug of the shoulders, “Ah, yes; we’re going to have a warm time of it now with ‘Old Blood and Iron,’ we are!”

And they had!

Fritz had barely dropped to sleep on the evening of the 17th, when, towards midnight, he was aroused by the wild music of military trumpets, blown apparently from every bivouac in his neighbourhood for miles round.

“Who goes there?” he exclaimed, raising himself up on his elbow, but half awake and dreaming he was on sentry duty.

“Rouse up! rouse up!” shouted a comrade in his ear, and then he recollected all at once where he was. As he sprang to his feet, the noise throughout the camp told without further explanation that an important crisis was at hand, for the measured tramp of marching battalions pulsated the ground like the beat of a muffled drum, while above this sound could be heard the roll of wheels and dragging of gun limbers, and the ringing of horses’ hoofs, all swelling into a perfect roar of sound.

Bazaine, having been driven back from the forward positions his army had attained on the Verdun and Etain roads, in its progress of retreat towards Chalons, by the intervention of the German forces, now sought a fresh vantage-ground during the brief respite allowed by his enemy—one, that is, where he would be able not only to offer a determined resistance, but also retain his lines of retreat; and whence, if victorious, he might be able to break forth and make good his intended movement on Chalons. Such a position he found in the range of uplands, which, intersected at points by ravines, with brooks and difficult ground in front and with belts of wood in the near distance, extends from the village of Gravelotte on the north-east to Privat-la-Montaigne, beyond the road that runs from Metz to the whilom German frontier; and, throughout the whole of the previous day the Marshal had been busily engaged in stationing his troops along this line collecting every means of defence which could add to its natural strength.

The arrangements of Bazaine certainly gave proof on this occasion of that tactical skill for which he had previously been renowned.

The French left, occupying Gravelotte at the junction of the roads from Verdun and Etain and thence extended along the high-road to Metz, held a range of heights, with a wood beneath, which commanded all the neighbouring approaches. This position, besides, was protected in front by lines of entrenchments, with rifle-pits and a formidable display of artillery; and, shielded in its rear by the heavily armed fort of Saint Quentin, might well-nigh be considered impregnable. Bazaine’s centre, although not so strongly placed, had also the advantage of rising ground; and, the right of the line was equally protected by natural and artificial means. Along this admirably selected fighting ground the French Marshal posted some hundred thousand men altogether, clinging to Gravelotte with his best troops, and leaving about twenty thousand as a reserve near Metz—thus acting entirely on the defensive.

While Bazaine had been making these preparations, the German leaders had not by any means been idle. On the same day that the French Marshal was entrenching himself on his chosen field of battle, the entire force of the second army, under the Red Prince, approaching from Pont-à-Mousson, had come into line; and, in communication with the first army, under old “Blood and Iron” Steinmetz, had completely crossed the French, line of retreat, occupying the Verdun and Etain roads northward from Rezonville to Doncourt, with the remaining corps that had remained to the east of Metz supporting the rear and right flank. Altogether, the German commanders had at least nine army corps in hand; and when the reinforcements were brought up, they could calculate on possessing a force of no less than two hundred and forty thousand men to hurl against their antagonists, thus overmatched at the very outset by at least two to one.

The Teuton plan of battle, as subsequently detailed, premised, that, as the French left at Gravelotte was prodigiously strong, making it extremely difficult to carry that position without enormous sacrifices, it would be preferable to move a large part of the army across Bazaine’s front, in order to assail and crush his right wing, which was protected in the rear by Metz, and so could not be turned in that direction. It was also decided that, at the same time, a forward attack should be made as a feint on Gravelotte, the German commanders hoping that under the double pressure of a simultaneous onslaught on both its wings, the French army would lose its hold of the Verdun and Etain roads—which of course it was Bazaine’s object to secure—when, being driven in under the guns of Metz, his forces would there be isolated and completely cut off from any further action in the campaign.

This result, it may be here stated, was ultimately attained, although the turning movement against the right of the French line was found to be impracticable shortly after it was undertaken and had to be given up, the operations of the German host being subsequently confined to an attack in front on the formidable position of Gravelotte—which, with its ridge of hills lined with fortifications and strengthened with rows of rifle-pits that covered the slopes in every direction, overtopping each other like seats in a circus, seemed proof against attack.

Marching in the darkness, he knew not whither, by the side of comrades in solid phalanx, Fritz found himself, when morning broke, at the rear of some other battalions that were concealed from the enemy behind a mass of brushwood and scattered forest trees. These grew on an elevated plateau from which a very good view could be obtained of the field of battle, the rising sun lighting up the whole landscape and displaying the beautiful details of the country around, so soon, alas! to be marred by the terrible havoc of battle, bringing fire and ruin and bloodshed in its train.

On the left, stretched out like a silver thread amidst the green sheen of the foliage the road leading to Verdun and Paris beyond, lined along its extent with rows of tall poplars planted with mathematical regularity; while a series of pretty villages, each with its own church steeple and surrounded by charming villa residences, only a few hundred yards apart apparently, broke the monotonous regularity of the highway—Mars la Tour, Florigny, Vionville, Rezonville, Malmaison, and last, though by no means least, Gravelotte, which was in the immediate foreground. On the right were thickly wooded hills; and, far away in the distance, glittered the peaks and pinnacles of Metz, the whole forming a lovely panorama, spread out below in the smiling valley of Lorraine.

As Fritz was looking on this scene with mingled feelings, a splendid regiment of uhlans dashed up behind the infantry; and, when they reached the brow of the hill, they broke into a wild hurrah, which almost seemed to thrill their horses, which neighed in chorus. This provoked a responsive echo from the marching battalions on foot; and then, the cavalry galloped forwards. At the same time, distant cannonading could be heard in the neighbourhood of Vionville, and shells were seen bursting in the air around the French positions at Point du Jour, with the smaller puffs of smoke from rifles in action between the trees below.

The battle had begun.

Bang, bang, went the guns; and soon the cannonade, drawing in closer and closer upon the doomed villages, became a deafening roar, with streams of hurtling missiles shrieking overhead and bursting with a crash at intervals. Masses of men could be perceived winding in and out along the main road and the side lanes like ants, a gap every now and then showing in their ranks when some shot had accomplished its purpose. By twelve o’clock the engagement had become general; although, as yet, it had been only a battle of the guns, which bellowed and hurled destruction on assailant and defender alike—the curious harsh grating sound of the French mitrailleuse being plainly perceptible above the thunder of the cannon and rattle of musketry, “just like the angry growl of a cross dog under a wagon when some one pretends to take away his bone!” as one of the men said.

The Ninth Army Corps, composed of Schleswig-Holsteiners, Fritz’s compatriots and close neighbours, were the first to come into collision with the enemy’s van but soon the Hanoverian artillery had to follow suit; and bye-and-bye, in the main attack on Gravelotte, the infantry became engaged at last, much to the relief of the men, who were bursting with impatience at being allowed to rest idly on their arms when such stirring scenes were being enacted before their eyes.

This was not, however, until the French positions in front of Vionville had been carried, a success only achieved late in the afternoon, after the most desperate fighting and when the slaughter-dealing Steinmetz ordered an advance in front of the enemy’s defences.

A tremendous fire of artillery was first concentrated on the French works, one hundred and twenty guns taking part in the bombardment; and then, after about half an hour’s shelling, the leading Prussian regiment dashed up the slopes above Gravelotte. The men were rushing into the very jaws of death; for, when they had got about half-way up, the mitrailleuses opened on them, doing terrible execution at close quarters. The brave fellows, however, pressed on, though they fell literally by hundreds. Indeed, they actually got into the works, and a half battery of four-pounder guns which had followed them up was close in their rear on their way to the crest of the hill, when the French, who had run their mitrailleuses farther back some four hundred yards to avoid capture, opened so deadly a fire that the “forlorn hope” had to retire again down the slope—leaving the guns behind them, for every horse in the battery had been killed or disabled. After this, a mad attempt was made to charge the hill with cavalry, the cuirassiers and uhlans dashing up the road at the French works; but men and horses were mowed down so rapidly that the scattered remnants of these fine squadrons had to retire like the infantry. A third effort was made by another line regiment, the men advancing in skirmishing order, instead of in column like the first pioneers of the attack; but although this attempt was covered by a tremendous artillery fire, it was equally unsuccessful. Some of the men certainly managed to reach the French batteries, but they were then shot down in such numbers by the terrible mitrailleuses that they could not hold their ground.

These different episodes of the battle consumed the greater portion of the afternoon, although of course fighting was going on elsewhere along the line. Fritz’s battalion was engaged in another part of the field, and in the Bois du Vaux, as well as on the opposite bank of the Moselle, it did good service in crushing in the wing of the French. Here Fritz had an opportunity of distinguishing himself. In charging an entrenched outwork held by the enemy, the captain of his company got struck down by a bullet; when, as no officer remained to take his place, Fritz gallantly seized the sword of the fallen man, leading on his comrades to the capture of the battery, which had been annoying the German reserves greatly by its fire. Fortunately, too, for Fritz, his commanding officer, General Von Voigts-Rhetz, not only noticed his bravery on the occasion, but let him know that it should not be forgotten at headquarters.

Meanwhile, the continual bombardment of the French position was maintained, and about half-past six o’clock in the evening a last desperate attack was made on Gravelotte—the outlying farmhouse of La Villette, which was the key to the defence, being especially assailed. The reserve artillery being brought up commenced playing upon the still staunchly guarded slopes with storms of shot and shell; and, presently, the farmhouse was in flames, although the garden was still held by the French, who had crenellated the walls, making it into a perfect redan. A gallant foot regiment then took the lead of the German forces, charging up the deadly slope, followed by a regiment of hussars; when, after more than an hour spent in the most desperate fighting of the day, the French at last began to retire from the entrenchments which they had defended so gallantly up to now, the infantry being protected in their retreat by the murderous mitrailleuses that had so disunited the ranks of their stubborn foes, the hoarse growl of their discharge being yet heard in the distance long after the louder and sharper reports of the guns and howitzers had generally ceased.

The evening was now closing in, and soon darkness reigned around, the prevailing gloom being only broken by the fiery path of some bombshell winging its parabolic flight through the air, or the long tongue of fire darting forth from the mouth of a stray cannon; while, in the sky above, the lurid smoke-clouds of burning houses joined with the shades of night in casting a pall over the scene of hideous carnage which the bright day had witnessed, hiding it for ever save from the memories of those who were there and had shared its horrors.

The battle of Gravelotte was lost and won; but, to the Germans, the victory was almost akin to a defeat, no less than five-and-twenty thousand of the best troops of the “Fatherland” being either killed or wounded!

Fritz escaped scathless through all the perils of the day, in spite, too, of his risking his life most unnecessarily on many occasions in order to see the progress of the fight when his battalion was not in action; but his favourite comrade, the veteran soldier who had fought at Sadowa, received a bullet in his chest, and his life-blood was gradually ebbing away when Fritz, kneeling at his side, asked him if he could do anything for him.

“Ah, no,” answered the poor fellow; “nobody can do anything for me now! I told you, comrade, to wait till you saw what real war was like. Himmel! Sadowa and ’66 were child’s play to this here, with the fire of the chassepot and that infernal mitrailleuse! Hurrah, though we’ve won!” shouted out the veteran in a paroxysm of patriotism; and then, joining in with the chorus of “Die Wacht am Rhein,” which a Prussian corps was singing as they marched by, he thus sobbed out his last breath and so died!

“His was a patriot soldier’s end,” said Fritz, as he closed his eyes and covered over his face reverently with his pocket-handkerchief.

“Yes, so it was,” chimed in the others sententiously. “It is good so to die!”

Chapter Four.

After the Battle.

During the height of the struggle, Fritz had been carried away by a perfect delirium of excitement, as if in a dream; and what he had done had been done almost unconsciously, in spite of himself, and on the spur of the moment. He had been marched here; marched there; halted; ordered to fire; charged with his comrades; retreated; charged again—all, as it seemed, in one brief second of time!

What, with the continuous roar of artillery reverberating through the surrounding hills; the constant ping; pinging and singing of rifle bullets; the rattling discharge of platoon firing; the whirring of heavy shot and shell through the air above the ranks and the bursting every now and then of some huge bomb in their midst, knocking down the men like ninepins and sending up a pyramid of dust and stones, mingled with particles of their arms and clothing, as well as fragments of the torn flesh of some victims, on the missile exploding in a sheet of crackling flame, with a rasping, tearing noise—all combined with the thick sulphureous cloud of gunpowder which hung over the battlefield, half asphyxiating the combatants, whose hoarse cries of rage and hatred could be heard above the noise of the cannon and discharges of musketry, mixed up with the words of command of their different officers, the “En avant, mes amis!” of the French, the stern “Vorwarts!” of the Germans, and the occasional wild, weird, frenzied scream of some stricken charger echoing shrilly in the distance, like the wail of a lost soul in purgatory—the whole realised a mad riot of destruction and carnival of blood, the essence of whose moving spirit appeared to take possession of each one engaged, rendering him unaccountable for his actions for the time being. Like the rest, Fritz felt the “war fever” upon him. A red mist hovered before his eyes. He smelt blood and longed to spill more. The fumes of brimstone acted on his senses like hasheesh to narcotic smokers. An irresistible impulse urged him forwards. A voice kept crying in his ears, “Kill and slay, and spare not!”

This was while the fury of the combat lasted, when the Prussian battalions were hurling their human waves in columns against the rocky defences of Gravelotte, only for them to fall back impotently, like the broken foam and spent wash of billows which have assailed in vain the precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel and galloping thud of flying squadrons, urged on with savage oath and triumphant cheer, filled the air; when the gurgling groan of the death-agony and moan of painless pain, made the treble of the devil-music, to the thundering sustained bass of the cannon roar, and the growling arpeggio accompaniment of the mitrailleuse!

But, when, after one last fearful combined volley, in which every single piece of ordnance on the field seemed to take part, the hideous turmoil of sound ceased as if by mutual consent. A sort of solemn hush, in company with the night, caused comparative stillness to brood over the scene, in contrast to the pandemoniacal noise that had previously reigned so fiendishly. Then, all of a sudden, Fritz appeared to awake suddenly from a disturbed dream or phantom-haunted night-mare, in which all the powers of evil were tearing at his heart and brain. The war fever, for him, had exhausted its final paroxysm. The red mist had been withdrawn from his eyes. The thirst for blood from his soul. He was himself again; but a strangely altered self, for he felt weak and ill, and as languid and worn-out as if he had just recovered from a fainting fit.

It was at this moment that Hermann his comrade had been struck down by a chassepot ball, winging its murderous mission from some unknown point; and when Fritz had sat down by the side of the body, covering over the face of the dead man, he did not seem to feel any desire to live or even to rise up again, he was so utterly powerless and lacking in energy. The majority of his fellow-soldiers appeared, too, to be in the same mood, stretching their weary limbs on the ground in listless apathy, as if caring for nothing; they did not either seem to be affected by hunger or thirst, although it was more than twelve hours since they had broken their fast; the fury of the fight had satiated them, taking away all stamina and appetite.

Presently, however, an ambulance detachment, passing by on their merciful errand to seek for the wounded, besought aid; and Fritz, with others, at once sprang up and volunteered assistance to bear away those to whom the surgeon’s care could do any good to the field hospitals, where their hurts could be attended to in a general way. The number of wounded men was so great that it was simply impossible for the doctors to hunt after individual cases and treat them properly.

The battlefield was now covered by a dense cloud, illuminated at either end of the valley in which it lay by two enormous fires of burning houses. But, above, the stars shone down peacefully from the blue vault of heaven on the terrible picture of carnage below; and, as the smoke of the gunpowder cleared away, the different points of the struggle could be clearly picked out by reason of the heaps of corpses and dead horses, piled beneath overturned cannon and broken limbers, shattered needle-guns and chassepôts, all of which were scattered around pell-mell in endless profusion.

“Water, water, for the love of God!” was the heartrending cry that proceeded everywhere from yet living men hidden among hecatombs of the slain, as they heard the footsteps of the ambulance corps and their helpers. Really, the task was an endless one, to try to relieve the misery around; for, hardly had one wounded wretch been saved from being buried alive in the mountain of dead under which he writhed, than an appeal for aid was heard in another direction—and yet again another, until the bearers and relief corps themselves became exhausted. Each required forty pairs of hands instead of one!

It was terrible work to go over the scene of slaughter in cold blood, with no fever of excitement to blot out the hideous details, now displaying themselves in all their naked reality! Conspicuously, in front of La Villette, were to be seen the white trimmings of the uniforms of the Prussian Imperial Guards; the red trousers of the French line; the shining helmets of the cuirassiers, whose breastplates were all torn and dented with shot, as if they had been ploughed over; while the wind, now rising as the night progressed towards morning, rustled the myriad leaves of white paper that had escaped from out of the French staff carriages, blowing them across the valley, like a flock of sea-gulls fluttering on the bosom of the breeze.

As the day broke, the bright beams of the rising sun lit up the field of battle, only to disclose its horrors the more unmistakably. The rays of light, flashing on the exposed sword blades and bayonet points, reflected little radiant gleams of brightness; but, the hands of those who wielded them so valiantly not many hours agone were now cold and cramped in the agony of death, alas! Sad bruised eyes glared out from disfigured faces under torn-open breasts, appearing to look up to where the stars only so recently twinkled down, vainly asking Providence why it had put the lightning into the hands of man for so fell a purpose! Rows of infantry lay dead in perfect order, as if on parade, where the mitrailleuse had mowed them down; whole squadrons of hussars and lancers were heaped up in mass; and, in some of the French rifle-pits, there were more than a thousand corpses piled, the one on top of another with trim regularity, as if carefully arranged so. Blue, red, and yellow uniforms, with the occasional green of the Tyrolean Jager, were mixed together in picturesque confusion along the Verdun road; in fact, the dead and dying were everywhere in such prodigious numbers that the hearts of those seeking out the wounded were appalled.

Worse than in the fields were the scenes displayed in the villages and little towns along the white high-road to Metz, the tall poplars that lined it being torn down by the round shot, thus blocking the way. The broken vehicles and baggage wagons that were mingled together in an inextricable mass also added to the obstruction; Malmaison, Vionville, and Rezonville were filled with war victims; and all the surgeons, French as well as German, that could be summoned to help, were as busy as they could possibly be. Carriages and stretchers covered the open places in front of every house, the Red Cross of Geneva being rudely depicted on the doors, with the neutral flag of the society floating above; while pools of blood marked the dressing places of the wounded, the pale white faces of whom looked down in mute misery from the carts in which they were being borne away to the rear to make room for others to be attended to. To complete the picture, those who had died under operation were laid by the roadside until they could be collected bye-and-bye for burial, the living having to be seen to first!

Released at length, after toiling through the night and early morning at his voluntary labour, Fritz was able at last to return to the bivouac of the Hanoverians; but, while on his way to camp, he passed one of the most affecting pictures he had yet seen. Hearing the howl of a dog, he turned aside towards a little clump of trees from which the sound seemed to come, and here he came up to a splendid large black retriever, which, with one paw on a dead officer’s breast and with his noble head raised to the sky, was baying in that melancholy fashion in which dogs tell their woe on being overcome by grief. Near this little group was an unfortunate horse sitting on its haunches, its hind-quarters having been torn off by the discharge of a shell, or the passage of some conical projectile. The animal was moaning heavily with pain, and looked so appealingly at Fritz out of its large deep eyes, that he raised a revolver which he had picked up on the field and put the poor brute out of its agony. It was a different matter with the dog, however; although he could not persuade the faithful retriever to leave his master’s side; and, as it was getting late, and Fritz thought he might be missed and reported as a straggler from his corps, he hurried on to the camping ground of his regiment, promising himself to return later on in the day, if spared from duty, when he would bury the dead body of the officer and take possession of the dog—that is, should no one else have appropriated him in the meantime, as might possibly be the case.

He was so worn-out with fatigue, on arrival at the bivouac of the regiment in the Bois du Vaux, that, on finding that his absence was not taken any notice of, he laid himself down by the side of a fire which the men had kindled for cooking their camp kettles; and, although it was a warm summer day, he immediately fell asleep, not waking until late in the afternoon. Then, partaking of some Erbwurst, or “peasoup sausage,” which one of his comrades had kindly kept for him, albeit the rations were rather scanty, he felt a new man, and fit for anything; for, the worn-out feeling of exhaustion and nervous horror which had possessed his mind throughout the many hours that elapsed since the close of the fighting on the evening before, being only the effects of over-excitement, had now completely disappeared on his getting rest and refreshment. Indeed, he no longer felt sickened with war. On the contrary, he was quite ready to start into a fresh battle, and that, too, with as eager an impetus as he had plunged into his first engagement.

This was not all, either.

On the regiment being paraded shortly afterwards in front of its bivouac, the field officer of the day called out “Fritz Dort” a second time, after the names of the men had been run over on the muster roll—many failing to answer, and having the brief military comment “Dead,” or “Missing,” placed after their numbers.

“Here!” answered Fritz, stepping forwards and saluting the officer in the ordinary routine fashion, wondering what was to come next.

“Fritz Dort and men of the 16th Hanoverians,” proceeded the major, reading from an official document in his hand, “I am directed by the general commanding the Tenth Army Corps, in the order of the day, to signalise the distinguished gallantry which the said Fritz Dort displayed yesterday in the face of the enemy at the engagement in front of Gravelotte, when, on the falling of the officer leading the company to which he was attached, the said Fritz Dort bravely stepped to the front, and taking his commander’s vacant post, led on his men to capture the French battery, which they were detailed to take by storm. For such conspicuously good service in action, the general commanding hereby promotes the said Fritz Dort to be a sub-lieutenant in the same regiment, trusting that, as an officer, he will perform his duty as he has done as a private soldier and meet with the obedience and honour of those with whom he has previously served as a brother comrade, none the less on account of his promotion from the ranks which as one of themselves he has adorned!”

A loud “Hurrah!” broke from all the men when the major had finished reading this document; and that officer then shook hands kindly with Fritz, welcoming him cordially to the higher station he had attained. The other subalterns also advanced, doing the same; while, on retiring from the parade, the men of the rank and file, without receiving any order to that effect, gave the young hero a general salute, in token of their respect and recognition of his new dignity as an officer over them.

Fritz’s heart was bursting with joy at his unexpected promotion. He thought how proud his mother would be to hear of it; but, before writing home by the afternoon field post, as he intended doing, he determined to carry out the promise he had made to himself, and which he held as equally binding as if it had been made in the presence of witnesses—the promise to bury the body of the dead officer which he had come across in the wood, guarded by his faithful dog.

“Heinrich!” he called out to the man who, as his whilom comrade, had preserved his rations for him. He forgot for the moment the altered condition of their respective ranks.

“Ja, Herr Lieutenant,” said Heinrich, much to his surprise, stepping out towards him and saluting, with forefinger to pickelhaube, as straight as a ramrod.

“Bother!” exclaimed Fritz, a bit puzzled at first by the inconvenience in some ways of his exaltation in rank. There was some difficulty at first in accommodating himself to his new position.

“Never mind my being an officer for awhile, friend Heinrich,” he explained to his whilom comrade—“the dignity can keep without harming it until we are again on duty together, when I promise to remember it to all your advantage; for you’ve been good fellows to me, one and all! I want you now to help me, friend Heinrich, in a sad commission; so, I rely upon your assistance from our old brotherly feelings when together—not because I ask you as your superior. Get a pickaxe and spade from one of the pioneers and come with me. I’m going to bury a poor fellow who has fallen over there, whose fate has attracted my sympathy.” Fritz pointed, as he spoke, to the wood where the dead man lay.

“With right good pleasure, Herr Lieutenant,” said the other in a cheerful tone of voice, with great alacrity of manner, saluting again as before. As a soldier, he knew his place too well to take a liberty with an officer, even if a newly-made one, and with his own permission! The German, or rather Prussian, system was and is very strict on such points.

“Oh, bother!” ejaculated Fritz again, between his teeth. “The idea of helping to bury a man ‘with right good pleasure’!”

He could not help smiling at the ludicrous association with so grave a subject, as he unconsciously mimicked the soldier’s simple speech.

“Poor dear old fellow, though,” thought he a moment afterwards, “he doesn’t know what a funny phrase he used.”

In a minute or two the man returned with the required articles; when he and Fritz set off towards the wood, the latter leading the way, and Heinrich following close behind in single file.

On reaching the spot which he had marked, Fritz found that no one had apparently been there in his absence, for the dog was still on guard over his master’s corpse, although he was now lying across the body, and had ceased his melancholy howl. When he approached the animal wagged his bushy tail, as if in recognition of having seen Fritz before.

“Poor fellow!” said Fritz; “come here, old man! We’re here to put your master in his last home, and you must not prevent us. We will treat him very tenderly.”

The dog looked up in his face, as if he understood what his new friend said; and, crawling off from the officer’s body, he came to Fritz and licked his hand, holding up the while one paw, which was bleeding as if from a cut.

“He is wounded,” said Heinrich, stooping down.

“Yes,” answered Fritz, examining the poor paw, much apparently to the dog’s satisfaction. “It’s from a piece of shell, probably the same that settled the horse there; but it’s not a bad wound, and will soon get well, doggie!” So saying, lifting up the injured member gently, he began to bind it round with a piece of lint which he had in his pocket, the retriever keeping perfectly quiet, as if knowing that no injury was intended him.

Fritz then proceeded to open the dead officer’s jacket, in order to search for any papers or articles of value, which he might keep and forward to his relatives. Previously, the dog would not allow him to touch the body at all, but now he did not offer any objection, so Fritz turned out all the pockets. He could discover no paper, however, nor any trace of identity. The only token he could find was a little silver ring wrapped in a small piece of paper, inscribed, “From my beloved, 18th July, 1870.” This was carefully enclosed in a little bag of silk, and suspended by a ribbon round the poor young fellow’s neck, resting on the cold and lifeless spot where his heart once used to beat.

“A love gage,” said Heinrich sympathisingly.

“Ah, yes,” replied Fritz; “and the poor girl will, I suppose, continue to look out for him, hoping to see him again, while he lies here in a nameless tomb! Never mind, I will keep the token and the dog; perhaps I may discover her and his friends some day through them. Now, let us make the grave quickly, comrade, and commit him to his rest!”

In silence the two then dug a low trench in the soil beneath the tree where the officer had found his death, and then reverently laid him in it. He had died calmly from the effects of a bullet which must have penetrated his brain, as only a small blue orifice was to be seen in the centre of his forehead; and a smile was on his handsome young face, as if no painful thought had vexed his last moment.

During the sad obsequies, the dog kept close to the side of Fritz, watching attentively everything that was done, without stirring or uttering a sound, save when they shovelled the earth on his poor master’s breast. He then gave vent to a short, angry bark; but, on Fritz speaking to him soothingly, he again became quiet, remaining so to the end, when he laid down on the newly-made grave, with a deep, low whine that was almost a sigh, that seemed to come from the bottom of his faithful canine heart!

From a piece of broken wood close by, Fritz then carved a rude cross, which he fixed in the ground at the head of the poor young fellow’s last resting-place, inscribing on it the words: “To a French officer. Peace to his remains. The grave knows no enmities! 18th August, 1870.”

The date on this unknown victim’s grave was exactly one month later than that on which he must have parted from his sweetheart. What a strange fatality, pondered Fritz and his companion, that one who had probably been so much loved and cared for, should be indebted for the last friendly offices which man or woman could render him—to strangers! “May he rest in peace!” said Fritz, uncovering his head as he turned away, and then putting on his helmet again.

“So, too, I wish,” echoed Heinrich. “We can do no more for him, poor youth!”

“No,” said Fritz; “we’d better go now. Come on, old fellow!” he added, with a whistle to the retriever, who, wise dog that he was, seeing he could do no further good to the one to whom he had been faithful in life and watched in death as long as he was able, now answered the call of the new friend whom Providence had sent him. Without any demur he returned with Fritz and Heinrich to the Hanoverian camp, following close behind the heels of the former, as if recognising him as his master in the place of him whom he had lost.

Fritz christened this treasure trove of the battlefield “Gelert”; and like that trusty hound of old, the animal became known to all the men in a very short while. He was formally adopted, indeed, as the pet of the regiment, besides coming in for Fritz’s own special care, being known even to the general in command of the division as “the dog of the sub-lieutenant of Gravelotte.”

Chapter Five.

Bad News.

If it had seemed dull and lonely in the little household of the Gulden Strasse at Lubeck after Eric had gone to sea, how much more so was it not to the two sad women left alone to console each other when Fritz, also, had departed from home!

For days, Madame Dort appeared borne down by a weight of woe, and even Lorischen lost that customary cheeriness with which she usually performed her daily duties in her endeavours to console her mistress. Mouser, too, went miaow-wowing about the house at nights, as if he likewise shared in the family despondency—not once being caught in the act of stealing the breakfast cream, a predilection for which had hitherto been an abnormal failing on his part. So changed, indeed, became the old cat that he did not possess spirit enough to put up his tail and “phit” and “fiz” at Burgher Jans’ terrier, when that predatory animal made an occasional excursion into the parlour at meal times, to see what he could pick up, either on the sly or in that sneaking, fawning fashion which a well-trained dog would have despised. This continued almost to the end of the month; but then came a bright little bit of intelligence to gladden their hearts. It was like a gleam of sunshine breaking through the dark cloud of gloom that hung over them.

Fritz wrote home from Coblentz, close to the frontier, telling how comfortable he was, and how every one in the army of the Fatherland was confident as to the result of the campaign. In a few weeks at the outside, they thought—everything was so carefully planned and every contingency provided against—the French army of invasion would have been dispersed to the four winds of heaven and the war be over; and, then, the Landwehr, at all events, would be enabled to return home to their several states and resume those peaceful employments which their mobilisation had interrupted. Fritz said that he feared he would have no chance of distinguishing himself in the campaign, as one alone of the three great army corps they had already massed along the Rhine would be sufficient to crush the hated foe. The only men who would probably see any fighting would be those serving under the Crown Prince, who had already routed the enemy and were in active pursuit of them across the borderland. His veteran old general, Steinmetz, every one considered to be “out of the hunt completely!” All he would see of the whole affair, they thought, would be the warriors returning home crowned with laurels after the victory.

Thus ran the tenor of Fritz’s letter, the writer evidently not dreaming of the events in store for him; and that, instead of returning to Lubeck in a few weeks, it would be many weary months before he saw the blinking eyes of the ancient astronomical clock in the Dom Kirche again!

Through the intricacies of the field post, too, this communication was a long time in reaching the little seaport town on the North Sea, being at least ten days old when it arrived; but what mattered that? It contained good news when it did come, and was as welcome as if it had been dated only yesterday.

“Ah, ha!” exclaimed Lorischen, when her mistress communicated the contents of Fritz’s letter. “The young Herr will soon be back, and then we’ll see him give Meinherr Burgher Jans the right-about. I call it scandalous, I do, his persecuting an unprotected, lone widow—just because her sons are away, and there’s only me to look after her! But, I keep him at arm’s distance, I promise you, madame. It is only his thief of a dog who manages to creep in here when I am about!”

Madame Dort blushed. She was a comely, middle-aged woman, and when she coloured up she looked quite pretty.

“I’m sure, Lorischen,” she said, “I wonder you can talk such nonsense; you are as bad as poor Eric used to be, teasing me about that little fat man! Poor Burgher Jans means no harm in coming to inquire after my health while Fritz is away.”

“That’s just what I object to, dear lady,” interrupted the other; “why does he do it?”

“Can’t you see, you stupid thing,” said Madame Dort, laughing heartily, the hopeful letter of her son having quite restored her spirits, “that is the very reason? If dear Fritz were here, he would naturally ask him how we all are; but, as he is away now, and I never go outside the house, while you, my faithful Lorischen, are not very communicative, I suppose, when you go to the Market Platz, it is plain enough to common sense that the worthy Burgher, if he takes an interest in us, must come here to inquire after the family himself!”

“Oh yes, I understand,” answered the old nurse, in a grumbling tone. She had lived so long with the widow, whom she looked upon really as a child committed to her charge, that she considered she had a perfect right to pass an opinion on anything which did not please her. Besides, she was jealous, on behalf of the boys, of any interloper being put over their heads in the shape of a stepfather, she as an old spinster having a wholesome horror of the designing nature of all men, especially of the little Burgher Jans, to whom she had taken an inveterate dislike. “Oh yes, I understand,” she said in an ironical tone she always assumed on being a bit vexed; “when the cat’s away the mice play!”

“I presume then,” said Madame Dort dryly, “that Mouser is a good deal absent now from his duties; for, I noticed this morning that half that cheese in the cupboard was nibbled up. It was a good Limburger cheese, too!”

“Ach, Himmel!” exclaimed the old nurse, not perceiving the design of her mistress to change the conversation, and taking up the cudgels readily to defend her dearly loved cat. “The poor creature has not been himself since the young masters have been away. He feels too lonesome to hunt the mice as he used to do so gaily in the old days, tossing them up in the air when he caught them, and bringing them mewing to my feet,—the dear one! Why, he hardly ever touches a drop of milk now.”

“Yes, I see he spares our cream—”

“Oh, madame, that was a libel on the poor animal. It was only the dear lad Eric’s joke! Mouser would never touch one drop of the breakfast cream, save perhaps when we might be late for the meal, or when the dear fellow felt a little thirsty, or—”

“Ah, indeed! Yes, no doubt,” interrupted Madame Dort, laughing again. “He would have been at it again to-day, only Burgher Jans’ dog came in at the nick of time and scared him away!”

“Did he!” said Lorischen indignantly. “It strikes me that pest of a terrier is here a good deal too much, like his master! And, talk of him, there he is!” she added hastily, leaving the room as a knock came to the door.

Burgher Jans came in as the old nurse went out, brushing by him with ill-concealed contempt and aversion. He was a fat little man, with long straight hair coming down over his coat collar, and a round, full-moon sort of face, whose effect of beaming complacency was enhanced by a pair of large-rimmed tortoise-shell spectacles out of which his owl-like eyes shone with an air of balmy wisdom.

“Most worthy lady,” he commenced, addressing Madame Dort with an elaborate bow, sweeping the floor with his hat. “Unto me the greatest and ever-much rapture doth it with added satisfaction bring, to tell you of the glorious success of the German arms over our greatly-overbearing and hopeful-of-victory foe.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the widow, “you are rather late with your news; I heard from Fritz just now.”

“And is the dear, well-brought-up, and worthy youth in good health?”

“He is,” said Madame Dort; “and tells us to expect him home soon.”

Burgher Jans looked startled at this announcement, losing a trifle of his beaming smile. “He is not wounded, I trust?” asked he tremblingly.

“Oh dear no, thank the good God who has watched over him,” answered the other cheerfully. “Why, he has not been in battle yet! He tells us that the French are retreating, and that the war will be over almost before another blow has been struck, the enemy having to surrender before our irresistible battalions.”

“Have you not heard of the battles of Woerth and Forbach, then?”

“No; what—when were they?”

“Where did your son Fritz write to you from, then?”

“From Coblentz. His letter is dated the day he arrived there, but I only got it this morning.”

“Ah then, most worthy lady, two terrible battles have occurred since that time. We have beaten the French and forced them back into their own country; but, alas! thousands of German lives have been lost. The slaughter has been terrific!”

“Good heavens, Burgher Jans, you alarm me!” said Madame Dort, rising from her chair in excitement. “Fritz told me there would be no fighting except between the Crown. Prince’s army and the enemy!”

“The worthy young Herr was right so far,” put in the little man soothingly, “that is as regards the south of the line; but our second army corps has been likewise engaged on the banks of the Saar, hurling disaster on the foe, although the French fought well, too, it is said. Where, however, is Herr Fritz?”

“Serving under General Steinmetz.”

“Ah, then he’s safe enough, dear madame. That army is but acting as the reserve. It is only my poor countrymen, the Bavarians, and the Saxons who will have the hard work of the campaign to do. Von Bismark wants to let out a little of their blood in return for the feverish excitement they displayed against the Prussians in ’66!”

“You relieve my mind,” said Madame Dort, resuming her seat. “I thought for the moment Fritz was in danger. You speak bitterly against the Chancellor, however. He is a great man, and has done much for Germany.”

“Oh, yes, I grant that,” replied the other warmly; “still, he is one who never forgets. He always pays out a grudge! You will see, now, if those poor Bavarians do not come in for all the thick of the fighting.”

“You talk as if there is going to be a lot more?”

“So there is, without doubt, without doubt,” said Burgher Jans, rubbing his hands together, as if he rather enjoyed the prospect.

“In that case, then, Fritz cannot return to Lubeck as soon as he thinks possible?” and Madame Dort looked grave again, as she said this half questioningly.

“I fear not, most worthy lady,” replied the little man in a tone of great concern; but, from the look on his face and the brisk way in which he still continued to rub his hands together, it might have been surmised that the prolonged absence of poor Fritz from his home would not affect him much,—in fact, that he would be rather pleased by such a contingency than not.

Madame Dort noticed this, and became quite sharp to him in consequence.

“I must beg you to say good-bye now,” she said; “I’ve a busy day before me, and have no more time to waste in chatting. Good-morning, Burgher Jans.”

“Good-morning, most worthy lady,” said the little fat man, accepting his dismissal and bowing himself out.

“The ill-natured little manoeuvrer!” exclaimed Madame Dort, half to herself, as he left the room. Lorischen entered again at the same time, the two always playing the game apparently of one of those old-fashioned weather tellers, in which a male or female figure respectively comes out from the little rustic cottage whenever it is going to be wet or fine; for, as surely as the Burgher ever entered the sitting-room, the old nurse withdrew, never returning until he had left. “The ill-natured little manoeuvrer!” exclaimed Madame Dort, not thinking she was overheard. “I believe he would be glad to keep poor Fritz away if he could.”

“Just what I’ve thought all along!” said Lorischen, immensely pleased at this acknowledgment of her superior power of discernment.

“I mean, not on account of wishing any harm to Fritz,” explained the widow, “but that he himself might be able to come here oftener.”

“Just what I’ve said!” chirped out the old nurse triumphantly; but Madame Dort made no reply to this second thrust, and before Lorischen could say anything further, a second visitor came to the little house in the Gulden Strasse. It seemed fated as if that was to be a day for callers, and “people who had no business to do preventing those who had,” as the old nurse grumbled while on her way to open the street door for the new-comer—a courtesy Burgher Jans never required, walking in, as she said, without asking leave or license, just when he pleased!

The visitor was Herr Grosschnapper, the merchant who employed Fritz in his counting-house and who was also a part proprietor in the ship in which Eric had sailed for Java. Madame Dort’s heart leapt in her bosom when she saw the old gentleman enter the parlour.

But, the shipowner’s face did not look as if he brought any pleasing news; and, after one brief glance at his countenance, the widow’s fell in sympathy. She almost anticipated the evil tidings which she was certain he had in store for her.

“Madame Dort,” he began, “pray compose yourself.”

“I am quite calm, Herr Grosschnapper,” she answered. “Go on with what you come to tell me. You have heard something of my poor boy Eric; is it not so?”

“It is, madame,” replied the merchant, deceived by her composure. “I grieve to say that I have received intelligence through the English house of Lloyd’s that the Gustav Barentz foundered at sea in the Southern Ocean early this year. Two boats escaped from her with the crew and passengers, one of which, containing the first officer and several hands, was picked up when those on board were in the last stage of exhaustion, by a vessel bound to Australia. The men were taken to Melbourne before any communication could be received from them, so that is why the news of the wreck has been so long in reaching us.”

“And Eric?” asked the widow, with her head bent down.

“He was with the captain in the other boat, dear madame,” said Herr Grosschnapper; “but, I’m afraid there is little or no chance of their having been saved, or else we would have heard of them by this time. Pray bear up under the loss, madame. He was a good son, I believe, and would have made a good sailor and officer; but it was not to be! Remember, you have another son left.”

“Ah, but not Eric, my little one, my darling!” burst forth the poor bereaved mother in a passion of tears; and then, the merchant, seeing that any words of comfort on his part would be worse than useless, withdrew.

The violence of Madame Dort’s grief, however, was soon assuaged, for she had long been preparing herself for this blow. She had given up all hope of ever hearing from Eric again, even before Fritz left home.

Thenceforth, all her motherly love was bound up in her firstborn, now the only son left her; and daily she scanned the papers to learn news of the war.

Time passed on, the widow occasionally receiving a hurried scrawl from Fritz, who, as she knew, was now no longer resting with the reserve battalions in the fortresses of the Rhine, but marching onwards with the invading army through France.

She heard of the terrible battle of Gravelotte, in which she dreaded that he had taken part; but, almost before she could read the full official details published in the German newspapers under military censorship, her anxieties were relieved by a long letter coming from Fritz, telling of his participation in the colossal contest and of his miraculous escape without a wound, although he had been in the thick of the fire and numbers of his comrades from the same part of the country had been killed.

But, he had better news to tell—that, at least, is what he wrote, only the mother doubted whether any intelligence could be more important to her than the fact of his safety!

What would she think of hearing that he had been promoted to be an officer “for gallantry in the field of battle,” as the general order read out to the whole army worded it? Would she not be proud of her Fritz after that?

Aye, would she not, would not Lorischen?

And did not the entire gossiping community of Lubeck know all about it by and through the means of the old nurse before the close of the self-same day, eh?

Certainly; still, would it be believed that the very first person whom Lorischen told the news to was her special antipathy, Burgher Jans? She actually went up to and accosted him of her own free-will on the Market Platz for the very purpose of telling him of Fritz’s promotion! Yes, such was the case; and she not only was friendly to the little fat man on this occasion, but she actually patted his dog at the same time!

Still, Eric, the lost sailor laddie, was not forgotten in his brother’s success. The mother’s grief was only chastened; and almost the very first thought she had on receiving the news from Fritz, and afterwards when she read it in official print, was “how pleased poor Eric would have been at this!”

Bye-and-bye, Fritz wrote again, telling that their task had become very monotonous. The Tenth Army Corps was detained along with several others to besiege Metz, so hemming in Bazaine and the remainder of the army that had endeavoured so gallantly at Gravelotte to pierce the German lines, that they were powerless to assist the rest of their countrymen in driving the Teuton invader from their soil. The besieging army, which was formed of the united forces of the different corps under Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz, had nothing to do, said Fritz, save to stand to their guns and perform sentry duty; for the French, since the fearful battle of the 18th of August, had not once attempted to push their way out beyond range of the guns of the fortress, under whose shelter they were cantoned in an extended entrenched camp, and were apparently being daily drilled and disciplined for some great effort.

On the 31st of the month, however, Fritz told his mother later on, Bazaine made a desperate effort to break the German cordon around Metz; and this being repulsed with heavy loss, the Marshal again remained quiet for the space of another six weeks.

During this period Madame Dort heard regularly from her son through the field post. She sent him letters in return, telling him all the home news she could glean, and saying that she expected him back before the winter. She hoped, at least, that he would come by that time, for Herr Grosschnapper had informed her that he would have to fill up Fritz’s place in his counting-house if the exigencies of the war caused his whilom clerk to remain away any longer.

Things went on like this up to the month of October, the anniversary of poor Eric’s going away; when, all at once, there came a cessation of the weekly letters of Fritz from headquarters.

His mother wrote to inquire the reason.

She received no answer.

Then she read in the papers of another heavy battle before Metz, in which the Tenth Army Corps had taken part. The engagement had happened more than a week before, and Fritz was silent. He might be wounded, possibly killed!

Madame Dort’s anxiety became terrible.

“No news,” says the proverb, “is good news;” but, to some it is the very worst that could possibly be; for, their breasts are filled with a storm of mingled doubts and fears, while hope is deadened and there is, as yet, no balm of resignation to soothe the troubled heart! The proverb is wrong; even the most heartbreaking confirmation of one’s most painful surmise is infinitely preferable to being kept in a state of perpetual suspense, where one dreads the worst and yet is not absolutely certain of it.

It was so now with Madame Dort. She thought she could bear the strain no longer, but must go to the frontier herself and seek for information of her missing son, as she had read in the newspapers of other mothers doing. However, one afternoon, as she was sitting in the parlour in a state of utter dejection by the side of the lighted stove, for winter was coming on and the days were getting cold, Lorischen brought in a letter to her which had just come by the post.

It was in a strange handwriting!

The widow tore it open hurriedly, glancing first at the signature at the end. “Madaleine Vogelstein!” she said aloud. “I wonder who she is; I never heard of her before!” She then went on to read the letter.

It did not take her long to understand the sense of it.

For, after scanning the contents with startled eyes, she exclaimed, “My son! oh, my son!” and then fell flat upon the floor in a dead faint.

Chapter Six.

Wounded.

The stupendous events of the war rushed on with startling rapidity.

The invasion of France, in retaliation for the projected invasion of Germany, was now an accomplished fact; and, day after day, the Teuton host added victory to victory on the long list of their triumphant battle-roll, almost every engagement swelling the number of Gallic defeats and lessening the power of the French to resist their relentless foe, who now, with iron-clad hand on the throat of the prostrate country, marched onward towards Paris, scattering havoc with fire and sword wherever the accumulating legions of armed men trod.

The battle of Woerth succeeded that of Weissembourg; Forbach that of Woerth; and then came Vionville and Gravelotte to add their thousands of victims to the valhalla of victory. The surrender of Sedan followed, when the Germans passed on their way to the capital; but the brave general Urich still held out in besieged Strasbourg, and Bazaine had not yet made his last brilliant sortie from the invested Metz. The latter general especially kept the encircling armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz on the constant alert by his continuous endeavours to search out the weakest spot in the German armour. The real attempt of the French Marshal to break through the investing lines was yet to come; that of the 31st of August, to which Fritz alluded in his letter to his mother, having been only made apparently to support Mcmahon as a diversion to the latter’s attack on Montmedy, before the surrender of Sedan.

From this period, up to the beginning of October, the French remained pretty quiet, the guns of the different forts lying without the fortifications of Metz only keeping up a harassing fire on the besieging batteries that the Germans had erected around on the heights commanding the various roads by which Bazaine’s army could alone hope to force a passage through their lines. Summer had now entirely disappeared and cold weather set in, so the Teuton forces found it very unpleasant work in the trenches when the biting winds of autumn blew through their encampments of a night, making their bivouac anything but comfortable; while the sharp morning frosts also made their rising most unpleasantly disagreeable; add to this, whenever they succeeded in making their quarters a trifle more cosy than usual, as certainly would the cannon of Fort Quélin or the monster guns of Saint Julien send a storm of shot and shell to awaken them, causing an instant turn-out of the men in a body to resist a possible sortie. Bazaine made perpetual feints of this sort, with the evident intention of wearying out his antagonists, even if he could do them no further harm.

The position was like that of a cat watching a mouse-hole, the timid little occupant of which would every now and then put out its head to see whether the coast were clear; and then, perceiving its enemy on the watch, provokingly draw it in again, leaving pussy angry at her repeated disappointments and almost inclined to bite her paws with vexation at her inability to follow up her prey into its stronghold; for, the heavy artillery of the fortress so protected the surrounding country adjacent to Metz, that the Germans had to place the batteries of their works out of its range, that is, almost at a distance of some four miles from the French camp—of which any bombardment was found after a time to be worse than useless, causing the most infinitesimal amount of damage in return for an enormous expenditure of ammunition and projectiles that had to be conveyed over very precarious roads all the way from the frontiers of the Rhine into the heart of Lorraine.

“Oh, that the French would only do something!” cried Fritz and his companions, sick of inactivity and the wearisome nature of their duties, which, after the excitement of battle and the stirring campaigning they had already gone through, seemed now far worse than guard-mounting in Coblentz. “Oh, that the French would only do something to end this tedious siege!”

Soon this wish was gratified.

On the morning of the 6th of October, when the investiture of Metz had lasted some six weeks or more—just at daybreak—a heavy, dull report was heard at Mercy-le-Haut. It was like the bursting of a mine.

“Something is up at last!” exclaimed one of the staff-officers, entering the tent where Fritz and others were stretched on the bare ground, trying to keep themselves as warm as they could with all the spare blankets and other covering that could be collected heaped over them—“Something is up at last! Rouse up; the general assembly has sounded!”

The ringing bugle notes without in the frosty air emphasised these words, causing the young fellows to turn out hastily, without requiring any further summons.

Aye, something was up. The pioneers of the Seventh German army corps, on the extreme right, had mined and blown up the farm buildings of Legrange aux Bois, close to Peltre. These farm buildings had hitherto served as a cover to the French troops when they made their foraging sorties, but they could not be held by the Germans, for they were situated within the line of fire of Fort Quélin; so, as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently anticipating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. Whole broadsides of projectiles from the great guns flew into the valley of the Moselle as far as Ars, sweeping away the entrenchments as if they were mere packs of cards; and, presently, an onward movement of French battalions of infantry, supported by field artillery and cavalry, showed that, this time at least, something more was intended by Marshal Bazaine than a mere feint.

Trumpet called to trumpet in the German ranks, and speedily the whole of the second army under Prince Frederick Charles mustered its forces in line of battle, the men gathering in imposing masses towards the threatened point at Ars. Here the 61st and 21st infantry regiments, which were on outpost duty, were the first: to commence hostilities, rushing to meet the French who were advancing from Metz. Aided by the batteries erected by the side of the Bois de Vaux, the Germans, after a sharp conflict, succeeded in repulsing the enemy, who had ultimately to retire again under the guns of Fort Quélin, although they made a vigorous resistance while the engagement lasted—only falling back on suffering severe loss from the shower of shrapnel to which they were subjected, besides losing many prisoners. During all the time of this attack and repulse, Fort Saint Julien, on the other side of the fortress, was shelling the Landwehr reserve, causing many casualties amongst the Hanoverian legion; and, but that the men here were quite prepared for their foe, the combat might have extended to their lines.

As it was, the expected fight, for which the Tenth Corps was ready and waiting, was only delayed for a few hours; when, if Fritz and his comrades had complained of the cold of the weather, they found the work cut out for them “hot” enough in all conscience!

In the afternoon of the following day, Bazaine made a desperate effort to break through the environment of the Germans in the direction of Thionville. On the previous evening, in resisting the attack from Saint Julien, which had been undertaken at the same time as that from Saint Quélin on Ars, the French had been driven from the village of Ladonchamps, and their adversaries had established foreposts at Saint Rémy, Pétites et Grandes Tapes, and Maxe; and now, under cover of a thick fog, the French Marshal advanced his troops again and commenced a vigorous attempt, supported by a heavy artillery fire, for the recovery of the lost Ladonchamps. Failing in this, although possibly the attack might have been a blind, the general being such a thorough master of strategy, Bazaine made a dash for Pétites et Grandes Tapes, annihilating the foreposts and hurling great masses of men at their supports. Having occupied these villages, the French Marshal then sent forward a large body of troops to the right, close to the Moselle. These advanced up the valley against the German entrenchments on the heights until checked by cannon fire from batteries on both sides of the river, and were only finally stopped by an advance in force of two brigades of the Landwehr, the men of whom occupied a position just in front of Pétites et Grandes Tapes.

Amongst these latter troops was the regiment of our friend Fritz.

The fighting was terrific here.

Clouds of bullets came like hail upon the advancing men, reaping the ranks down as if with a scythe, while bursting shells cleared open spaces in their midst in a manner that was appalling; still, those in the rear pressed on to fill the places of the fallen, with a fierce roar of revenge, and the needle-gun answered the chassepôt as quickly as the combatants could put the cartridges into the breech-pieces and bring their rifles again to the “present.”

Fritz felt the frenzy of Gravelotte return to him as he gripped the sword which he now wielded in place of the musket; and, urging on his company, the men, scattering right and left in tirailleur formation were soon creeping up to the enemy, taking advantage of every little cover which the irregularities of the ground afforded.

Then, suddenly, right in front, could be seen a splendid line regiment of the French, advancing in column. A sheet of flame came from their levelled rifles, and the Fusilier battalion of the Landwehr regiment to the left of Fritz’s company were exterminated to a man, the enemy marching over their dead bodies with a shout of victory.

Their progress, however, was not to last.

“Close up there, men!” came the order from Fritz’s commanding officer; when the troops hurriedly formed up in a hollow which protected them for a moment from the galling fire. “Fix bayonets!”—and they awaited the still steady advance of the French until they appeared above the rising ground. “Fire, and aim low!” was the next order from the major; and then, “Charge!”

With a ringing cheer of “Vorwarts!” Fritz dashed onward at the head of the regiment, a couple of paces in front of his men, who with their sharp weapons extended in front like a fringe of steel, came on behind at the double.

Whiz, sang a bullet by his ear, but he did not mind that; crash, plunged a shell into the ground in front, tearing up a hole that he nearly fell into; when, jumping over this at the run, in another second he had crossed swords with one of the officers of the French battalion, who rushed out as eagerly to meet him.

They had not time, though, to exchange a couple of passes before a fragment of a bursting bomb carried away the French officer’s head, bespattering Fritz with the brains and almost making him reel with sickness; while, at the same moment, the men of the German regiment bore down the French line, scattering it like chaff, for the sturdy Hanoverians seemed like giants in their wrath, bayoneting every soul within reach!

This was only the beginning of it.

“On,” still “on,” was the cry; and, not until the lost villages were recaptured and the unfortunate German foreposts avenged did the advance cease.

But the struggle was fierce and terribly contested. Three several times did the Germans get possession of Pétites et Grandes Tapes, and three several times did the French drive them out again with their fearful mitrailleuse hail of fire; the bayonet settled it at last, in the hands of the northern legions, who had not forgotten the use of it since the days of Waterloo, nor, as it would appear, the French yet learnt to withstand it!

Beyond a slight touch from a passing bullet which had grazed his lower jaw, having the effect of rattling his teeth together, as if somebody had “chucked him under the chin,” Fritz had escaped without any serious wound up to the time that the French were beaten back after the third attempt to carry their positions; but then, as they turned to run and the Hanoverians pressed on in pursuit, he felt suddenly hit somewhere in the breast. A spasm of pain shivered through him as the missile seemed to rend its way through his vitals; and then, throwing up his arms, he fell across the corpse of a soldier who must have been shot almost immediately before him, for the body was quite warm to the touch.

How he was hurt he could not tell; he only knew that he was unable to stir, and that each breath of air he drew came fainter and fainter, as if it were his last.

He heard, from the retreating tramp of footsteps and distant shouts, that his regiment had moved on after the enemy; but, as he lay on his back, he could not see anything save the sky, while each moment some stray shot whistled by in the air or threw up earth over him, threatening to give him his finishing blow should the wound he had received not be sufficient to settle him.

Then, he felt thirsty, and longed to cry out for help; but, no sound came from his lips, while the exertion to speak caused such intolerable agony that he wished he could die at once and be put out of his misery. When charging the French battalion, he recollected putting his foot on the dead face of some victim of the fight, and he could recall the thrill of horror that passed through him as he had done this inadvertently; now, each instant he expected, too, to be trampled on in the same manner.

Ha! He could distinguish footsteps pressing the ground near. “Oh, mother!” he thought, “the end is coming now, for the fight must be drawing near again. I wish a shell or bullet would settle the matter!”

But the footsteps he imagined to be the tramp of marching men—on account of his ear being so close to the ground and thus, of course, magnifying the sound—were only those of the faithful Gelert, who with the instinct of a well-trained retriever was searching for his new-found friend. He had tracked his path over the valley from the advanced post which the regiment had occupied in the morning, and where the dog had been kept by Fritz to watch his camp equipments until he should return. Gelert evidently considered that he had waited long enough for duty’s sake; and, that, as his adopted master did not come to fetch him, he ought to start to seek for him instead, one good turn deserving another!

At the moment, therefore, when Fritz expected to have the remaining breath trampled out of him by a rush of opposing battalions across his poor prone body, he felt the dog licking his face, whining and whimpering in recognition and mad with joy at discovering him.

“Dear old Gelert, you brave, good doggie,” he ejaculated feebly, in panting whispers. “You’ll have to try and find a third master now!” and then, overcome by the effort, which taxed what little strength was left in him, he swooned away like a dead man—the last distinct impression he had being that of seeing a bright star twinkle out from the opal sky above him as he lay on the battlefield, which seemed to be winking and blinking at him as if beckoning him up to heaven!

His awakening was very different.

On coming to his consciousness again, he felt nice and warm and comfortable, just as if he were in bed; and, opening his eyes, he saw the sweet face of a young girl bending over him.

“I must be dreaming,” he murmured to himself lazily. He felt so utterly free from pain and at ease that he did not experience the slightest anxiety or perplexity to know where he was. He was perfectly satisfied to take what came. “I must be dreaming, or else I am dead, and this is one of the angels come to take me away!”

Chapter Seven.

Madaleine.

“I am glad you are better,” said a soft voice in liquid accents, so close to his ear that he felt the perfumed breath of the speaker wafted across his face.

Fritz stared with wide-opened eyes. “I’m glad you’re better,” repeated the voice; “you are better, are you not; you feel conscious, don’t you, and in your right senses?”

“Where am I?” at last said Fritz faintly.

“Here,” answered the girl, “with friends, who are attending to you. Do not fear, you shall be watched over with every care until you are quite well again.”

“Where is ‘here’?” whispered Fritz feebly again, smiling at his own quaint question.

The girl laughed gently in response to his smile. “You are at Mézières, not far from the battlefield where you fell. I discovered you there early yesterday morning.”

“You?” inquired Fritz, his eyes expressing his astonishment.

“Yes, I,” said the girl kindly; “and I was only too happy to be the means of finding you, and getting you removed to a place of safety; for, I’m afraid that if you had lain there much longer on the damp ground you would have died.”

“Oh!” interrupted Fritz as eagerly as his exhausted condition would allow; “I remember all now! I was wounded and lay there close to the battery; and then I saw the stars come out and thought—”

“Hush!” said the girl, “you must not speak any more now. You are too weak; I only spoke to you to find out whether you had regained consciousness or not.”

“But you must let me thank you. If it had not been—”

“No, I won’t allow another word,” she interposed authoritatively. “You will do yourself harm, and then I shall be accused of being a bad nurse! Besides, you haven’t got to thank me at all; it was the dog who made me see you.”

“What, Gelert,” whispered Fritz again, in spite of her admonition,—“dear old fellow!”

He had hardly uttered these words, when the faithful dog, who must have been close beside the bed, raised himself up, putting a paw on one of Fritz’s arms which lay outside the coverings and licking his hand, whining rapturously the while, as if rejoiced to hear the voice of his master again.

“‘Gelert!’” exclaimed the girl with some surprise. “Why, I know the dog perfectly, and he recognises me quite well; but he is called ‘Fritz,’ not ‘Gelert,’ as you said.”

“‘Fritz!’” ejaculated he, in his turn. “Why, that is my name!”

“Gracious me,” thought the girl to herself, “he is rambling again, and confusing his own name with that of the dog! I must put a stop to his speaking, or else he will get worse. Here, take this,” she said aloud, lifting to his lips a wineglass containing a composing draught which the doctor had left for her patient to take as soon as he showed any signs of recovery from his swoon, and which she really ought to have given him before; “it will do you good, and make you stronger.”

Fritz swallowed the potion unhesitatingly, immediately sinking back on his pillow in a quiet sleep; when the girl, sitting down by the side of the bed, watched the long-drawn, quivering respirations that came from the white, parted lips of the wounded man.

“Poor young fellow!” she said with a sigh; “I fear he will never get over it. I wonder where Armand is now, and how came this stranger to have possession of his dog! The funniest thing, too, is that ‘Fritz’ seems as much attached to this new master as he was to Armand, although he has not forgotten me. Have you, ‘Fritz,’ my beauty, eh?”

The retriever, in response, gave three impressive thumps with his bushy tail on the floor, as he lay at the girl’s feet by the side of the bed. He evidently answered to this other familiar appellation quite as readily as he had done to that of “Gelert,” being apparently on perfect terms of friendship, not to say intimacy, with the young lady who had just asked him so pertinent a question.

He certainly had not forgotten her. He would not have been a gallant dog if he had; nor would he have displayed that taste and wise discrimination which one would naturally have expected to find, in a well-bred dog of his particular class, for his interlocutor was a remarkably pretty girl—possessing the most lovely golden-hued hair and a pair of blue eyes that were almost turquoise in tint, albeit with a somewhat wistful, faraway look in them, especially now when she gazed down into the brown, honest orbs of the retriever, who was watching her every moment with faithful attention. She had, too, an unmistakeable air of refinement and culture, in spite of her being attired in a plainly made black stuff dress such as a servant might have worn, and having a sort of cap like those affected by nuns and sisters of charity drawn over her dainty little head, partly concealing its wealth of fair silky hair. No one would have dreamt of taking her to be anything else but a lady, no matter what costume she adopted, or how she was disguised.

“Who ever thought, dear doggie,” she continued, speaking the thoughts that surged up in her mind while addressing the dumb animal, who looked as if he would like to understand her if he only could,—“who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, ‘Fair Bingen on the Rhine,’ eh?” and she murmured to herself the refrain of that beautiful ballad.

The retriever gave a long sniff here to express his thorough sympathy with her, and the girl proceeded, musingly, thinking aloud.

“Yes, I mean, doggie, when Armand and I parted for the last time. Poor mamma was alive then, and we never dreamt that this terrible war would come to pass, severing us so completely! Poor Armand, he said he would be true and return to me again when he was old enough to be able to decide for himself without the consent of that stern father of his, who thought that the daughter of a poor German pastor was not good enough mate for his handsome son—although he was only a merchant, while my mother was a French countess in her own right. Still, parents have the right to settle these things, and I quite agreed with dear mamma that I would never consent to enter a family against their will, especially, too, when they despised our humble position!”

The girl drew herself up proudly as she said this.

“Never mind,” she went on again presently, “it is all over and done for. But, still, I believe Armand loved me. How handsome he looked that last time I saw him when he came to our little cottage to say good-bye, before he went to join his regiment in Algeria, where his father had got him ordered off on purpose to separate us. However, perhaps it was only a boy and girl affection at the best, and would never have lasted; my heart has not broken, I know, although I thought it would break then; for, alas! I have since seen sorrow enough to crush me down, even much more than parting with Armand de la Tour. Fancy, poor darling mamma gone to her grave, and I, her cherished child, forced to earn my bread as companion to this haughty old baroness, who thinks me like the dust under her feet! Ah, it is sad, is it not, doggie?”

The retriever sniffed again, while the blue eyes continued to look down upon him through a haze of tears; and then, the girl was silent for a time.

“Heigho, doggie,” she exclaimed, after a short pause of reflection, brushing away the tear drops from her cheeks and shaking her dainty little head as if she would fain banish all her painful imaginings with the action, “I must not repine at my lot, for the good Father above has taken care of me through all my adversity, giving me a comfortable home when I, an orphan, had none to look after me. And, the good baroness, too—she may be haughty, but then she is of a very noble family, and has been brought up like most German ladies of rank to look down upon her inferiors in position; besides, she is kind to me in her way. I am pleased that she took it into her head to come off here to seek for her son, and bring him presents from home in person. Nothing else would suit her, if you please, on his birthday, although the young baron, I think, was not over-delighted at his mother coming to hunt for him in war time, as if he were a little boy—he on the staff of the general! I fancy he got no little chaff from his brother officers in consequence. However, ‘it is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ for the good baroness being here has been seized with a freak for looking after the wounded, because the Princess of Alten-Schlossen goes in for that sort of thing; and thus it is, doggie, that I’m now attending to this poor fellow here. Though, how on earth Armand parted with you, and you became attached to this new master, whom you seem to love with such affection, I’m sure I cannot tell!”

Fritz at this moment turned in the little pallet bed on which he was lying, and in an instant the girl was up from her seat and bending over him.

“Restless?” she said, smoothing the pillows and laying her cool hand on the hot brow of her patient, who gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction in his sleep. “Ah! you’ll be better bye-and-bye. Then, you will wake up refreshed and have some nourishment; and then, too, you’ll be able to tell me all about yourself and master doggie here, eh?”

But, it was many days before poor Fritz was in a condition to offer any explanation about the dog—many days, when the possibility was trembling in the balance of fate as to whether he would ever speak again, or be silent for aye in this world!

When he woke up, he was delirious; and the doctor, a grave German surgeon of middle age, on coming into the room to examine him, when making the rounds of the house—a villa in the suburbs of Mézières, which had been transformed into a sort of field hospital for the most dangerous cases in the vicinity—declared Fritz to be in a very critical state. His life, he said, was in serious peril, a change having taken place for the worse.

He had been struck by a chassepot conical rifle bullet in the chest; and the ball, after breaking two of his ribs and slightly grazing the lungs, had lodged near the spine, where it yet remained, the wounded man being too prostrate for an operation to be performed for its extraction, although all the while it was intensifying the pain and adding to the feverish symptoms of the patient.

“You’ve not been allowing him to talk, have you?” asked the surgeon, scanning the girl’s face with a stern professional glance.

“No,” she replied, blushing slightly under his gaze; “that is, he wanted to, an hour ago, when he became conscious, but I gave him the sleeping draught you ordered at once.”

“Donnerwetter!” exclaimed the other. “The potion then has done him harm instead of good. I thought it would have composed him and made him comfortable for the operation, as, until that bullet is taken out he can’t possibly get well. However, he must now be kept as quiet as possible. Put a bandage on his head and make it constantly cool with cold water. I will return bye-and-bye, and then we’ll see about cutting out the ball.”

The surgeon then went out softly from the room, leaving the girl to attend to his directions, which she proceeded to do at once; shuddering the while at what she knew her poor patient would have to undergo, when the disciple of Aesculapius came back anon, with his myrmidons and their murderous-looking surgical knives and forceps, to hack and hew away at Fritz in their search for the bullet buried in his chest—he utterly oblivious either of his surroundings or what was in store for him, tossing in the bed under her eyes and rambling in his mind. He fancied himself still on the battlefield in the thick of the fight:— “Vorwarts, my children!” he muttered. “One more charge and the battery is won. Pouf! that shell had a narrow squeak of spoiling my new helmet. The gunner will have to take better aim next time!” Then he would shudder all over, and cry out in piteous tones, “Take it away, take it away—the blood is all over my face; and his body, oh, it is pressing me down into that yawning open grave! Will no one save me? It is terrible, terrible to be buried alive, and the pale stars twinkling down on my agony!” Presently, however, the cold applications to his head had their effect, and he sank down into a torpid sleep, only to start up again in the ravings of delirium a few moments afterwards.

Fritz continued in this state for hours, with intervals of quiet, during which his nurse, by the doctor’s orders, administered beef tea and other nourishment which sustained the struggle going on in his sinking frame; until, at last, the ball was extracted, after an operation which was so prolonged that the girl, who felt almost as if she were undergoing it herself, thought it would never end.

Then came the worst stage for the sufferer. Fever supervened; and, although the wound began to heal up, his physical condition grew weaker every day under the tearing strain his constitution was subjected to.

Even the doctor gave him up; but the girl, who had attended to him with the most unwearying assiduity had hopes to the last.

Fritz had been unconscious from the time that he first recognised the dog, on the evening after he was wounded and found himself in the villa, until the fever left him, when he was so weak that he was unable to lift a finger and seemed at the very gates of death.

Now, however, his senses returned to him, and a glad look came into his eyes on seeing, like as he did before and now remembered, the face of the beautiful girl bending over him again; but he noticed that she did not look so bright as when he first beheld her.

“Ah!” he exclaimed feebly, “it was not a dream! How long have I been ill?”

“More than a fortnight,” said the girl promptly.

“Oh, my poor mother!” ejaculated Fritz with a sob, “she will have thought me dead, and broken her heart!”

“Don’t fear that,” said she kindly. “I wrote to her, telling her you were badly hurt, but that you were in good hands.”

“You! Why, how did you know her name, or where she lived?”

“I found the address in your pocket,” answered the girl with a laugh. “Don’t you recollect putting a slip of paper there, telling any one, in case you were wounded or killed, to write and break the news gently to your mother, ‘madame Dort, Gulden Strasse, Lubeck’? I never heard before of such a thoughtful son!”

“Ah, I remember now,” said Fritz; “and you wrote, then, to her?”

“Yes, last week, when we despaired of your recovery; but, I have written again since, telling her that the bullet has been removed from your wound, and that if you get over the fever you will recover all right.”

“Thank you, and thank God!” exclaimed Fritz fervently, and he shut his eyes and remained quiet for a minute or two, although his lips moved as if in prayer.

“And where is Gelert, my dog?” he asked presently.

“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” said the girl, smiling.

“No, that is my name, the dog’s is Gelert.”

“That is what I want explained,” said the other.

“But, please pardon my rudeness, Fraulein,” interrupted Fritz, “may I ask to whom I am indebted for watching over me, and adding to it the thoughtful kindness of relieving my mother’s misery?”

“My name is Madaleine Vogelstein,” said the girl softly. “Do you like it?”

“I do; it is a very pretty one,” he replied. “The surname is German, but the given name is French—Madaleine? It sounds sweeter than would be thought possible in our guttural Teuton tongue!”

“My mother was a Frenchwoman, and I take the name from her,” explained the girl. “But now, before I stop you from talking any more, for the good doctor would blame me much if he came in, you must tell me how you came to possess that dog; or, rather, why he so faithfully attached himself to you, as it was entirely through him that I found you, and got you picked up by the ambulance corps and brought here. You must first take this soup, however, to strengthen you. It has been kept nice and warm on that little lamp there, and it will do you good. I won’t hear a word more until you have swallowed it!”

“A soldier should always obey the orders of his commanding officer,” said Fritz with a smile, as he slowly gulped down the broth, spoonful by spoonful, as Madaleine placed it in his mouth, for he could not feed himself.

“That will do,” she remarked, when he had taken what she thought sufficient. “And now you can tell me about the dog. Here he is,” she continued, as the retriever came into the room; and, going up to the side of the bed where Fritz was lying, put up his paws on the counterpane and licked his master’s face, in the wildest joy, apparently, at his recovery and notice of him. “He must have heard his name spoken, as I only just sent him out for a run with one of the men, for all the time you were so ill we could not get him to leave the room. Now, doggie, lie down like a good fellow, and let us hear all about you.”

The retriever at once obeyed the girl, stretching himself on the floor at her feet, although close beside his master all the while.

Fritz then narrated the sad little episode of the battle of Gravelotte, and how he had found the dead body of the French officer with the dog keeping guard over it.

The girl wept silently as he went on.

“It must have been poor Armand,” she said presently through her tears. “Did you find nothing about him to tell who he was?”

“There was a little bag I saw round his neck,” said Fritz; “I took it off the poor fellow before we buried him, and suspended it on my own breast afterwards for security, thinking that I might restore it some day to his friends, if I ever came across them.”

“Ah, that must be the little packet which got driven into your wound, and, stopping the flow of blood, saved your life, the doctor says. I have kept it carefully for you, and here it is,” cried the girl, hastily jumping up from her seat and bringing the article in question to Fritz.

“Open it,” he said; “I haven’t got the strength to do it, you know.”

Madaleine unfastened the silken string that confined the mouth of the bag, now stained with Fritz’s blood; and then she pulled out the little silver ring it contained.

One glance was enough for her.

“Yes,” she faltered through her sobs. “It is the ring I gave him; but that was months before the date engraved upon it, ‘July 18th, 1870,’ which was the day he said he would come back to Bingen, as then he would be of age.”

“And he never came, then?” inquired Fritz.

“No, never again,” said she mournfully.

“Ah, I would come if I had been in his place,” exclaimed Fritz eagerly, with a flashing eye. “I never fail in an appointment I promise to keep; and to fail to meet a betrothed—why it is unpardonable!”

He had raised his voice from the whisper in which he had previously spoken, and its indignant tone seemed quite loud.

“Perhaps he couldn’t come,” said Madaleine more composedly. “Besides, we were not engaged; all was over between us.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” replied Fritz. “It would have been dastardly on his part otherwise! But, would you like to keep the dog for his sake, Fraulein Vogelstein? I have got no claim to him, you know.”

“Oh dear no, I would not like to deprive you of him for the world, much as I love the poor faithful fellow. Why, he would think nobody was his proper master if he were constantly changing hands like this!”

“Poor old Gelert!” said Fritz; and the dog, hearing himself talked about, here raised himself up again from his recumbent attitude by the side of the bed and thrust his black nose into the hand of his master, who tried feebly to caress him.

“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” corrected Miss Madaleine, determined to have her point about his right name.

“Well, if you call him so, I shall think you mean me,” said Fritz jokingly, as well as his feeble utterance would permit his voice to be expressive. He wanted, however, to imply much more than the mere words.

“That would not be any great harm, would it?” she replied with a little smile, her tears of sorrow at Armand de la Tour’s untimely fate having dried up as quickly as raindrops disappear after a shower as soon as the sun shines out again; however, she apparently now thought the conversation was becoming a little too personal, for she proceeded to ply the invalid with more soup in order to stop his mouth and prevent him from replying to this last speech of hers!

Chapter Eight.

The “Little Fat Man.”

“Hullo! What fails with the well-born and most worthy lady, her to make in such pitiable plight?” inquired Burgher Jans, poking his little round face into the parlour of the house in the Gulden Strasse, just as Lorischen, bending over her mistress, was endeavouring to raise her on to the sofa, where she would be better enabled to apply restoratives in order to bring her to.

The old nurse was glad of any assistance in the emergency; and, even the fat little Burgher, disliked as he was by her, as a rule, with an inveterate hatred, was better than nobody!

“Madame has fainted,” she said. “Help me to lift her up, and I’ll be obliged to you, worshipful Herr.”

“Yes, so, right gladly will I do it, dearest maiden,” replied Burgher Jans politely, with his usual sweeping bow, taking off his hat and depositing it on an adjacent chair, while he lent a hand to raise the poor lady and place her on the couch.

This done, he espied the letter that had caused the commotion, which Madame Dort still held tightly clutched in her hand when she fell; and he tried to pull it away from her rigid fingers. “Ha, what have we here?” he said.

“You just leave that alone!” snapped out Lorischen. “Pray take yourself off, with your wanting to spy into other people’s business! If I were a man I’d be ashamed of being so curious, I would. Burgher Jans, I’ll thank you to withdraw; I wish to attend to my mistress.”

“I will obey your behests, dearest maiden,” blandly replied the little man, taking his hat from the chair and backing towards the door, although casting the while most covetous eyes on the mysterious letter, which he would have cheerfully given a thaler to have been allowed to peruse. “I will return anon to inquire how the gracious lady is after her indisposition, and—”

“If you are not out of the room before I count five,” exclaimed the old nurse, angrily interrupting him, “I declare I’ll pitch this footstool at your little round turnip-top of a head, that I will. One—two—three—”

“Why, whatever is the matter, Lorischen?” interposed Madame Dort, opening her eyes at this juncture, while the old nurse yet stood with the footstool raised in her uplifted hands facing the door, half in and half out of which peered the tortoise-shell spectacles of the little fat burgher. “Who is there?”

The poor lady spoke very faintly, and did not seem to know where she was at first, her gaze wandering round the room.

Lorischen quickly put down the heavy missile with which she was threatening Burgher Jans; and he, taking advantage of this suspension of hostilities, at once advanced again within the apartment, although still keeping his hand on the door so as to be ready to beat a retreat in a fresh emergency, should the old nurse attempt to renew the interrupted fray.

“High, well-born, and most gracious madame,” said he obsequiously. “It is me, only me!”

“Hein!” grunted Lorischen. “A nice ‘me’ it is—a little, inquisitive, meddlesome morsel of a man!”

“Oh, Meinherr Burgher Jans,” said Madame Dort, rising up from the sofa. “I’m glad to see you; I wanted to ask you something. I—”

Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of which she had been for the time oblivious.

“Ah, poor Fritz!” she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping. “My son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!”

“Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?” said Burgher Jans, abandoning his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room. “No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?”

“Read,” said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him; “read for yourself and see.”

His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained—and which he had been all along burning with curiosity to find out.

Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.

“There, just see that!” she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to snatch the letter away from him—when, perhaps, she would have expressed her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher’s beaming face: “there, I wouldn’t have let him see it if he had gone down on his bended knees for it—no, not if I had died first!”

The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter, as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word—he took so long over it.

“Ah, it is bad, gracious lady,” he said at length; “but, still, not so bad as it might otherwise be.”

Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him stop speaking.

The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height—just five feet one inch!

“The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,—and you, dearest maiden,” he proceeded—with a special bow to Lorischen, which the latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly drawn spinster lips—“that the young and well-born Herr is merely grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is—he is—he is—”

“Why don’t you say ‘dead’ at once, and not beat about the bush in that stupid way?” interposed the old nurse, who detested the little man’s hemming and hawing over matters which she was in the habit of blurting out roughly without demur.

“No, I like not the ugly word,” suavely expostulated the Burgher. “The great-to-come-for-all-of-us can be better expressed than that! But, to resume my argument, dearest maiden and most gracious lady, this document does not state that the dear son of the house has shaken off this mortal coil entirely as yet.”

“I’d like to shake off yours, and you with it!” said Lorischen angrily, under her breath—“for a word-weaving, pedantic little fool!”

“You mean that there is hope?” asked Madame Dort, looking a bit less tearful, her grief having nearly exhausted itself.

“Most decidedly, dear lady,” said the Burgher. “Does not the letter say so in plain and very-much-nicely-written characters?”

“But, all such painful communications are generally worded, if the writers have a tender heart, so as to break bad news as gently as possible,” answered the widow, wishing to have the faint sanguine suspicion of hope that was stealing over her confirmed by the other’s opinion.

“Just so,” said Burgher Jans authoritatively. “You have reason in your statement; still, dear lady, by what I can gather from this letter, I should think that the Frau or Fraulein Vogelstein who signs it wishes to prepare you for the worst, but yet intimates at the same time that there is room to hope for the best.”

“Ah, I’m glad you say so,” exclaimed the widow joyfully. “Now I read it over, I believe the same; but at first, I thought, in my hurried glance over it, that Fritz was slain, the writer only pretending he was still alive, in order to prepare me for his loss. He is not dead, thank God! That is everything; for, whilst there is life, there’s hope, eh?”

“Most decidedly, gracious lady,” responded the little man with effusion. “If ever I under the down-pressing weight of despondency lie, so I unto myself much comfort make by that happy consolation!”

Madame Dort experienced such relief from the cheering aspect in which the Burgher’s explanation had enabled her now to look upon the news of Fritz’s wound, that her natural feelings of hospitality, which had been dormant for the while, asserted themselves in favour of her timely visitor, who in spite of his curiosity had certainly done her much good in banishing all the ill effects of her fainting fit.

“Will you not have a glass of lager, Herr Jans?” said she.

“Mein Gott, yes,” promptly returned the little man. “Much talking makes one dry, and beer is good for the stomach.”

“Lorischen, get the Burgher some lager bier,” ordered Madame Dort, on her invitation being accepted, the old nurse proceeding to execute the command with very ill grace.

“The Lord only knows when he’ll leave now, once he starts guzzling beer in the parlour! That Burgher Jans is getting to be a positive nuisance to us; and I shall be glad when our poor wounded Fritz comes home, if only to stop his coming here so frequently—the gossipping little time-server, with his bowing and scraping and calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed—I’d ‘maiden’ him if I had the chance!”

Lorischen was much exasperated, and so she grumbled to herself as she sallied out of the room.

However, much to her relief, the “fat little man” did not make a long stay on this occasion, for he took his leave soon after swallowing the beer. He was anxious to make a round of visits amongst his acquaintances, to retail the news that Fritz was wounded and lying in a hospital at Mézières, near Metz, for he had read it himself in the letter, you know! He likewise informed his hearers, although he had not so impressed the widow, that they would probably never see the young clerk of Herr Grosschnapper again in Lubeck, as his case was so desperate that he was not expected to live! His story otherwise, probably, would have been far less interesting to scandal-mongers, as they would have thus lost the opportunity of settling all the affairs of the widow and considering whom she would marry again. Of course, they now decided, that, as she had as good as lost both her sons and had a nice little property of her own, besides being comparatively not old, so to speak, and not very plain, she would naturally seek another partner to console herself in her solitude—Burgher Jans getting much quizzed on this point, with sly allusions as to his being the widow’s best friend!

Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein’s first letter, Madame Dort received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her son’s wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate; although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.

The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in Mouser’s prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to negative the fat little man’s praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine’s original communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped inquiry—“Any news yet?” until the field post brought the next despatch, when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him to read.

“He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!” Lorischen would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man’s pertinacity in visiting her. “Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!”

“Oh, Lorischen!” Madame Dort would remonstrate. “How can you say such things?”

“It is ‘Oh, mistress!’ it strikes me,” the other would retort. “I wish the young master were only here!”

“And so do I heartily,” said Madame Dort, at the end of one of these daily skirmishes between the two on the same subject. “We agree on that point, at all events!” and she sighed heavily. The old servant was so privileged a person that she did not like to speak harshly to her, although she did not at all relish Lorischen’s frequent allusions as to the real object of the Burgher’s visits, and her surmises as to what the neighbours would think about them. Madame Dort put up with Lorischen’s innuendoes in silence, but still, she did not look pleased.

“Ach Himmel, dear mistress!” pleaded the offender, “never mind my waspish old tongue. I am always saying what I shouldn’t; but that little fat man does irritate me with his hypocritical, oily smile and smooth way—calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed!”

“Why, don’t you see, Lorischen, that it is you really whom he comes here after, although you treat him so cruelly!” said the widow, smiling.

This was more than the old spinster could bear.

“What, me!” she exclaimed, with withering scorn. “Himmel, if I thought that, I would soon scratch his chubby face for him—me, indeed!” and she retreated from the room in high dudgeon.

Bye-and-bye, there came another letter from the now familiar correspondent, saying that Fritz was really recovering at last; and, oh what happiness! the mother’s heart was rejoiced by the sight of a few awkwardly scrawled lines at the end. It was a postscript from her son himself!

The almost indecipherable words were only “Love to Mutterchen, from her own Fritz,” but they were more precious to her than the lengthiest epistle from any one else.

“Any news?” asked Burgher Jans of Lorischen soon afterwards, when he came to the house to make his stereotyped inquiry.

“Yes,” said the old nurse, instead of replying with her usual negative.

“Indeed!” exclaimed the little man. “The noble, well-born young Herr is not worse, I hope?” and he tried to hide his abnormally bland expression with a sympathetic look of deep concern; but he failed miserably in the attempt. His full-moon face could not help beaming with a self-satisfied complacency which it was impossible to subdue; indeed, he would have been unable to disguise this appearance of smiling, even if he had been at a funeral and was, mentally, plunged in the deepest woe—if that were possible for him to be!

“No, not worse,” answered Lorischen. “He is—”

“Not dead, I trust?” said Burgher Jans, interrupting her before she could finish her sentence, and using in his hurry the very word to which he had objected before.

“No, he is not dead,” retorted the old nurse, with a triumphant ring in her voice. “And, if you were expecting that, I only hope you are disappointed, that’s all! He is getting better, for he has written to the mistress himself; and, what is more, he’s coming home to send you to the right-about, Burgher Jans, and stop your coming here any more. Do you hear that, eh?”

“My dearest maiden,” commenced to stammer out the little fat man, woefully taken aback by this outburst, “I—I—don’t know what you mean.”

“Ah, but I do,” returned Lorischen, not feeling any the more amiably disposed towards him by his addressing her in that way after what Madame Dort had said about his calling especially to see her. “I know what I mean; and what I mean to say now, is, that my mistress told me to say she was engaged when you came, should you call to-day, and that she is unable to see you, there! Good-morning, Burgher Jans; good-morning, most worshipful Herr!”

So saying, she slammed the door in the poor little man’s face, leaving him without, cogitating the reason for this summary dismissal of him by the widow; albeit Lorischen, in order to indulge her own feelings of dislike, had somewhat exaggerated a casual remark made by her mistress—that she did not wish to be interrupted after the receipt of the good news about Fritz, as she wanted to answer the letter at once!

Chapter Nine.

A Mutual Understanding!

“Do you know what is going on to-day?” said Madaleine Vogelstein to her patient, a couple of days after she had aided him to scrawl that postscript to her letter to his mother in his own handwriting, when he had so far recovered that he might be said to be almost convalescent. “No, what—anything important?” he replied, answering her question in questionable fashion by asking another.

“Guess,” said she teasingly, holding up her finger. “I’m sure I can’t.”

“The capitulation of Metz!” she said slowly with some emphasis, marking the importance of the news she was telling.

“Never—it can’t be!” ejaculated Fritz, making an effort to spring up in the pallet bed on which he was still lying, but falling back with a groan on finding himself too weak. “What an unlucky beggar I am!”

“Lie still,” said she, putting her hand gently on his, which was outside the quilt. “You must keep quiet, or you’ll never get better, so as to be able to stand up and walk about again—no, you won’t, if you try to hurry matters now.”

“That’s more than the French have done if they’ve only just given in! Is it true, though? Perhaps you’ve only heard a rumour, for there are always such false reports flying about. Why, in the camp it used to be the current cry every morning, after we began the siege, that Metz had fallen.”

“It is true enough now, I can tell you,” said Madaleine. “The whole French army commanded by Bazaine has capitulated, and the Germans have marched in and taken possession of the fortress.”

“I must believe you; but, is it not aggravating that this should just happen when I am invalided here, and not able to take part in the final triumph? It is rather hard lines, after serving so long in the trenches all during our wearisome environment, not to have had the satisfaction in the end of being a witness to the surrender!”

“It’s the fortune of war,” said she soothingly, noticing how bitterly Fritz spoke. “Although all may fight bravely, it is not every one who reaps the laurels of victory.”

“No,” he replied, smiling at some thoughts which her words suggested—so much is dry humour allied to sentiment that the mention of laurels brought to his mind a comic association which at once dispelled his chagrin. “When did you say the capitulation took place?”

“Well, I heard that the formal agreement was signed by the French officers on behalf of Marshal Bazaine two days ago; but the actual surrender takes place to-day, the Marshal having already left, it is said, to join his imprisoned emperor at Cassel.”

What Madaleine told Fritz was perfectly true.

On the 27th of October, the seventieth day after it had been driven under the guns of Metz on the disastrous termination of the battle of Gravelotte, Bazaine’s army, in addition to the regular garrison of the fortress and an unknown number of Gardes Mobiles, was forced to surrender to the Germans—thus now allowing the latter to utilise the giant legions hitherto employed in investing the stronghold of Lorraine, in further trampling out the last evidences of organised resistance in France, and so, by coercing the country, sooner put an end to the duration of the war.

Notwithstanding all the comments made—especially those by his own countrymen in their unreasoning prejudice against every one and everything connected with the late empire, from its unfortunate and much-maligned head downwards—in the matter of this capitulation, and on Marshal Bazaine’s conduct, it is absolutely certain that he held out as long as it was possible to do so. Indeed, it is a surprising fact that his provisions lasted such a length of time; and it would be a cause for sorrow to believe that the brave defender of Metz was in any way stained by the crime of “treachery” as his act was stigmatised by the demagogues of Paris. Those who assert that a clever commander ought somehow or other to have made his escape from the place, do not take into consideration the strength of the investing force, which comprised the united armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz—more than two hundred and fifty thousand men, in addition to their reserves, all capable of being concentrated at any given point where an attack was anticipated, and protected, besides, by entrenched lines of great strength. Nor do these biassed critics consider the ruin that must have fallen on Bazaine’s army, even if it had succeeded in cutting its way through the ranks of the besiegers, as the general tried gallantly, but unsuccessfully, to do on more than one occasion, besides making numerous sorties. It is apparent to most unprejudiced minds now, at this distance of time from the momentous epoch of the struggle between the two nations, that the Marshal, in his situation, accomplished all that could have been expected in detaining for such a length of time a huge German army nearly on the frontier, thus giving the invaded country breathing time to collect its resources for just so long a period. The fact is, that when an army like that of Bazaine’s is severed from its communications and supplies, its surrender can only be a question of time; and, therefore, unparalleled as is the capitulation of Metz in modern history, the unprecedented catastrophe—can be fully accounted for on military grounds.

“I’m sorry I missed the sight,” said Fritz presently, after thinking over the news. “It would have been some fair return for all that bitter night work I had in the trenches before I was wounded. Still, I’m glad it’s all ended now, for my corps will be able to march onward on Paris like the rest.”

“That will not benefit you much, my poor friend,” remarked Madaleine sympathisingly. “I’m afraid it will be some time before you will be strong enough to move from this room, although you’re improving each day.”

“Oh, will it?” said Fritz triumphantly; “that’s all you know about it, young lady! Why, Doctor Carl said this morning that he thought I would be able to report myself fit for duty in another week.”

“I suppose you’ll rejoice to get back to your friends and comrades in the regiment? You must find it miserable and dull enough in this place!”

“No, not quite that. I’ve been very happy and comfortable here the last few days; and I shall never forget all your kindness and care of me—no, never!”

“Don’t speak of that, pray; it’s only what any one else would have done in my place. Besides,” she added demurely, “you know that in attending to you as a wounded soldier, I have only been carrying out the orders of the baroness, my employer.”

“Hang the fussy old thing!” said Fritz impatiently trying to shrug his shoulders. He had had the honour of one interview with Madaleine’s distinguished patroness, and did not crave for another; for, she had a good deal of that old-fashioned, starched formality which the German nobility affect, mixed up with a fidgety, condescending, patronising manner which much annoyed the generous-minded young fellow. He burned with indignation all the time the visit of the old lady to him had lasted, for she ordered Madaleine to do this and corrected her for doing that, in, as he thought, the rudest manner possible. Her exquisitely dignified patronage of himself, as a species of inferior animal, who, being in pain and distress, she was bound in common charity to take some notice of, caused him no umbrage whatever; but it annoyed him to see a gentle, ladylike girl like Madaleine subjected to the whims and caprices of an old woman, who, in spite of her high birth, was naturally vulgar and inconsiderate. “Hang the fussy old thing!” he repeated, with considerable heat. “I wish you had nothing to do with her. I’m sure she would drive me mad in a day if I were constantly associated with her!”

“Ah, dear friend, beggars mustn’t be choosers,” said Madaleine sadly. “You forget my position, in your kind zeal on my behalf! A poor orphan girl such as I, left friendless and penniless, ought to be glad to be under the protection of so grand a lady as the Baroness Stolzenkop. She is kind to me, too, in her way.”

“But, what a way!” interposed Fritz angrily. “I wouldn’t speak to a dog in that fashion.”

“You are different.”

“I should hope so, indeed!”

“Besides, Herr Fritz, remember, that if it hadn’t been for this old lady, of whom you speak in such disrespectful terms, I should never have come here to Mézières and been able to nurse you.”

“I forgot for the moment, Fraulein. My blessing on the old catamaran for the fancy that seized her, so auspiciously, to go touring on the trail of the war and thus to bring you here. I don’t believe I would have lived, if it had not been for your care and kindness!”

“Meinherr, you exaggerate. It is to your own good constitution and to Providence that your thanks are due; I have only been a simple means towards that happy end.”

“Well, I shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you’ve done for me and her.”

“I should like to see her,” said Madaleine; “she must be a kind, good lady, from her letters to you.”

“And the fondest mother in the world!” exclaimed Fritz with enthusiasm. “But, you will see her—some day,” he added after a pause. “I vow that you shall.”

“I don’t know how that will be,” said Madaleine, half laughing in a constrained fashion, as if wishing to conceal her real feelings. “In a week or two you will be off to the wars again and forget me—like a true soldier!”

“Stay,” interposed Fritz, interrupting her. “You have no right to say that! Do you think me so ungrateful? You must have a very bad opinion of me! I—”

“Never mind explanations now,” interrupted the girl in her turn, speaking hurriedly in a nervous way, although trying to laugh the matter off as a joke. “If the doctor says you can soon report yourself as fit for duty, of course you’ll have to rejoin your regiment.”

“Ah, I wonder where that is now?” said Fritz musingly. “Since our camp round Metz is broken up, the army will naturally march on farther into the interior. No matter, there’s no good my worrying myself about it. They’ll soon let me know where I’ve got to go to join them; for, the powers that be do not allow any shirking of duty in the ranks, from the highest to the lowest!”

“I saw that here,” remarked Madaleine. “The baroness wanted to get her son to return home with her; but she was told that, if he were allowed to go he could never come back to the army, as his reputation for courage would be settled for ever.”

“Yes, that would be the case, true enough. Hev would be thought to have shown the white feather! But, about your movements, Fraulein Madaleine—the baroness is not going to remain here long, is she?”

“No; she spoke this morning about going away. She said that, as the siege of Metz was raised, and the greater portion of the wounded men would be removed to Germany, along with the prisoners of war, she thought she would go back home—to Darmstadt, that is.”

“And there you will stop, I suppose?” asked Fritz.

“Until she has a whim to go somewhere else!” replied Madaleine.

“May I write to you there?”

“I will be glad to hear of your welfare,” answered she discreetly, a slight colour mantling to her cheeks. “Of course, you have been my patient; and, like a good nurse, I should like to know that you were getting on well, without any relapse.”

“I will write to you, then,” said Fritz in those firm, ringing tones of his that clearly intimated he had made a promise which he intended to keep. “And you, I hope, will answer my letters?”

“When I can,” replied the girl; “that is, you know, if the Baroness Stolzenkop does not object.”

“Bother the Baroness Stolzenkop!” said he energetically, and he stretched out his hand to her with a smile. “Promise to write to me,” he repeated.

Madaleine did not say anything; but she returned his smile, and he could feel a slight pressure of her fingers on his, so with this he was perfectly contented for the while.

“Ah, when the war is over!” he exclaimed presently, after a moment’s silence between the two, which expressed more than words would have done perhaps. “Ah, when the war is over!”

“Eh, what?” said the doctor, coming in unexpectedly at that instant and catching the last words.

“I—I—said,” explained Fritz rather confusedly, “that when the war was over, I’d be glad to get home again to my mother and those dear to me;” and he looked at Madaleine as he spoke meaningly.

“Eh, what?” repeated the doctor. “But, the war isn’t over yet, my worthy young lieutenant, and I hope we’ll patch you up so as to be able to play a good part in it still for the Fatherland!”

“I hope so, Herr Doctor,” answered Fritz. “I’ve no desire yet to be laid on the shelf while laurels and promotion are to be won.”

“Just so, that is good; and how do you feel this afternoon, eh?”

“Much better.”

“Ah yes, so I see! You will go on improving, if you take plenty of food. I bet that in a week’s time I shall be able to turn you out of these nice quarters here.”

So saying, the surgeon bustled out of the room, with a kind nod to his patient and a bow to Madaleine, who was shortly afterwards summoned by a servant to the baroness—the footman telling her that her ladyship requested her presence at once.

She returned later on, but it was only for a very brief interval, to say good-bye. The Princess of Alten-Schlossen, she said, was about to leave Mézières immediately for Germany, and the baroness could not think of staying behind, even for the charitable consideration of nursing any more wounded, if the exalted lady, whose actions traced the pattern for her own conduct, thought fit to go away! Madaleine, therefore, had orders to pack up all the old dowager’s numerous belongings, being also given permission to make any arrangements she pleased for the poor fellows who remained in the villa, in order to have them handed over to the regular authorities, now that this amateur ambulance of the baroness was going to abandon its voluntary labours.

“It’s a shame,” said Madaleine indignantly. “It is like putting one’s hand to the plough and then turning back!”

“Never mind, Fraulein, do not fret yourself,” interposed Fritz. “The old lady has done some good by starting this hospital here, even if she did it in imitation of the Princess; and, although she may now give it up, it will be carried on all right by others, you see if it won’t! As I am getting well, too, and will have to go, as the doctor says; why, I shall not regret it as I should otherwise have done.”

“Oh, you selfish fellow!” said she, smiling. “Now you have been attended to and nursed into convalescence, you do not care what becomes of those who may come after you!”

“Not quite so bad as that,” replied Fritz; “only, as I shall be away serving with my regiment, I should prefer to think of you ensconced in the quiet security of the baroness’ castle on the Rhine, to being here amidst the excitement of the war and in the very thick of bands of stragglers to and from the front.”

“Especially since I would lose your valuable protection!” laughed Madaleine.

“Ah, wait till I get up and am strong!” said Fritz. “When you see me again, I promise to be able to protect you.”

“Aye, when!” repeated the girl with a sigh. “However, I must say good-bye now, Herr Lieutenant I have told our man Hans, whom the baroness leaves behind, to see that you want for nothing until you shall be able to attend to yourself. I’m sorry you’ll have no female nurse now to look after you.”

“I wouldn’t let another woman come near me after you go!” exclaimed Fritz impulsively. “Mind, you have promised to write to me, you know.”

“Yes,” said she, “I will answer your letters; and now, good-bye! Don’t forget me quite when you get amongst the gay ladies of Paris, who will quite eclipse your little German nurse!”

“Never!” he ejaculated. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” and he pressed her hand to his lips, looking up into her eyes.

“Good-bye!” said she in a husky voice, turning away; when the dog, which had been lying down in his usual place by his master’s bedside, started up, “Good-bye you, too, my darling ‘Fritz’!” she added, throwing her arms round the retriever’s neck and kissing his smooth black head; “I nearly forgot you, dearest doggie, I do declare!”

“Heavens!” exclaimed the other Fritz, mortally jealous of his dog for the moment, “I wish you would only say farewell to me like that!”

Madaleine blushed a celestial rosy red.

But “Auf wiedersehen!” was all she said, as she left the room with a speaking glance from her violet eyes; and, towards the evening, from the confused bustling about which he heard going on within the villa, and the sound of carriage wheels without driving off, Fritz knew that the Baroness Stolzenkop and her party—amongst whom, of course, was Madaleine—had quitted Mézières, on their way back to the banks of the Rhine.

Chapter Ten.

On the Move again.

“I wonder if she cares about that French fellow still?” thought Fritz to himself when Madaleine had gone. “I don’t believe she could have felt for him much, from the manner in which she listened when I told her of his death and the way she looked at that ring. Himmel! Would she receive the news of my being shot in the same fashion, I wonder?”

Fritz, however, could not settle this momentous question satisfactorily to his own mind just then; so he had, consequently, to leave the matter to be decided at that blissful period when everybody thought that “everything would come straight”—the period to which he had alluded at the interesting instant when his slightly confidential conversation with Madaleine was so inopportunely interrupted by the maladroit entrance of Doctor Carl. In other words, “when the war should be over!” But, as the worthy disciple of Aesculapius had sapiently remarked on the occasion of his accidental interference with what might have been otherwise a mutual understanding between the two, the war was not over yet. The halcyon time had not arrived for the sword to be beaten into a ploughshare, nor did there seem much prospect of such a happy contingency in the near immediate future; for, although the contest had already lasted three months—during which a series of terrible engagements had invariably resulted in the defeat of the French—from the commencement of the campaign to the capitulation of Metz, each crushing disaster only seemed to have the effect of nerving the Gallic race to fresh resistance and so prolong the struggle. Indeed, at the beginning of November, 1870, with Paris laughing the idea of a siege to scorn and new armies being rapidly organised, in the north at Saint Quentin, in the west at Havre, and in the south at Orleans, the end of the war appeared as far off as ever!

Fritz missed the attentions of his unwearying little nurse much, and his convalescence did not progress so rapidly in consequence; but one morning, some three weeks after the departure of the party of the baroness’ from Mézières, he was agreeably surprised by Doctor Carl giving him permission to rejoin his corps.

“I don’t quite think you exactly strong enough yet, you know; but I’ve received orders to clear out the hospitals here, sending forward all such as are fit to their respective regiments, while those not sufficiently recovered I am to invalid to Germany. Now, which is it to be, Herr Lieutenant? I candidly don’t believe you’re quite up to the mark for campaigning again yet; but still, perhaps, you would not like being put on the shelf, and no doubt you’d gain strength from the change of air as you moved on with the army. Which course will you select, Herr Lieutenant? I give you the choice.”

“To rejoin my regiment, certainly, doctor!” answered Fritz, without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m tired of doing nothing here, and I fancy I’ve been well enough to move for the past fortnight.”

“Ah, permit me to be the best judge of that, young man,” said the other. “No doubt you feel wonderfully strong just now! Can you lift this chair, do you think, eh?”

“Certainly,” replied Fritz, laying his hand on the slight little article of furniture the doctor had pointed out with his cane, and which he could have easily held up with one finger when in the possession of his proper strength. He was quite indignant, indeed, with Doctor Carl for suggesting such a feeble trial for him, as if he were a child; but, much to his astonishment, he found that he was utterly unable to raise the chair from the ground. Besides which, he quite panted after the exertion, just as if he had been endeavouring to lift a ton weight!

“Ha, what did I say, Herr Lieutenant?” said the surgeon with a laugh. “You will now allow, I suppose, that we doctors know best as to what is good for our patients! But, come, you will not be wanted to raise or carry about a greater weight than yourself until you come up with your regiment, which is now with Manteuffel’s division near Amiens, for, by that time, you’ll be yourself again. I’ll now go and sign your certificate and papers, so that you may get ready to start as soon as you like.”

“Hurrah!” exclaimed Fritz. “It is ‘Forwards’ again—the very word puts fresh life in me!” and, trying once more, he lifted the chair this time with ease. “You see, Herr Doctor, I can do it now!”

“Ah, there’s nothing like hope and will!” said the doctor, bustling out of the room—which Fritz, unlike many poor victims of the war, had had entirely to himself, instead of being only one amongst hundreds of others in a crowded hospital ward. “By the time you join your comrades again, you’ll be double the man you were before you came under my care!”

“Thanks to you, dear doctor,” shouted out Fritz after him in cordial tones; and he then proceeded to overhaul his somewhat dilapidated uniform to see whether it was in order for him to don once more.

On the termination of the siege of Metz, by its capitulation at the end of October, the large German force which had been employed up till then in the investment of Marshal Bazaine’s entrenched camp before the fortress, became released for other duties; thus enabling Von Moltke, the great strategical head of the Teuton legions, to develop his plans for the complete subjugation of the country.

In accordance, therefore, with these arrangements, two army corps, each of some thirty thousand men, proceeded at once to aid the hosts encircling Paris with fire and steel; while two more corps were led by Prince Frederick Charles towards the south of France, where they arrived in the nick of time to assist the Duke of Mecklenburgh and the defeated Bavarians under Van der Tann in breaking up the formidable army of the Loire commanded by Chanzy, which had very nearly succeeded in altering the condition of the war; the remainder of the German investing force from Metz were sent northwards, under Manteuffel, in the direction of Brittany and the departments bordering on the English Channel, so as to crush out all opposition there.

With this latter force marched the regiment of our friend Fritz, which he was able to rejoin about the beginning of December at Amiens, where were established the headquarters of General Manteuffel, the present commander of the first army—“Old Blood and Iron.”

Steinmetz having been shelved, it was said, on account of his age and infirmities, he having fought at Waterloo, but more probably on account of his rather lavish sacrifice of his men, especially at Gravelotte. This force kept firm hold of Normandy with a strong hand, threatening Dieppe and Havre on either side.

Fritz had a tedious journey to the front.

Partly by railway where practicable, and partly by roads that were blocked by the heavy siege guns and waggon loads of ammunition going forwards for the use of the force besieging Paris, the young lieutenant made his way onwards in company with a reserve column of Landwehr proceeding to fill up casualties in Manteuffel’s ranks—the journey not being rendered any the more agreeable by the frequent attacks suffered from franc-tireurs when passing through the many woods and forests encountered on the route, in addition to meeting straggling bands of the enemy, who opposed the progress of the column the more vigorously as it abandoned the main roads leading from the frontier and struck across country.

It was not by any means a pleasure trip; but, putting all perils aside, regarding them merely as the vicissitudes of a soldier’s lot, what impressed Fritz more than anything else was the ruin and devastation which, following thus in the rear of a triumphant army, he everywhere noticed.

The towns he entered on his way had most of their shops shut, and the windows of the private houses were closed, as if in sympathy with a national funeral, those which had been bombarded—and these were many—having, besides, their streets blocked up with fallen masonry and scattered beams of timber, their church steeples prostrate, and the walls of buildings perforated with round shot and bursting shells that had likewise burnt and demolished the roofs; while, in the more open country, the farms and villages had been swept away as if with a whirlwind of fire, only bare gables and blackened rafters staring up into the clouds, like the skeletons of what were once happy homes. The vineyards and fields and gardens around were destroyed and running to waste in the most pitiful way, for every one connected with them, who had formerly cherished and tended them with such care and attention, had either been killed or else sought safety in flight to the cities, where their refuge was equally precarious. Along the highway, the trees, whose branches once gave such grateful shade to wayfarers, were now cut down, only rows of hideous, half-consumed stumps remaining in their stead; while here and there, as the scene of some great battle was passed, great mounds like oblong bases of flattened pyramids rose above the surface of the devastated plain—mounds under whose frozen surface lay the mouldering bodies of thousands of brave men who had fallen on the bloody field, their last resting-place unmarked by sepulchral cross or monumental marble. Everywhere there was terrible evidence of the effects of war and the price of that “glory” which, the poet sings truly, “leads but to the grave!”

Fritz was sickened with it all; but, what struck his keen sense of honour and honesty more, was the wholesale pillage and robbery permitted by the German commanders to be exercised by their soldiery on the defenceless peasantry of France. A cart which he overhauled, proceeding back to the frontier, contained such wretched spoil as women’s clothes, a bale of coffee, a quantity of cheap engravings and chimney ornaments, an old-fashioned kitchen clock, with an arm-chair—the pride of some fireside corner—a quantity of copper, and several pairs of ear-rings, such as are sold for a few sous in the Palais Royale!

The sight of this made his blood boil, and Fritz got into some trouble with a colonel of Uhlans by ordering the contents of the cart to be at once confiscated and burnt, the huckster being on the good books of that officer—doubtless as a useful collector of curios!

It was a current report amongst the French at the time that the German army was followed by a tribe of Jew speculators, who purchased from the soldiers the plunder that they certainly could not themselves expect to carry back to their own country; and this incident led Fritz to believe the rumour well founded.

“Heavens, little mother,” as he wrote home subsequently to Madame Dort, after his experience of what went on at headquarters under his new commander. “I do not fear the enemy; but the only thing which will do us any harm, God willing that we come safely home, is that we shall not be able to distinguish between mine and thine, the ‘meum’ and ‘tuum’ taught us at school, for we shall be all thorough thieves; that is to say, we are ordered to take—‘requisition’ they call it—everything that we can find and that we can use. This does not confine itself alone to food for the horses and people, but to every piece of portable property, not an absolute fixture, which, if of any value, we are directed to appropriate and ‘nail’ fast!

“Through the desertion of most of the castles here in the neighbourhood by their legitimate proprietors, the entry to all of them is open to us; and now everything is taken out of them that is worth taking at all. The wine-cellars in particular are searched; and I may say that our division has drank more champagne on its own account than I ever remember to have seen in the district of Champagne, when I visited it last year before the war.

“In the second place, our light-fingered forces carry off all the horses we can take with us; all toilet things, glasses, stockings, brushes, boots and shoes, linen—in a word, everything is ‘stuck to!’

“The officers, I may add, are no exception to the private soldiers, but steal in their proper precedence, appropriating whatever objects of art or pictures of value they can find in the mansions we visit in these archaeological tours of ours. Only yesterday, the adjutant of my regiment, a noble by birth, but I am sorry to say not a gentleman either by manners or moral demeanour, came to me and said, ‘Fritz Dort, do me the favour to steal for me all the loot you can bring me. We will at all events show Moltke that he has not sent us into this war for nothing.’ Of course, this being an order from a superior officer, I could not say anything but ‘At your command, your highness!’ But what will come of it all only God knows! I’m afraid, when there is nothing left to lay our hands on, we will begin to appropriate the goods and chattels of each other; although, little mother, I will endeavour to keep my fingers clean, if only for your sake!”

Fritz, however, soon had something more exciting to think about than the morals of his comrades; for, only a few days after he joined his regiment, he went into action again at the battle of Amiens, when the Germans drove back Faidherbe’s “army of the north,” routing them with much slaughter, and taking many prisoners, besides thirteen cannon. A French regiment of marines was ridden down by a body of German Hussars, who were almost decimated by the charge—which resembled that of Balaclava, the “sea soldiers” standing behind entrenchments with their guns.

Later on, too, Fritz was in a more memorable engagement. It occurred on the morning of the 23rd of December at Pont Noyelles, where the army of General Manteuffel, numbering about fifty thousand men with some forty guns, attacked a force of almost double the strength, commanded by Faidherbe, the last of the generals on whom the French relied outside of Paris. The two armies confronted each other from opposing heights, separated by the valley of the Somme and a small, winding stream, which falls into the larger river at Daours, on the right and left banks of which the contending forces were respectively aligned; and the combat opened about eleven o’clock in the forenoon with a heavy cannonade, under cover of which the German tirailleurs smartly advanced and took possession of several small villages, although the French shortly afterwards drove them out of these at the point of the bayonet, exhibiting great gallantry. In the evening, both armies rested in the same positions they had occupied at the commencement of the fight; but, although the French greatly outnumbered their antagonists, being especially superior in artillery, the fire of which had considerably thinned the German ranks, they did nothing the whole of the succeeding day. On the contrary, they rested in a state of complete inactivity, when, if they had but pushed forwards, they might have compelled the retreat of Manteuffel.

The next morning was that of Christmas Day.

Fritz could not but remember it, in spite of his surroundings, for he received a small parcel by the field post, containing some warm woollen socks knitted by Lorischen’s own fair fingers, and sent to him in order “to prevent his appropriating those of the poor French peasantry,” as he had intimated might be the case with him in his last letter home, should he be in need of such necessaries and not have any of his own. His good mother, too, did not forget him, nor did a certain young lady who resided at Darmstadt.

It was the morning of Christmas Day; but not withstanding its holy and peaceful associations, Fritz and every one else in Manteuffel’s army corps expected that the anniversary would be celebrated in blood. Judge of their surprise, however, when, as the day advanced, the vedettes and outposts they sent ahead returned with the strange intelligence that the enemy had abandoned the highly advantageous ground they had selected on Pont Noyelles, retiring on Arras.

The news was almost too good to be true; but, nevertheless, the German cavalry were soon on the alert, pursuing the retreating force and slaughtering thousands in the chase—thus Christmas Day was passed!

The new year opened with more fighting for Fritz; for, on the 2nd of January, occurred the battle of Bapaume, and on the 19th of the same month the more disastrous engagement for the French of Saint Quentin, which finally crumbled up “the army of the north” under Faidherbe, which at one time almost looked as if it would have succeeded in raising the siege of Paris, by diverting the attention of the encircling force. However, in neither of these actions did Fritz either get wounded or gain additional promotion; and from thence, up to the close of the war, his life in the invaded country was uneventful and without interest.

Yes, to him; for he was longing to return home.

“Going to the war” had lost all its excitement for him, the carnage of the past months and the sorrowful scenes he had witnessed having fairly satiated him with “glory” and all the horrors which follow in its train.

Now, he was fairly hungering for home, and the quiet of the old household at Lubeck with his “little mother” and Lorischen—not forgetting Mouser, to make home more homelike and enjoyable, for Fritz thought how he would have to teach Gelert, who had likewise escaped scathless throughout the remainder of the campaign in the north of France, to be on friendly terms with the old nurse’s pet cat.

He was thinking of some one else too; for, lately, the letters of Madaleine had stopped, although she had previously corresponded with him regularly. He could not make out the reason for her silence. One despatch might certainly have been lost in transmission through the field post; but for three or four—as would have been the case if she had responded in due course to his effusions, which were written off to Darmstadt each week without fail—to miss on the journey, was simply impossible!

Some treachery must be at work; or else, Madaleine was ill; or, she had changed her mind towards him.

Which of these reasons caused her silence?

It was probably, he thought, the former which he had to thank for his anxiety; and the cause, he was certain, was the baroness. What blessings he heaped on her devoted head!

It was in this frame of mind that Fritz awaited the end of the war.

Chapter Eleven.

A Pleasant Surprise!

That winter was the dullest ever known in the little household of the Gulden Strasse, and the coldest experienced for years in Lubeck—quiet town of cold winters, situated as it is on the shores of the ice-bound Baltic!

It was such bitter, inclement weather, with the thermometer going down to zero and the snow freezing as it fell, that neither Madame Dort nor old Lorischen went out of the house more than they could help; and, as for Mouser, he lived and slept and miaow-wowed in close neighbourhood to the stove in the parlour, not even the temptation of cream inducing him to leave the protection of its enjoyable warmth. For him, the mice might ravage the cupboards below the staircase, his whilom happy hunting-ground, at their own sweet will; and the birds, rendered tame by their privations, invade the sanctity of the balcony and the window-sills, whereon at another season their lives would not be worth a moment’s purchase. He heeded them not now, nor did he, as of yore, resent the intrusion of Burgher Jans’ terrier, when that predatory animal came prowling within the widow’s tenement in company with his master, who had not entirely ceased his periodic visits, in spite of “the cold shoulder” invariably turned to him by Lorischen. Mouser wasn’t going to inconvenience himself for the best dog in Christendom; so, on the advent of the terrier, he merely hopped from the front of the stove to the top, where he frizzled his feet and fizzed at his enemy, without risking the danger of catching an influenza, as he might otherwise have done if he had sought refuge elsewhere out in the cold.

Aye, for it was cold; and many was the time, when, rubbing their tingling fingers, both the widow and Lorischen pitied the hardships to which poor Fritz was exposed in the field, almost feeling angry and ashamed at themselves for being comfortable when he had to endure so much—as they knew from all the accounts published in the newspapers of the sufferings which the invading armies had to put up with, although Fritz himself made light of his physical grievances.

At Christmas-tide they were sad enough at his absence, with the memory of the lost Eric also to make that merry-making time for others doubly miserable to them; but, on the dawn of the new year, their hopes began to brighten with the receipt of every fresh piece of news from France concerning the progress of the war.

“The end cannot be far off now,” they said to one another in mutual consolation, so as to cheer up each other’s drooping spirits. “Surely the campaign cannot last much longer!”

The last Sunday in the month came, and on this day Madame Dort and Lorischen went to the Marien Kirche to service.

Previously they had been in the habit of attending the Dom Kirche, from the fact of Eric’s liking to see, first as a child and afterwards as a growing boy, the great astronomical clock whose queer-looking eyes rolled so very curiously with the swing of the pendulum backwards and forwards each second; but, now, they went to the other house of God for a different reason. It, too, had an eccentric clock, distinguished for a procession of figures of the saints, which jerked themselves into notice each hour above the dial; still it was not that which attracted the widow there. The church was filled with large monumental figures with white, outstretching wings, that hovered out into prominence above the carvings of the old oak screens, black with age. These figures appeared as if soaring up to the roof of the chancel; and Madame Dort had a fancy, morbid it might have been, that she could pray better there, surrounded as it were by guardian angels, whose protection she invoked on behalf of her boy lost at sea, and that other, yet alive, who was “in danger, necessity,” and possibly “tribulation!”

After she and Lorischen had returned home from the Marien Kirche, the day passed quietly and melancholy away; but the next morning broke more cheerfully.

It was the 30th of January, 1871. Both the lone women at the little house in the Gulden Strasse remembered that fact well; for, on the morrow, the month from which they had expected such good tidings would be up, and if they heard nothing before its close they must needs despair.

Seeing that the morning broke bright and cheerily, with the sun shining down through the frost-laden air, making the snow on the roofs look crisper and causing the icicles from the eaves to glitter in its scintillating rays, Lorischen determined to go to market, especially as she had not been outside the doorway, except to go to church, since the previous week.

She had not much to buy, it is true; but then she might have a gossip with the neighbours and hear some news, perhaps—who knows?

Anything might have happened without the knowledge of herself or her mistress, as no one, not even Burgher Jans, had been to visit them for ever so long!

Clad, therefore, in her thick cloak and warm boots, with her wide, red-knitted woollen shawl over her head and portly market-basket on arm, Lorischen sallied out like the dove from the ark, hoping perchance to bring back with her an olive branch of comfort; while the widow sat herself down by the stove in the parlour with her needle, stitching away at some new shirts she was engaged on to renew Fritz’s wardrobe when he came back. Seeing an opportunity for taking up a comfortable position, Mouser jumped up at once into her lap as soon as the old nurse had left the room, purring away with great complacency and watching in a lazy way the movements of her busy fingers, blinking sleepily the while at the glowing fire in front of him.

Lorischen had not been gone long when Madame Dort heard her bustling back up the staircase without. She knew the old nurse’s step well; but, besides hers, she heard the tread of some one else, and then the noisy bark of a dog. A sort of altercation between two voices followed, in which the old nurse’s angry accents were plainly perceptible; and next there seemed a hurried scuffle just without the parlour door, which suddenly burst open with a clatter, and two people entered the room.

They were Lorischen and Burgher Jans, who both tried to speak together, the result being a confused jangle of tongues from which Madame Dort could learn nothing.

“I say I was first!” squeaked the Burgher in a high treble key, which he always adopted when excited beyond his usual placid mode of utterance.

“And I say it was me!” retorted the old nurse in her gruff tones, which were much more like those of a man. “What right have you to try and supplant the servant of the house, who specially went out about it, you little meddlesome teetotum, I’d like to know, hey?”

“But I was first, I say! Madame Dort—”

“Don’t listen to him, mistress,” interposed Lorischen. “I’ve just—”

“There’s news of—”

But, bang just then came Lorischen’s market-basket against the side of the little man’s head, knocking his hat off and stopping his speech abruptly; while the old nurse muttered savagely, “I wish it had been your little turnip-top of a head instead of your hat, that I do!”

“Good people! good people!” exclaimed Madame Dort, rising to her feet and dropping her needlework and Mouser—who rapidly jumped on to the top of the stove out of the reach of Burgher Jans’ terrier, which, of course, had followed his master into the parlour and at once made a dart at the cat as he tumbled on to the floor from the widow’s lap. “Pray do not make such a noise, and both speak at once! What is the matter that you are so eager to tell me—good news, I trust, Lorischen, or you would not have hurried back so soon?”

Madame Dort’s voice trembled with anxiety, and tears of suspense stood in her eyes.

“There,” said Lorischen triumphantly to the Burgher, who remained silent for the moment from the shock of the old nurse’s attack. “You see for yourself that my mistress wishes me to tell her.”

“Oh, what is it—what have you heard?” cried the widow plaintively. “Do not keep me in this agony any longer!”

And she sat down again nervously in her chair, gazing from one to the other in mute entreaty and looking as if she were going to faint.

“There now, see what you’ve done!” said Lorischen, hastening to Madame Dort’s side. “I told you what it would be if you blurted it out like that!”

Burgher Jans’ eyes grew quite wide with astonishment beneath the broad rims of his tortoise-shell spectacles, giving him more than ever the appearance of an owl.

“Peace, woman!” he exclaimed. “I—”

“Yes, that’s it, dear mistress,” interrupted the old nurse, half laughing, half crying, as she knelt down beside the widow’s chair and put her arm round her caressingly. “There’s peace proclaimed at last, and the dear young Herr will come home again to you now!”

“Peace?” repeated the widow, looking up with an anxious stare from one to the other.

“Yes, peace, most worthy lady,” said Burgher Jans pompously in his ordinary bland voice; adding immediately afterwards for Lorischen’s especial benefit—“and I was the first to tell you of it, after all.”

“Never mind,” replied that worthy, too much overpowered with emotion at the happiness of the widow to contest the point. “We both brought the glad tidings together. Madame, dearest mistress, you are glad, are you not?”

But Madame Dort was silent for the moment. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moving in earnest prayer of thankfulness to Him who had heard her prayers and granted the fervent wish of her heart at last.

“Is it really true?” she asked presently.

“Yes, well-born and most worthy lady,” replied the little fat man, whom Lorischen now allowed to speak without further interruption. “Our Bismark signed an armistice with the French at Versailles on Saturday by which Paris capitulates, the forts defending it being given over to our soldiers, and the starving city allowed to be reprovisioned by the good English, who have prepared ever so many train-loads of food to go in for the use of the population.”

“Ah, those good English!” chimed in Lorischen.

“You have reason to say that, dearest maiden,” continued the Burgher, bowing suavely to the old woman. “They subscribed, ah! more than a million thalers for this purpose in London.”

“And I suppose the war will now cease?” said Madame Dort.

“Most certainly, worthy lady,” replied Burgher Jans. “The armistice is to last for three weeks to enable the French to have an election of members to an assembly which will decide whether the contest shall go on any further; but there is no doubt, as their armies have all been defeated and their resources exhausted, that hostilities will not be again resumed. All parties are sick of fighting by this time!”

“So I should think,” exclaimed Lorischen warmly. “It has been a bloody, murdering work, that of the last six months!”

“Yes, but good for Germany,” put in the little man in his bland way.

“Humph! much good, with widows left without their husbands and children fatherless, and the stalwart sons that should have been the help of their mothers made food for French powder and the chassepot! Besides, I don’t think the German states, Meinherr,” added the old nurse more politely than she usually addressed the Burgher, “will get much of the plunder. Mark my words if Prussia does not take the lion’s share!”

“You have reason, dearest maiden,” answered the other, agreeing with his old opponent for once. “I’ve no doubt that, like the poor Bavarians who had to do the heaviest part of the fighting, we shall get only the kicks and Prussia the halfpence!”

“That’s more than likely,” said Lorischen, much pleased at the similarity of their sentiments; “and I suppose we can expect Herr Fritz home soon now, eh?”

“Probably as soon as peace is regularly established; for then, our troops will commence to evacuate France and march back to the Rhine,” replied Burgher Jans,—“that Rhine whose banks they have so valiantly defended.”

“Ah, we’d better begin at once to prepare to receive our soldier lad,” said the old nurse with much cheerfulness, as if she wished to set to without a moment’s delay at making things ready for Fritz; seeing which, Burgher Jans took his departure, the widow and Lorischen both expressing their thanks for the good news he had brought, and the old nurse actually escorting him to the door in a most unusual fit of civility!

The definite treaty of peace between France and Germany was completed on the 28th February, 1871, when it was ratified by the constituent assembly sitting at Bordeaux, the conquered country surrendering two of her richest provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, together with the fortresses of Metz and Belfort—the strongest on the frontier—besides paying an indemnity of no less a sum than five milliards of francs, some two hundred millions of pounds in English money, to the victors!

It was a terrible price to pay for the war; for, in addition to these sacrifices must be reckoned:— 2,400 captured field guns; 120 eagles, flags, and standards; 4,000 fortress guns; and 11,669 officers and 363,326 men taken prisoners in battle and interned in Germany—not counting 170,000 men of the garrison of Paris who must be held to have surrendered to their conquerors, although these were not led away captive like the others, who were kept in durance until the first moiety of their ransom was paid!

But, Prince Bismark over-reached himself in grinding down the country as he did. He thought, that, by fixing such an enormous sum for the indemnity, France would be under the heel of Germany for years to come, as the Prussian troops were not to leave until the money was paid. Instead of which, by a general and stupendous movement of her population, inflamed by a praiseworthy spirit of patriotism, the five milliards were paid within a year and the French soil clear of the invader—this being the most wonderful thing connected with the war, some persons think!

Meanwhile, Madame Dort’s anxiety to behold her son again at home and his earnest wish to the same effect had to await gratification.

The news of the armistice before Paris reached Lubeck on the 30th January; but it was not until March that the German troops began to evacuate their positions in front of the capital of France, and nearly the end of the month before the last battalion turned its face homeward.

Before that wished-for end was reached, Fritz was terribly heart-sick about Madaleine.

After a long silence, enduring for over a month, during which his mind was torn by conflicting doubts and fears, he had received a short, hurried note from her, telling him that she had been ill and was worried by domestic circumstances. She did not know what would become of her, she wrote, adding that he had better cease to think of her, although she would always pray for his welfare.

That was all; but it wasn’t a very agreeable collapse to the nice little enchanted “castle in Spain” he had been diligently building up ever since his meeting with Madaleine at Mézières:— it was a sad downfall to the hopes he had of meeting her again!

Of course, he wrote to his mother, telling her of his misery; but she could not console him much, save by exhorting him to live in hope, for that all would come well in good time.

“Old people can’t feel like young ones,” thought Fritz. “She doesn’t know what I suffer in my heart.”

And so time rolled on slowly enough for mother and son; he, counting the days—sadly now, for his return was robbed of one of its chief expectations; she, gladly, watching to clasp her firstborn in her arms once more. Ample amends she thought this would be to her for all the anxiety she had suffered since Fritz had left home the previous summer, especially after her agonised fear of losing him!

Towards the close of March, the Hanoverian regiments returned to their depôt, Fritz being forwarded on to Lubeck.

As no one knew the precise day or hour when the train bearing him home might be expected to arrive, of course there was no one specially waiting at the railway station to welcome him back. Only the ordinary curiosity-mongers amongst the townspeople were there; but these were always on the watch for new-comers. They raised a sort of cheer when he and his comrades belonging to the neighbourhood alighted from the railway carriages; but, although the cheering was hearty, and Fritz and the others joined in the popular Volkslieder that the townspeople started, the young sub-lieutenant missed his mother’s dear face and Lorischen’s friendly, wrinkled old countenance, both of whom, somehow or other without any reason to warrant the assumption, he had thought would have been there.

It was in a melancholy manner, therefore, that he took his way towards the Gulden Strasse and the little house he had not seen for so long—could it only have been barely nine months ago?

How small everything looked now, after his travels and experiences of the busy towns and handsome cities of France which he had but so lately passed through! All here seemed quiet, quaint, diminutive, old-fashioned, like the resemblance to some antique picture, or the dream city of a dream!

Presently, he is in the old familiar street of his youth. It seemed so long and wide then; now, he can traverse its length in two strides, and it is so narrow that the buildings on either side almost meet in the middle.

But, the home-coming charm is on him; love draws him forward quickly like a magnet! He sees his mother’s house at the end of the street. He is up the outside stairway with an agile bound.

With full heart, he bursts open the door, and, in a second, is within the parlour. He hears his mother’s cry of joy.

“My son, my son!” and she throws herself on his neck, as he clasps her in a fond embrace, recollecting that once he never expected to have lived to see her again.

And Lorischen, too, she comes forward with a handshake and a hug for the boy she has nursed on her knee many a time in the years agone.

But, who is this besides?

“What! Madaleine?” exclaims Fritz.

“Yes, it is I,” she replies demurely, a merry smile dancing on her face, and a glad light in the bright blue eyes.

This was the surprise Madame Dort had prepared for Fritz—a pleasant one, wasn’t it, with which to welcome him home?

Chapter Twelve.

Family Councils.

“I have to thank you, dear mother, for this!” said Fritz, with an affectionate smile, to Madame Dort. “How did you contrive such a pleasant surprise?”

“You told me of your trouble, my son,” she replied; “so I did my best to help you under the circumstances.”

“And you, little traitress,” exclaimed he, turning to Madaleine. “How could you keep me in suspense all those weary weeks that have elapsed since the year began?”

“I did not think you cared so much,” said she defiantly.

“Cared!” he repeated.

“Well, it was not my fault,” she explained. “When I wrote to you last, I really never thought I should see you again.”

“You don’t know me yet,” said Fritz. “I should have hunted you out to the world’s end! I had determined, as soon as I had seen mother, to go off to Darmstadt and find out what had become of you.”

“And a nice wild-goose chase you would have had,” answered Madaleine, tossing her head, and shaking the silky masses of golden hair, now unconfined by any jealous coiffe, with her blue eyes laughing fun. “You wouldn’t have found me there! The baroness—”

“Hang her!” interrupted Fritz angrily; “I should like to settle her!”

“Ah, I wouldn’t mind your doing that now,” continued the girl naïvely; “she treated me very unkindly at the end.”

“The brute!” said Fritz indignantly.

“Her son—the young baron, you know—came home from the war in January. He was invalided, but I don’t think there was anything the matter with him at all; for, no sooner had he got back to the castle than he began worrying me, paying all sorts of attention and pestering me with his presence.”

“Puppy!” exclaimed Fritz; “I would have paid him some delicate little attentions if I’d been there!”

“Oh, I knew how to treat him,” said Madaleine. “I soon made him keep his distance! But it is the Baroness Stolzenkop that I complain of; she actually taxed me with encouraging him!”

“Indeed?” interrogated Fritz.

“Yes; and, when I told her I wouldn’t choose her fop of a son if there wasn’t another man in Germany, why she accused me of impertinence, telling me that the fact of my having attracted the young baron was an honour which an humble girl in my position should have been proud of—she did, really!”

“The old cat!” said Fritz indignantly; “I should like to wring her neck for her.”

“Hush, my son,” interposed Madame Dort. “Pray don’t make use of such violent expressions. The baroness, you know, is exalted in rank, and—”

“Then all the greater shame for her to act so dishonourably,” he interrupted hotly. “She ought to be—I can find no words to tell what I would do to her, there!”

“Besides, Master Fritz,” said old Lorischen, “I won’t have you speak so disrespectfully of cats, the noblest animals on earth! Look at Mouser there, looking his indignation at you; can’t you see how he feels the reproach of your comparing him to that horrid baroness?”

This remark at once diverted the conversation, all turning in the direction the old nurse pointed, where a little comedy was being enacted.

Mouser—with his tail erected like a stiff bottle-brush, and every individual hair galvanised into a perpendicular position on his back, which was curved into the position of a bent bow with rage and excitement, his whiskers bristling out from each side of his head and his mouth uttering the most horrible anathemas the cat language is capable of—was perched on the back of Madame Dort’s arm-chair in the corner; while poor Gelert, the innocent cause of all this display of emotion on Mouser’s part, was calmly surveying him and sniffing interrogatory inquiries as to whom he had the pleasure of speaking. The dog had not yet been formally introduced to his new cat friend, and from the commanding position he had taken up, with his hind legs on the hearthrug and his fore paws on the seat of the easy chair, he had considerable advantage over pussy, should that sagacious creature think of fleeing to another vantage-ground; although the thought of this, it should be added, never crossed for an instant the mind of old Mouser; he knew well when he was safe.

Fritz burst out laughing.

“Lie down, Gelert!” he cried; and the retriever at once obeyed.

“Is that the dear dog?” inquired Madame Dort, stooping to pat him.

“Yes,” said Fritz, “this is Gelert, the brave, faithful fellow but for whom I would have bled to death on the battlefield and never have been saved by Madaleine!”

“Thanks be to God!” exclaimed the widow piously. “What a nice dog he is!”

“He is all that,” replied Fritz; “still, he must be taught not to molest Master Mouser. Here, Gelert!”

The dog at once sprang up again from his recumbent position on the hearthrug; while Mouser, his excessive spiny and porcupinish appearance having become somewhat toned down, was now watchfully observing this new variety of the dog species, which his natural instinct taught him to regard with antagonism and yet who was so utterly different from Burgher Jans’ terrier, the only specimen of the canine race with whom he had been previously acquainted.

“See,” said Fritz to the retriever, laying one hand on his head and stroking the cat with the other, “you mustn’t touch poor Mouser. Good dog!”

The animal gave a sniff of intelligence, seeming to know at once what was expected of him; and, never, from that moment, did he ever exhibit the slightest approach of hostility to pussy—no, not even when Mouser, as he did sometimes from curiosity, would approach him at the very delicate juncture when he was engaged on a bone, which few dogs can stand—the two ever after remaining on the friendliest of friendly terms; so friendly, indeed, that Mouser would frequently curl himself to sleep between Gelert’s paws on the hearthrug.

This little diversion had drawn away the conversation from Madaleine’s treatment by the old Baroness Stolzenkop; but, presently, Madame Dort proceeded to explain to Fritz that, on account of his telling her in one of his letters home how anxious he was in the matter, and knowing besides how much she was indebted to Madaleine for saving his life by her kindly nursing when he was in the villa hospital at Mézières, she had written to her at Darmstadt, asking her to pay her a visit and so light up a lonely house with her presence until her son should have returned from the war. “And a veritable house fairy she has been,” concluded the widow, speaking from her heart, with tears in her eyes. “She has been like sunshine to me in the winter of my desolation.”

“And Mouser likes her, too,” said Lorischen, as if that settled the matter.

“She’s the best manager in the world,” next put in Madame Dort. “She has saved me a world of trouble since she’s been in the house.”

“And she cooks better than any one else in Lubeck!” exclaimed the old nurse, not to be beat in enumerating all the good qualities of Fritz’s guardian angel, who had taken her heart, as well as the widow’s, by storm.

Meanwhile, the subject of all these remarks stood in the centre of the room, blushing at the compliments paid her on all sides.

“Dear me, good people, I shall have to run away if you go on like that,” she cried at last. “I have been so happy here,” she added, turning to Fritz. “It’s the first time I’ve known what home was since my mother died.”

“Poor child,” said Madame Dort, opening her arms. “Come here, I’ll be your mother now.”

“Ah, that’s just what I’ve longed for!” exclaimed Fritz rapturously. “Madaleine, will you be her daughter in reality?”

The girl did not reply in words, but she gave him one look, and then hid her face in the widow’s bosom.

“Poor Eric,” said the widow presently, resigning Madaleine to the care of Fritz, who was nothing loth to take charge of her—the two retreating to a corner and sitting down side by side, having much apparently to say to each other, if such might be surmised from their bent heads and whispered conversation. “If he were but here, my happiness would now be almost complete!”

“Yes,” chimed in Lorischen as she bustled out of the room, Madame Dort following her quietly, so as to leave the lovers to themselves—“the dear flaxen-haired sailor laddie, with his merry ways and laughing eyes. I think I can see him now before me! Ah, it is just nineteen months to the day since he sailed away on that ill-fated voyage, you remember, mistress?”

But, she need not have asked the question. Madame Dort had counted every day since that bright autumn morning when she saw her darling for the last time at the railway station. It was not likely that she would forget how long he had been absent!

Later on, when the excitement of coming home to his mother and meeting with Madaleine had calmed down, Fritz, having ceased to be a soldier, his services not being any longer required with the Landwehr, turned his attention to civil employment; for, now, with the prospect of marrying before him, it was more urgent than ever that he should have something to do in order to occupy his proper position as bread-winner of the family, the widow’s means being limited and it being as much as she could do to support herself and Lorischen out of her savings, without having to take again to teaching—which avocation, indeed, her health of late years had rendered her unable to continue, had she been desirous of resuming it again.

Madaleine, of course, could have gone out as a governess, Madame Dort being, probably, easily able to procure her a situation in the family of one of her former pupils; or she might have resumed the position of a hospital nurse, for which she had been trained at Darmstadt, having been taken on as an assistant in the convalescent home established in that town by the late Princess Alice of Hesse, when the Baroness Stolzenkop turned her adrift. But Fritz would not hear of Madaleine’s leaving his mother.

“No,” said he decisively to her, “your place is here with mutterchen, who regards you as a daughter—don’t you, mother?”

“Yes, indeed,” answered the widow readily enough—“so long as I’m spared.”

“There, you see, you’ve no option,” continued Fritz triumphantly. “Mother would not be able to do without you now. Besides, it is not necessary. I will be able to earn bread enough for all. Look at these broad shoulders and strong arms, hey! What were they made for else, I’d like to know?”

Still, Fritz did not find it so easy to get employment as he thought.

Herr Grosschnapper had kept the clerkship he had formerly filled in his counting-house open for him some time after the commencement of the war; but, finding that Fritz would be away much longer than he had expected, he had been forced to employ a substitute in his place. This young man had proved himself so diligent and active in mastering all the details of the business in a short time, that the worthy shipowner did not wish to discharge him now when his original clerk returned, and Fritz himself would have been loth to press the matter; although, he had looked upon his re-engagement in the merchant’s office as a certainty when he came back to Lubeck.

Fritz had thought, with that self-confidence which most of us possess, that no one could possibly have kept Herr Grosschnapper’s books or calculated insurances with such ability as he could, and that the worthy merchant would have been only too delighted to welcome so able a clerk when he walked into the counting-house again. He had not lived long enough to know that as good, or better, a man can always be found to fill the place of even the best; and that, much as we may estimate our own value, a proportionate equivalent can soon be supplied from other sources!

So, much to Fritz’s chagrin, on going down to the merchant’s place of business on the quay, all eagerness to resume work again on the old footing, he found that he was not wanted: he would have to apply elsewhere for employment.

“Oh, that will not be a hard matter,” he thought to himself.

“Softly, my friend,” whispered fickle Dame Fortune in his ear, “not quite so fast! Things don’t always turn out just as you wish, young sir, with your reliant impetuosity!”

Lubeck had never been at any time a bustling place, for it had no trade to speak of; and now, since the war had crippled commerce, everything was in a state of complete stagnation. Ships were laying up idle all along the banks of the great canal, although spring was advancing and the ice-chains that bound up the Baltic would soon be loosed. There were no cargoes to be had; and perforce, the carriers of the sea were useless, making a corresponding dearth of business in the houses of the shipping firms. Why, instead of engaging fresh hands at their desks, they would have need soon to discharge some of their old ones! This was the answer that met his ear at every place he applied to, and he had finally to give up all hope of finding work in his native town.

It was the same elsewhere.

The five milliards of ransom paid by France, brought no alleviation of the enormous taxation imposed on Germany to bear the expense of organising the great military machine employed to carry out the war. The Prussian exchequer alone reaped the benefit of this plunder of the conquered nation; as for the remaining states of the newly created empire, they were not a farthing to the good for all the long train of waggons filled with gold and silver and bales of bank-notes that streamed over the frontier when the war indemnity was paid. If possible, their position was made worse instead of better; as, from the more extravagant style of living now adopted, in lieu of the former frugal habits in vogue—on account of the soldiers of the Fatherland learning to love luxury through their becoming accustomed during the campaign to what they had never dreamt of in their lives before—articles of food and dress became increased in price, so that it was a difficult matter for people with a small income to make both ends meet.

Ah, there was wide-spread poverty and dearth of employment throughout the length and breadth of the land, albeit there might be feasting and hurrahing, and clinking of champagne glasses Unter den Linden at Berlin!

However, Fritz was not the sort of fellow to grow despondent, or fail to recognise the urgency of the situation.

Long before Eric had gone to sea, he had fancied that Lubeck, with its slow movements and asthmatic trade, offered little opening for the energy and ability with which he felt himself endowed; for, he might live and die a clerk there, without the chance of ever rising to anything else. He had frequently longed to go abroad and carve out a fortune in some fresh sphere; but the thought of leaving his mother alone prevented him from indulging in this day-dream, and he had determined, much against the grain, to be satisfied with the humble lot which appeared to be his appointed place in life.

Now, however, circumstances had changed. His place was filled up in the old world; Providence itself forced him to seek an opening in the new.

His mind was made up at once.

“Little mother,” said he one evening, when he had been home a month, seeing every prospect of employment shut out from him—his last hope, that of a situation in the house of a comrade’s father at Coblentz, from which he had expected great things, having failed—“I’ve determined to emigrate to America—that is, if you do not offer any objection; for I should not like to go without your consent, although I see there’s no chance for me here in Germany.”

“What!” exclaimed Madame Dort, so startled that she let her knitting drop. “Go to America, across the terrible sea?”

Fritz had already explained matters to Madaleine, and she, brave-hearted girl that she was, concealing her own feelings at the separation between them which her lover’s resolve would necessitate, did not seek to urge him against his will to abandon his project. She believed in his honesty of purpose, relying on his strong, impulsive character; and what he had decided on, she decided, too, as a good wife that was to be, would be best not only for them both but for all.

“Yes, to America, mutterchen,” he replied to the widow’s exclamation, speaking in a tender voice of entreaty. “It is not so very far, you know, dear little mother, eh? It will be only from Bremerhaven to Southampton in England,—you recollect going there with me for a trip, don’t you, the year before last?—and from Southampton to New York; and, there, I shall be in my new home in ten days’ time at the outside! Why, it’s nothing, a mere nothing of a voyage when you come to consider it properly.”

“Across the wide, wild ocean that has already robbed me of Eric, my youngest,” went on poor Madame Dort, unheeding his words; “you, my firstborn—my only son now—I shall never see you more, I know!” and she gave way to a burst of tears.

“Say not so, darling mother,” said Madaleine, throwing her arms round her and joining in her weeping with a sympathetic heart, feeling quite as great grief at the idea of parting with her lover. “He will return for us both bye-and-bye. He is only going to make that home for us in the Far West we’ve read about so often lately, which he cannot hope to establish here; and then, my mother,—for you are my mother too, now, are you not?—he will come back for you and me, or we will go out and join him.”

“And I should like to know what will become of me, Fraulein Madaleine,” interposed Lorischen indignantly. “Am I to be left behind to be bothered all my life long by that little plague, Burgher Jans?”

“No, no, Lorischen,” laughed Fritz; “a home across the sea in America would not be a home without you—or Mouser, either,” he added.

“That’s all right, then,” said the old nurse affably; her digression serving to break the gravity of the conversation, and make Madame Dort take a better view of the matter.

“But, it’s a terrible journey, though, a terrible journey—almost worse than parting with him to go to the war,” said the widow sadly to herself.

“Ah, but you did not have Madaleine with you then,” replied Fritz, turning a look of affection to the fair girl clinging to his mother. “She will be a daughter to you, and comfort you in my absence, I know.”

“Aye, that I will,” exclaimed Madaleine fondly, caressing her adopted parent and gazing at Fritz with the blue eyes full of love, although blinded with tears. “I shall love her dearly for your sake, my darling, as well as for her own—and my own too; and we will all look forward to meeting again happily after our present parting, with hope and trust in the good God who will protect and watch over you in return for our prayers!”

“Amen to that,” said Lorischen heartily. “And I tell you what it is, Master Fritz—we’ll be all ready when you give the word to follow you across the sea to that wonderful America! I declare I’m quite longing to see it, for I don’t think much of this Lubeck now, with such curious, meddling, impertinent people in it like that odious little fat man, Burgher Jans.”

These words of the old nurse put them all in a merry mood, and the family council thus terminated more cheerily than it had begun.

Chapter Thirteen.

Across the Atlantic.

Fritz was as prompt in action as he was rapid in resolve; so in a few days after he had imparted to Madaleine and his mother his intention of emigrating to America, his last good-byes were exchanged with the little household in the Gulden Strasse—not forgetting the faithful Gelert, now domiciled in the family, whom it was impossible to take with him on account of the expense and trouble his transit would have occasioned, besides which, the good doggie would be ever so much better looked after by those left behind and would serve “as a sort of pledge,” Fritz told Madaleine, “of his master’s return!”

Yes, within a week at the outside, he had left Lubeck once more, and was on his way to that western “land of the free” which Henry Russell the ballad writer, has sung of:— where the “mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea,” and where imperial autocrats and conscription are undreamt of—although, not so very, very many years ago, it was convulsed in the throes of a civil war which could boast of as gigantic struggles between hostile forces and as terrible and bloodthirsty battles as those which had characterised that Franco-German campaign, in which Fritz had but so recently participated and been heartily sick of before it terminated!

The love of colonisation seems to be the controlling spirit of modern times.

Some sceptics in the truth of historical accuracy, have whispered their suspicions that, the “New World” was actually discovered at a date long anterior to the age of Columbus; but, even allowing that there might be some stray scrap of fact for this assertion, it may be taken for granted that the first nucleus of our present system of emigration, from the older continent to the “new” one, originated in the little band of thirty-nine men left behind him by Christopher in Hispaniola, at the close of his first “voyage beyond seas,” in the year 1493, or thereabouts. This small settlement failed, as is well-known, and the bones of the Genoese mariner who founded it have been mouldering in dust for centuries. Sir Walter Raleigh—the gallant imitator of Columbus, treading so successfully in his footsteps as to illustrate the old adage of the pupil excelling the master, the original expounder, indeed, of the famous “Westwards Ho!” doctrine since preached so ably by latter-day enthusiasts—has also departed to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. So have, likewise, a host of others, possessing names proudly borne on the chronicle of fame as martyrs to the universal spread of discovery and spirit of progress. But, the love of enterprise, and consequent expansion of civilisation and commercial venture, inaugurated by the brave old pioneers of Queen Elizabeth’s day, have not ceased to impel similar seekers after something beyond ordinary humdrum life. The path of discovery, although narrowed through research, has not yet been entirely exhausted; for “fresh fields and pastures new,” as hopeful as those about which Milton rhapsodised and as plenteously flowing with typical milk and honey as the promised land of the Israelites, are being continually opened up and offered to the oppressed and pauperised populations of Europe. Thus, the tide of emigration, swelled from the tiny ocean-drop which marked its first inception more than three hundred years ago to its present torrentine proportions and bearing away frequently entire nationalities on its bosom, still flows from the east to the west, tracing the progress of civilisation from its Alpha to its Omega, as steadily as when it originally began—aye, and as it will continue to flow on, until the entire habitable globe shall be peopled as with one family by the intermixture and association of alien races!

It is curious how this migratory spirit has permeated through the odd corners of the old world, leading the natives of different countries to flock like sheep to every freshly spoken of colony; and how, by such means, Englishmen, Celts, Germans, French, Hollanders, Italians, Norsemen, Africans, as well as the “Heathen Chinee,” are scattered in a mixed mass over the whole face of the earth now-a-days, as widely as the descendants of Noah were dispersed from the plain of Shinar after their unsuccessful attempt at building the tower of Babel—the result being, that some of the highest types of advancement are at present to be found where, but a few years back, uncultivated savages, as rude but perhaps not quite so inquisitive as the late Bishop Colenso’s apocryphal Zulu, were the sole existing evidences of latent humanity!

Fritz, however, was not proceeding to any of these newly colonised countries. Like the majority of other Germans who had emigrated before him, he was aiming for “the States,” where, according to the popular idea in Europe, money can be had for nothing in the shape of any expenditure of labour, time, or trouble. Really, the ne’er-do-well and shiftless seem to regard America as a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground for the idle, the lazy, and the dissolute—although, mind you, Fritz was none of these, having made up his mind to work as hard in the New World as he would have been forced to do in the Old for the fortune he could not win there, and which he had been forced to turn his back on.

Bremerhaven to Southampton; Southampton to Sandy Hook, as he had told his mother; and, in ten days altogether, the ocean steamer he travelled in, one of the North German line, had landed him safely in New York.

Seven years before, when he would have reached the “Empire City” during the height of the Secession War, he might have sold himself to a “bounty jumper,” as the enlisting agents of the northern army were termed, for a nice little sum in “greenback” dollars; now, he found sharpers, or “confidence men,” ready to “sell” him in a similar way—only, that the former rogues would have been satisfied with nothing less than his body and life, as an emigrant recruit for Grant or Sherman’s force; while the present set cared but for his cash, seeking the same with ravenous maw almost as soon as he had landed at Castle Garden!

Fritz had taken a steerage passage, so as to save money; and, being dressed in shabby clothes, in keeping with his third-class ticket, the loafers about the Battery, at the end of Manhattan Island, on which the town of New York is built, thought he was merely an ignorant German peasant whom they might easily impose on. They, however, soon found that he had not been campaigning six months for nothing, and so their efforts at getting him to part with the little capital he had were pretty well thrown away—especially as Fritz, in his anxiety to find some work to do at once, did not “let the grass grow under his feet,” but proceeded up Broadway instead of wasting his time by lounging in the vicinity of the emigrant depôt, as the majority of his countrymen generally do, apparently in the expectation that employment will come in search of them.

Still, he soon discovered that New York was overstocked with just the species of labour he was able to supply.

Of course, if he had been at the pitch of desperation, he might have found a job of some sort to his hand; but, writing and speaking English and French fluently in addition to his native tongue, besides being a good correspondent and book-keeper, he did not feel disposed to throw away his talents on mere manual labour. He had emigrated to “make his fortune,” or, at all events, to achieve a position in which he could hope to build up a home for the dear ones left behind at Lubeck; and there would not be much chance of his accomplishing this by engaging himself out as a day labourer—to assist some skilled carpenter or bricklayer—which was the only work offered him.

“No, sir; nary an opening here!” was the constant reply he met with at every merchant’s office he entered from Wall Street upwards along Broadway until he came to Canal Street; when, finding the shops, or “stores” as the Americans call them, going more in the “dry goods” or haberdashery line, he wended his way back again “down town,” investigating the various establishments lying between the main thoroughfare and the North and East rivers, hoping to find a situation vacant in one of the shipping houses thereabouts.

But, “No, sir; all filled up, I guess,” was still the stereotyped response to his applications, with much emphasis on the “sir”—the majority of the Manhattanese uttering this word, as Fritz thought, in a highly indignant tone, although, as he discovered later on, this was the general pronunciation adopted throughout the States.

“I suppose,” he said to one gentleman he asked, and who was, it seemed to Fritz, the master, or “boss,” of the establishment, from the fact of his lounging back in a rocking chair contiguous to his desk, and balancing his feet instead of his hands on the latter,—“I suppose it’s because I can give no references to former employers here, that all the men I speak to invariably decline my services?”

“No, sirree; I reckon not,” was the reply. “Guess we don’t care a cuss where you come from. We take a man as we find him, for just what he is worth, without minding what he might have been in the old country, or bothering other folks for his ka-racter, you bet! I reckon, mister, you’d better start right away out West if you want work. Book-keepers and sich-like are played out haar; we’re filled up to bustin’ with ’em, I guess!”

It was good advice probably; but, still, Fritz did not care to act upon it. Having been accustomed all his life to the shipping trade, he wished to find some opening in that special branch of business; and, if he went inland to Chicago or elsewhere, he thought, he would be abandoning his chances for securing the very sort of work he preferred to have. Besides, going away from the neighbourhood of ships and quays and the sea would be like cutting adrift every old association with Lubeck and Europe; while, in addition, he had directed his letters from home to be sent to the “Poste Restante, New York,” and if he left that city, why he would never hear how Madaleine and his mother were getting on in his absence!

So, for days and days he patrolled the town in vain; seeking for work, and finding none. The place, as his candid informer had said, was filled with clerks like himself in search of employment; and they, linguists especially, were a drug in the market—the cessation of the Franco-German War having flooded the country with foreign labour.

What should he do?

Before making a move, as everybody advised him, he determined to await the next mail steamer. This would bring him a letter from home, in answer to the one he had written, immediately on landing, telling of his safe arrival in the New World. He was dying to have, if only, a line from those dear ones he had left with a good-bye in the Gulden Strasse, recounting all that had happened since he had started from home—his passage across the Atlantic having lasted, according to his morbid imagination, at least as long as the war he had lately served through!

At last, a letter came; and, as it really put fresh heart in him—cheering up his drooping energies and banishing a sort of despondent feeling which had begun to prey upon him, altering him completely from his former buoyant self—he made up his mind in his old prompt fashion to visit some of the other seaports on the coast, “Down East,” as Americans say, in order to try whether he might not be able there to get a billet.

He had very little money left now; for, he had not brought much with him from home, originally and the greater part of what he had in his pockets when he came ashore had melted away in paying for his board and lodging while remaining in New York. Although he had put up at the cheapest boarding-house he could find, it was far dearer than the most expensive accommodation in Lubeck or even at a first-class hotel in any large town on the Continent. Living in such a city was actually like eating hard cash!

Fritz saw that he would have to proceed on his journey along the coast as cheaply as possible:— he had not much to spare for railway and steamboat fares.

With this resolution staring him in the face, he made his way one afternoon to the foot of Canal Street, from the quays facing which, on the North River, start the huge floating palaces of steamers that navigate the waters of Long Island Sound—visiting on their way those New England States where, it may be recollected, the Pilgrim Fathers landed after their voyage in the Mayflower, of historic renown, a couple of odd centuries ago.

One of these vessels had “Providence” marked on her; and the name at once arrested the attention of Fritz.

“Himmel!” he said to himself, with a superstitious sort of feeling like that which he used to ridicule in old Lorischen when she read omens in Mouser’s attitudes and cat language of a night—“this looks lucky; perhaps providence is going to interpose on my behalf, and relieve me from all the misery and anxiety I’m suffering! At all events, I will go on board and see where the steamer is bound for.”

No sooner said than done.

Fritz stepped on to the gangway; and, quickly gaining the vessel, asked one of the deck hands he saw forward where she was going to.

“Ha-o–ow?” repeated the man—meaning “what?”

“Where are you bound for?” said Fritz again.

“Providence, Rhode Island, I guess, mister. Can’t ye see it writ up?”

“And where’s that?” further inquired Fritz.

“New England way, I reckon, whar I wer raised.”

“Any ships or shipping trade there?”

The man laughed out heartily.

“Jerusalem, that’s prime, anyhow!” he exclaimed. “Any ships at Providence? Why, you might as well ask if thar wer any fish in the sea! Thar are heaps and heaps on ’em up to Rhode Island, mister, from a scoop up to a whaler; so I guess we can fix you up slick if you come aboard!”

“All right, I will,” said Fritz; “that is, if the fare is not too high.”

“Guess two-fifty won’t break you, hey?” responded the deck hand, meaning two-and-a-half dollars.

“No,” said Fritz; “I think I can manage that. What time do you start?”

“Five o’clock sharp.”

“That will just give me time to fetch my valise,” said Fritz, thinking aloud.

“Where away is that?” asked the man.

“Chatham Street,” answered Fritz, “just below the town hall.”

“Oh, I know, mister, well enough whar Chatham Street is! Yes, you’ll have plenty of time if you look smart.”

“Thank you, I will,” said Fritz; and, going back to the boarding-house where he had been stopping, he soon returned to the quay with the little valise that carried all his impedimenta—reaching the steamer just in the nick of time as she was casting off.

As he jumped on to her deck, the gangway was withdrawn.

“All aboard?” sang out the captain from the pilot-house on the hurricane deck.

“Aye, aye, all aboard,” was the response from Fritz’s friend the deck hand, who, with only a red flannel shirt on and a pair of check trousers—very unsailorlike in appearance altogether—stood in the bows.

“Then fire away and let her rip!” came the reply from the captain above, followed by the tinkle of an electric bell in the engine-room, the steamer’s paddles revolving with a splash the moment afterwards and urging her on her watery way.

Round the Battery at Manhattan Point she glided, and up the East River through Hell Gate into Long Island Sound—one of the most sheltered channels in the world, and more like a lake or lagoon than an arm of the sea—leaving a broad wake of creamy green foam behind her like a mill-race, and quivering from stem to stern with every revolution of her shaft, with every throb of her high-pressure engines!

Chapter Fourteen.

An Unexpected Meeting.

The Rhode Island steamer was a splendid boat, Fritz found, when he came to look about him; for, she was a “floating palace,” every inch of her, with magnificent saloons and state-cabins stretching away the entire length of the vessel fore and aft. A light hurricane deck was above all, on which the passengers could promenade up and down to their hearts’ content, having comfortable cane-bottomed seats along the sides to sit down upon when tired and no gear, or rope coils, or other nautical “dunnage,” to interrupt their free locomotion on this king of quarter-decks, which had, besides, an awning on top to tone down the potency of the western sun.

With three tiers of decks—the lowermost, or main, containing the engine-room and stowage place for cargo, as well as the men’s quarters; the lower saloon, in which were the refreshment bars, and what could only appropriately be called the “dining hall,” if such a term were not an anachronism on board ship; and, thirdly, the upper saloon, containing the principal cabins and state-rooms, in addition to the graceful promenading hurricane deck surmounting the whole—the steamer had the appearance of one of those bungalow-like pretended “houses” which children build up with a pack of cards. Only that, this illusion was speedily destroyed by the huge beam of the engine, working up and down like a monster chain-pump on top of the whole structure—not to speak of the twin smoke-stacks on either side of the paddle-boxes emitting volumes of thick, stifling vapour, and the two pilot-houses, one at each extremity of the hurricane deck; for, like most American river steamers, the boat was what was called a “double-ender,” built whale-boat fashion to go either backwards or forwards, a very necessary thing to avoid collision in crowded waters.

Fritz could not but realise that the ingenious construction which he was gazing at was essentially a Yankee invention, resembling nothing in European waters.

If he had not yet been fully convinced of this fact, the eldritch screech which the steam whistle shortly evolved, in obedience to the pressure of the captain’s finger on a valve in the pilot-house forward—whence the vessel was steered—would have at once decided his mind on the point. It was the most fearful, ear-deafening, blood-curdling sound he had ever heard in his life!

Fritz thought something had happened—that the boiler was in danger of bursting, or the vessel sinking at the least—but, on making a startled inquiry of the nearest person, he was reassured by learning that the “whistle,” as the frightful noise was called, was only emitted in courteous salutation to another steamer passing in the distance, bound down to New York; and soon, an answering squeal from the boat in question,

mercifully tempered by the distance into a faint squeak that lent more “enchantment” to its notes than was possessed by the one which had just startled him, corroborated the truth of this statement.

After enjoying the scenery from the hurricane deck for some little time, Fritz made his way below to the forward part of the main deck running into the bows, where he had noticed, while looking down from above, his friend the deck hand of the Garibaldi shirt and blue cotton check trousers—or “pants” as the man would himself probably have called these garments.

He was busily engaged coiling down ropes and otherwise making himself useful, singing the while in a light-hearted way a queer sort of serio-comic and semi-sentimental ditty, the most curious composition Fritz had ever come across.

He, therefore, could not help laughing when the singer arrived at the end of his lay.

The man turned round at once on hearing the sound of his merriment.

“Nice song, that,” said Fritz, as soon as he could compose his face sufficiently to speak. “Just the sort of tender tone about it that I like!”

“None o’ your gas, mister,” replied the other with a smile, which showed that he was not offended at Fritz’s chaff. “It’s only a lot o’ nonsense I picked up somehow or other out West.”

“It is a very funny mixture,” said Fritz. “It is a wonder to me who imagines these absurd things and makes them up!”

“Right you air,” replied the man. “A heap more curious it is than the folks who write the clever things; and the queerest bit about it is, too, that the nonsense spreads quicker and faster than the sense!”

“Human nature,” said Fritz laconically, expressing thus his opinion of the matter.

“You’re a philosopher, I reckon?” observed the deck hand in reply.

“No, not quite that,” answered Fritz, rather surprised at such a remark from a man of the sort. “I merely form conclusions from what I see. I’m only a clerk—and you?”

“I’m a deck hand now,” said the other, speaking rather bitterly. “Last fall, I was a cow boy, Minnesota way; next year, I’ll be goodness knows what. Once, I was a gentleman!”

“And how—” began Fritz, when the other interrupted him brusquely.

“Put it all down to the cussed drink, mister, and you won’t be far out,” said he, laughing mockingly, so as to disguise what he really felt by the avowal; “but,” he added, to turn the conversation, “you speak very good English for a German, which I ken see you are.”

“I was educated partly in England,” said Fritz.

“Ah, that accounts for it. Been long in this country?”

“About six weeks,” replied Fritz.

“Travelling for pleasure, or looking about you?” was the next query from the deck hand, whom Fritz thought strangely inquisitive for an utter stranger. Still, the man did not mean any harm; it was only the custom of the country, as all new-comers speedily find out.

“I’m looking about for work,” he answered rather curtly. “I wish you would get me some.”

Fritz thought this would have silenced his interlocutor; but, instead of that, the deck hand proceeded with a fresh string of questions.

“What can you do?” he asked amiably, his smile robbing the words of any impertinence. “You don’t look like one who has roughed it much.”

“No?” said Fritz, somewhat amused. “You would not think, then, that I had been all through the terrible war we’ve had with France, eh?”

“Pst!” ejaculated the other. “You don’t call that a war, do you? Why, you don’t know what a war is in your miserable, played-out old continent! Look at ours, lasting nearly four years, and the battle of Gettysburgh, with thirty thousand dead alone! What do you think of that, hey?”

“Gravelotte had nearly as many,” said Fritz quietly.

“All right, mister; we won’t argy the p’int now; but you haven’t answered me yet as to what you ken do.”

“Well, then,” answered Fritz, “I can speak and write three languages, keep books, and act as a good correspondent and manager.”

“I like that,” exclaimed the other admiringly. “You speak slick and straight to the p’int, without any bunkum or blarney, like some of them that come over here. But, what line have you run on in the old country?”

“The shipping business is what I know best about,” replied Fritz.

“Ah, that’s the reason, I suppose, you asked me if thar wer any ships up to Providence, hey, mister?”

“Yes,” said Fritz. “I have applied to all the houses in New York in vain, and I thought I would try my chance at some other seaport town.”

“Didn’t like going inland, then!”

“No,” he answered.

“And so you selected Providence?”

“I only did so from chance. If I had not seen the name painted on the steamer, I would not have thought of speaking to you and asking where she was going.”

“And if you had not spoken to me again, why, I would not have known anything about you, nor been able to put you in the way of something,” replied the deck hand, more earnestly than he had yet spoken.

“You can do that?” said Fritz eagerly.

“Yes; but wait till we get to Providence. As soon as the old ship is moored alongside the wharf and all the luggage ashore, you come along of me, and I’ll show you whar to go. I shall be my own boss then, with no skipper to order me about.”

The man hurried off as he said these last words, in obedience to a hail from above—telling him to go and do something or other, “and look smart about it too”—which had probably influenced his remark about being his own “boss” when he got to land; and Fritz did not see him again until the next morning, by which time the steamer had reached its destination.

To Fritz’s eyes, Providence was more like a European town than New York, the more especially from his being accustomed to the look of seaports on the Baltic and banks of the Elbe; for the houses were mostly built of stone, and there was much less of that wooden, flimsy look which the newly sprung up cities of America possess.

This old-fashioned appearance is a characteristic of all the New England states—Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut—for, here the original “Pilgrim Fathers” settled down and built unto themselves dwellings as nearly like those they had left behind them as it was possible with the materials to their hands, their descendants seemingly keeping up the habit of building in like manner. If this is not the case, then, most certainly, the old buildings of two centuries ago have lasted uncommonly well!

Fritz waited to go ashore until his friend the deck hand should be disengaged. He had seen him soon after they reached the steamer’s wharf; and, again, a second time when the crowd of passengers, with the exception of himself, brought up from New York had all disembarked—the man telling him he was just going to “clean himself down a bit,” and he would then be ready to take him to a decent place to stop, where he would not be charged too exorbitantly for his board.

And so Fritz waited on the steamer’s deck alongside the quay, gazing with much interest at the scene around him.

There were not quite so many ships as his casual acquaintance had led him to expect when he told him he would “see heaps up thaar”; but, still, the port evidently had a large import trade, for several big vessels were moored in the harbour and others were loading up at the wharves or discharging cargo, the latter being in the majority, while lots of smaller sailing craft and tiny boats were flying about, transporting goods and bales of merchandise to other places further up the river.

He had hardly, however, seen half what was in view when some one tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned round.

It was his friend the deck hand of the red flannel shirt and blue check cotton trousers; but, a wonderful transformation had taken place in his dress!

Clad now in an irreproachable suit of black, with a broad, grey felt hat on his head, the man looked quite the gentleman he had represented himself as once being. His manners, too, seemed to have changed with his outer apparel, the off-hand boorishness of the whilom “deck hand” having vanished with his cast-off raiment.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, sir,” he said to Fritz, still, however, with the strongly accentuated “sir” he had noticed in those who had spoken to him at New York, “but I’ve hurried up as quickly as I could. Shall we now go ashore?”

“Certainly,” said Fritz, “although you’ve not detained me, I assure you. I have had plenty to look at during the little time I’ve been waiting.”

“Ah, you’ve not seen half of Providence yet,” replied the other, as the two stepped from the gangway that led from the deck of the steamer on to the stone quay alongside. “Why, some of the houses further up are finer than those of Broadway!”

“This is your native place, I suppose?” said Fritz slyly.

“Yes,” answered his companion, “but I do not flatter it on that account.”

The two walked on, until presently the Rhode Islander stopped in front of one of the smaller hotels. This looked, despite its lesser proportions, in comparison with its larger rivals, far more respectable and aristocratic—if such terms may be permitted to anything appertaining to the land of so-called “equality” and “freedom,” where, according to the poetical belief, there is no aristocracy save hat of merit and shoddy!

“Let’s go in here,” said the deck hand. “It is a great place for the merchants and sea-captains, and I might be able to introduce you to some one I know while we’re having a drink.”

“It’s too early for that,” said Fritz, feeling inclined to draw back, remembering what his companion had confessed the night before about his habits.

“Ah, I see,” exclaimed the other, colouring up as he took the hint, being evidently highly sensitive. “But you need not be afraid of that now. I’m always on my good behaviour whenever I come up to Providence. I’m really not going in here to drink now, I assure you; this is a house of call for business people, and I want to see some one just come home whom I know.”

“All right, then,” said Fritz, going into the hotel without any further protest; when, following his companion through several long passages, they at length entered a large room at the back.

“Jerusalem!” ejaculated the Rhode Islander almost the very instant he had crossed the threshold of this apartment. “If that aren’t the identical coon right oppo-site, mister!”

“Where?” asked Fritz.

“There,” said the other, pointing to where a rather short, broad-shouldered man was engaged in conversation with a lithe lad, whose back was turned but the colour of whose hair reminded Fritz of poor Eric.

“Hullo, Cap’en Brown,” sang out the whilom deck hand at this juncture; and, the broad-shouldered man looking round in the direction whence the voice proceeded, the lad also turned his face towards Fritz.

Good heavens! It was his brother Eric, whom he and every one at home had believed to be buried beneath the ocean with the rest of the boat’s crew that had escaped when the Gustav Barentz foundered, nothing of them having been heard since!

With one bound he was across the room.

“Eric!” he exclaimed in astonishment.

“Fritz!” ejaculated the other; and, forgetting their surroundings in the joy of thus meeting again, the two brothers fell into each other’s arms, almost weeping with joy.

“By thunder!” said the Rhode Islander to his friend the sea captain, both looking on with much interest at the affecting scene, “I’m glad I made him come in here anyhow, and we’ll have a licker-up on the strength of it, Cap’en Brown. It seems it wer a sort of providence that made him take our boat away haar, after all!”

Chapter Fifteen.

The Yankee Skipper.

“And how on earth did you escape?” asked Fritz, when he and Eric had somewhat recovered from their first surprise and emotion at meeting again in so unexpected a manner.

“Well, it’s a long story to tell, brother,” replied Eric, as soon as he could speak calmly, putting his arm through that of Fritz and drawing him towards a sort of long sofa, like a divan, which stretched across one side of the wide apartment where they had so strangely encountered—the other and opposite side of the room being occupied by the usual long hotel “bar,” common in most American towns, in front of which various little detached groups of people were standing up, drinking and chatting together. “Suppose we come to an anchor here awhile, and I’ll reel you off a yarn about all that has happened to me since I left Lubeck.”

“All right, we may as well sit down, at all events,” said Fritz. “They won’t charge us for that, eh?”

“Oh no, I guess not,” answered Eric, with that old light-hearted laugh of his, which his brother had never thought he should ever hear again. “This is a free country, they say, you know!”

“Now tell me all about yourself,” said Fritz, when they had ensconced themselves comfortably in the furthest corner of the divan, or settee, which they had pretty much to themselves. “I’m dying to know how you were saved!”

“Right you are, my hearty,” replied Eric, in sailor fashion. “Here goes for the log of my cruise in the poor old Gustav Barentz!”

“Fire away!” said Fritz; and then, the lad thereupon began his story.

The ship, Eric declared, was found to be terribly leaky almost as soon as they had started on the voyage, and this necessitated their having to put into Plymouth for repairs, which detained them a considerable time. Indeed, it was as much as they could do to patch her up at all; for, her timbers were so rotten and the vessel had been strained so much from overloading that she was really unfit to be sent to sea. However, as Fritz already knew, the Gustav Barentz managed to clear out of the Channel, reaching the latitude of the Cape de Verde Islands all right, and it was shortly after passing Teneriffe that Eric had been enabled to forward that letter of his which had so gladdened his mother’s heart, to Lubeck by a homeward-bound ship. After that, however, all went wrong with the ill-fated vessel. She had knocked about in the doldrums for weeks; and, after making a long leg over to the South American coast, had succeeded at last in getting round the Cape of Good Hope safely—although taking a terrible time over it, and dragging out a most tedious passage from Plymouth—when she met a south-east gale, just as she had entered the Indian Ocean and was shaping a course towards the Straits of Sunda, so as to fetch Java.

Leaky and strained and overladen as the ship was, she was in no condition to fight the elements on fair terms; so the result of it was, that, after being buffetted by the gale for some four days and then, finally, pooped by a heavy following sea as she tried to run before the wind, it was discovered that she was making water too fast for the pumps to be of any avail. Consequently, as nothing further could be done, it was determined to abandon her. Accordingly, the jolly-boat and pinnace were provisioned and launched over the side, the crew being divided between the two, under the direction of the captain and chief officer; and they had hardly time to get into these frail craft, to encounter once again on worse terms the perils of the ocean that had already proved too strong for their vessel, and push off from her side, when they saw the old Gustav Barentz go down before their eyes—foundering almost without a moment’s warning.

“It was terrible for you all to be left tossing about on the raging sea in a couple of open boats!” said Fritz sympathisingly, pressing his brother’s arm,—“worse than being in a leaky ship, I should think.”

“Yes,” answered Eric; “but we kept up our courage well, the captain sustaining us with brave words, saying that, as we were not many miles south of Cape Arguilhas and had the wind blowing right on to the land, we must soon reach shore. But, I don’t know, I’m sure, how he came to place the ship where he did; for, according to my reckoning, we were several degrees, at the least, to the eastward of the Cape. However, I suppose he said what he did to prevent our giving way to despair, which, perhaps, we might otherwise have done, eh?”

“Most probably,” said Fritz, agreeing with his brother. “It would be very unlikely for the captain to make so great an error in his calculations as that. He was esteemed a good navigator, you know, by Herr Grosschnapper.”

“Well, anyway,” continued Eric, without waiting to argue this point with his brother, “we did not reach land that day, which some of the men expected from his words; nor did we the next morning, although, then much to our sorrow, we could see the pinnace no longer near us, she having parted company in the night time and gone to the bottom, as we thought.”

“You were wrong,” interrupted Fritz; “the boat was picked up by an Australian ship, the survivors being taken on to Melbourne. It was through these that we heard later on of the loss of the Gustav Barentz; and naturally, as you had not been rescued at the same time, we all gave you and the captain’s party up.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Eric. “I’m right glad to hear that! Why, we thought that they were the lost ones, not us, lamenting them much accordingly! That Groots, the first mate, was a capital chap, as fine an officer as ever stepped aboard a ship; so I’m pleased to know he’s safe. But, to go on with my yarn, there we found ourselves alone in the morning on the wild waste of waters, dancing about in an angry sea that threatened every moment to overwhelm us, and with the gale increasing instead of having blown itself out, as we hoped. We didn’t feel very comfortable, I can tell you, Fritz.”

“I should think not,” responded his brother.

“No; for it was as much as we could do to prevent the boat from filling every moment, the waves were breaking over her so continually. It only escaped sinking by constantly baling her out with our boots and keeping her head to the wind with a floating anchor, which we rigged together out of all the spare oars and spars we had aboard, veering the little craft to leeward of this by the painter. All that day, too, the gale kept up; and the sea, you may be sure, did not calm down, rolling mountains high, as it seemed to us just down to its level in the jolly-boat! So it was the next night, there not being the slightest lull, we having to ride it out all the while; but, on the third morning, the gale moderated sufficiently for us to be able to scud before it in the direction of the Cape. It was lucky for us that the wind, by the way, did not shift once while we were lying-to, blowing steadily from the same quarter it began in, from the south-east. If it had changed at all, especially during the night at any time, it would have been all up with us!”

“Yes?” said Fritz interrogatively.

“Why, of course it would, for it was as dark as pitch, so that you could not see your hand before your face; and if the wind had chopped round, bringing us athwart the heavy rolling sea that was running, we should have been swamped in a moment, without the chance of saving ourselves by turning the boat’s head so as to meet the waves; do you see now?”

“I see,” said Fritz, with a shudder. “It was bad enough to confront your peril in daylight, but it would have been awful to have been engulfed in the darkness!”

“That was what was in our minds,” proceeded Eric; “at least, I can answer for my own thoughts. However, on the morning of the third day, as I’ve told you, the wind slackening down somewhat, although still blowing steadily from the south-east, we hauled up to our floating anchor, which we quickly proceeded to take to pieces, hauling on board again the oars and old boat-stretchers that had composed it, and which had served the purpose of fending off somewhat the rollers, these breaking over the spars, under whose lee we had comparatively still water. We then, with a great deal of difficulty, as it was a dangerous operation on account of getting broadside on to the waves, managed to slew the jolly-boat’s head round; when, rigging up a scrap of a sprit-sail amidships, so as not to bury the little craft’s nose, which might have been the case if we had tried to step our proper mast more forward, with the captain steering with an oar out to windward to give him greater command of her than the rudder would have done, we scudded away towards the African coast, giving up the pinnace as lost, and looking out only for ourselves.”

“You had plenty to do,” said Fritz, “without thinking of any one else.”

“Yes,” replied Eric; “but still, we could not forget them so easily as all that. Shore folk think sailors are heartless, and that when a poor chap is lost overboard, they only say that ‘So-and-so has lost the number of his mess!’ and, after having an auction over his kit in the fo’c’s’le, then dismiss him from their memory! But, I assure you, this is not always the case. You see, a ship is a sort of little world, and those on board are so closely bound together—getting to know each other so thoroughly from not having any others to associate with—that when one is taken away from amongst them, particularly by a violent death, his absence, cannot but be felt. A sailor often misses even a messmate whom he may dislike. How much the more, therefore, did we feel the loss of the whole boat’s crew of the pinnace, every man of whom was almost as much a brother to me as you!”

“I beg your pardon if I spoke thoughtlessly,” said Fritz; “but I should have imagined that being in such imminent danger, you would not have had much time to mourn your lost comrades.”

“Nor did we,” continued Eric, “so long as we had something to do, either in helping to bale the boat out or keeping her head to wind; but, when we began to run before the gale, the men stretched out in the bottom and along the stern-sheets, doing nothing,—for there was nothing for us to do,—we began to think of the poor fellows. This was only for a short time, however, as presently we had a more serious consideration on our minds than even the fate of the others. During all the strain on us, when we were in such danger, none of us had thought of eating or drinking; and, consequently, we had not examined the provisions—put hastily on board as we were leaving the sinking ship. But, now, feeling almost famished, on proceeding to overhaul the lockers, we found to our dismay that the sea water had spoilt everything, our biscuit being paste and the other food rendered unfit for use.”

“What a calamity!” exclaimed Fritz.

“Yes,” said Eric, “it was. Fortunately, we had some water, although our two barricoes did not contain an over-abundant supply for seven men as there were of us in the jolly-boat all told, including me. The captain, too, had stowed away a bottle of rum in the pocket of his pea jacket; and this being served out all round in a little tin pannikin we had, diluted to the strength of about four-water grog, it strengthened us all up a bit, bracing up our energies for what lay before us.”

“What did you do?” asked Fritz.

“Why, what could we do, save let the boat go where the wind chose to take us, and trust in providence!” said Eric, seemingly surprised at the question.

“Ah, we had an awful time of it,” he resumed presently. “When you come to being five days in an open boat, with nothing to eat and only a small quantity of water to assuage your burning thirst with at stated intervals, exposed all the time, too, to rough seas breaking over you—encrusting your hair and skin and everything with salt that blistered you when the sun came out afterwards, as it did, roasting us almost as soon as the gale lessened—why it was a painful ordeal, that’s all! The rum did not last out long; and soon after the final drop of this was served out, the captain succumbed to weakness, having been dying by inches, and the stimulant only sustaining him so long. We kept him a couple of days, and then flung the body overboard, along with those of two other men who had died in the meantime from exposure and want of food; thus, only three others were now left in the jolly-boat besides me.”

“And then?” interrupted Fritz anxiously.

“I don’t know what happened afterwards,” said Eric. “I got delirious, I suppose, for I remember fancying myself at home again in Lubeck, with Lorischen bending over me and offering me all sorts of nice things to eat! Really, I do not recollect anything further as to what occurred in the boat.”

“How were you saved, then?” asked Fritz.

“It was that good Captain Brown there, talking to the gentleman whom you came in here with,” replied Eric, pointing out the broad-shouldered, jolly-looking, seafaring man whom Fritz’s friend, the deck hand of the steamer, had accosted and was now conversing with, close to where the two brothers were seated on the divan.

“Oh, he rescued you!” said Fritz, looking at the seafaring man with some interest. “I should like to thank him.”

“Yes; he’s a good fellow,” Eric went on. “The first thing I saw when in my right senses again, I think, after we had heaved the bodies of our dead shipmates overboard the boat, was Captain Brown bending over me. I must have confused his face with that of Lorischen, whom I had been dreaming of, for I thought it was hers, and called the captain by her name.”

“You did?”

“Yes; I remember his laughing and saying, ‘poor little chap,’ meaning me. He took care of me well, though; and it was only through his kind care that they were able to bring me round again. They told me afterwards that I was in a most pitiable state of emaciation—a skeleton, they said, with only fragments of burnt, blistered skin covering my poor bones!”

“And the others,” inquired Fritz,—“did they recover too?”

“No; not one of the three was alive when Captain Brown’s ship came across our boat. I was the only one who had any life remaining. They thought me a corpse, too, and would have left me to die with the rest, if it hadn’t been for the captain, who declared there was breath still in my apparently dead body, and kindly had me hoisted on board and attended to.”

“But how was it you never wrote home?” said Fritz after a bit, the recollection of what he had gone through overcoming Eric and making him silent for a moment.

“How could I, when the first land I touched, since I was picked up in the ocean south of the Cape, was when I stepped ashore here last week!”

“I can’t make that out,” said Fritz, puzzled at this.

“Why,” replied the other, “you must know that Captain Brown’s ship, the Pilot’s Bride, is a whaling vessel; and she was on her usual cruise for her fishing ground in the Southern Ocean, when I was rescued. If there had been a boatload of us, or had our skipper been alive, perhaps Captain Brown would have put in to the Cape to land us and so give news of the loss of our ship; but, as there was only me, a boy, and I was for days insensible and unable to give him any particulars about the vessel I belonged to, of course he continued his voyage. When I came to myself, he promised to put me on board the first home-going ship we met; but, as we were far out of the track of these, we never came across a sail. We did land at Tristan d’Acunha, about which I’ll have to tell you something bye-and-bye as to a plan I’ve got in my head, however, as no vessel with the exception of ourselves had been there for six months, there was not much use in my leaving a letter to be forwarded home, on the chance of its being called for, was there?”

“No,” said Fritz, laughing. “A bad sort of post office that!”

“So,” continued Eric, “I had to wait till I landed here last Friday, when I wrote at once to dear mother and you, whom I thought would of course still be at Lubeck.”

“Ah, you don’t know all that has happened since you left,” said Fritz solemnly.

“Nothing is the matter with mother, dear mutterchen?” asked Eric in a frightened voice.

“No; she’s quite well, thank God,” said Fritz, who then proceeded to give his brother a history of all that had transpired in his absence—the account taking all the longer from Eric’s ignorance of the war and everything connected with it, he not having seen a newspaper from the time of his leaving home until his arrival at Rhode Island, when, the events of the past memorable year being of course stale news, they had no chance of being communicated to him.

“And now,” said Fritz, when he had made an end of his confidences in return for his brother’s story, “I want to know Captain Brown, and thank him for all his kindness to you, Eric.”

As Fritz said this, the broad-shouldered, jolly, seafaring man Eric had pointed out—who was still talking to Fritz’s acquaintance of the steamboat, close to the divan and within sound of the brothers’ voices—hearing his name spoken, looked towards Fritz, who at once raised his hat politely.

“Sarvint, sir,” said he, coming forward and stretching out an open hand about the size of a small-sized ham.

“You’re the brother, I reckon from the likeness, of this young shaver I picked up off the Cape, hey? My name’s Brown, Cap’en Brown, sir, of the Pilot’s Bride, the smartest whaling craft as ever sailed out o’ Providence, I guess. Glad to know you, mister!”

Chapter Sixteen.

An Invitation.

“Yes, I’m Eric’s brother,” said Fritz, grasping the huge paw of the other, and shaking hands cordially,—“Fritz Dort, at your service. I’m only too glad to have the pleasure of personally thanking you, on my own and my mother’s behalf, for your bravery in saving my poor brother here from a watery grave, as well as for all your kindness to him afterwards! He has told me about you, captain, and how you rescued him at sea, besides treating him so very handsomely afterwards.”

“Avast there!” roared out the Yankee skipper in a voice which was as loud as if he were hailing the maintop from his own quarter-deck, albeit it had a genial, cheery tone and there was a good-natured expression on his jolly, weather-beaten face. “Stow all thet fine lingo, my hearty! I only did for the b’y, mister, no more’n any other sailor would hev done fur a shepmate in distress; though, I reckon I wer powerful glad I overhauled thet there jolly-boat in time to save him, afore starvation an’ the sun hed done their work on him. I opine another day’s exposure would hev settled the b’y’s hash; yes, sir, I du!”

“I’ve no doubt of that,” said Fritz kindly. “From what he says, you must have picked him up just in the nick of time.”

“Yes, sirree, you bet on thet,” responded the skipper. “Six hours more driftin’ about in thet boat, with the sun a-broilin’ his brain-box an’ his wits wool-gatherin’ in delirimums, would ha’ flummuxed him to a haar, I guess. He wer so mad when we got him aboard thet he took me fur his gran’mother, Lorry sunthin’ or other—I’m durned if I ken kinder rec’lect the name!”

“So he tells me,” said Fritz, laughing at the idea of old Lorischen being mistaken for the broad-shouldered, red-faced, whaling captain. The old nurse, who was very particular about her personal appearance, would have had a fit at the bare supposition, much less at such an allusion to her age as would have supposed her ancient enough to be Eric’s grandmother!

“Never mind, mister,” continued the skipper, giving Eric a hearty slap on the back, which made the lad wince although he smiled at what the worthy sailor intended for a little friendly attention. “He’s all right now, the b’y is—ain’t you, my bully, hey?”

“Yes; all right, captain, all right, sir, thanks to you,” replied Eric.

“Thet’s your sort,” said the skipper exultantly. “We’ve coddled him up an’ made a man of him ag’in, we hev, sirree. Jerusalem, mister, you wouldn’t know him ag’in for the skillagalee young shaver we h’isted aboard! An’, what is more, mister, look here, we’ve made a sailor of the b’y since he’s been along of us in the Pilot’s Bride—none of your lazy, good-for-nothin’ idlers; but, a reg’ler downeaster cat block, clear grit an’ no mistake, a sailor every inch of him, yes, sir!”

“I should have thought he had seen enough of the sea, eh?” said Fritz, turning to Eric with a smile.

“Thunder, mister!” exclaimed the Yankee skipper indignantly. “What d’ye mean with your ‘’nough of the sea,’ when he’s only jest cut his eye-teeth an’ taken to larnin’? Why, mister, it would be a sin to let thet b’y turn his hand to anythin’ else, fur he’s a born sailor to the very backbone!”

“What say you, Eric?” said Fritz to his brother.

“Oh, I’m with the captain,” replied he. “I always loved the sea, and the wreck of the old Gustav Barentz has not altered my thinking about it just the same. I don’t believe I could ever settle down to a shore life now! I have learnt a lot of seamanship, too, with Captain Brown; and he says, that if I will go with him on his next whaling voyage, he’ll make me third mate of the Pilot’s Bride.”

“Jest so, my young cock shaver,” said that gentleman; “an’ what old Job Brown sez, why I guess he’ll stick to! You rec’lect what I told you ’bout wages, hey? We whalin’ men don’t gen’rally give a fixed sum, as we go shares in the vally o’ the venture; but, if yer brother haar likes it better, I’ll give you twenty dollars a month, besides yer keep an’ mess money, thaar!”

“I’m sure, Captain Brown, that is a very generous offer,” replied Fritz, acting as spokesman for his brother; “still, I hardly think my poor mother would like his being away for so long a time as your voyage would last.”

“We’ll be away, I reckon, fur a twelvemonth, countin’ from next month, when we’ll start—thet is if my shep’s ready for the v’y’ge, as I kinder guess she’ll be, with me to look arter her an’ see the longshore men don’t lose time over the job,” interrupted the skipper. “Say now, she sails latter end o’ July, so as to git down to the Forties afore October, or tharabouts; waall, I guess we’ll cast anchor in Narraganset Bay ag’in ’fore next fall—will that du for you, mister, hey?”

“You see,” explained Fritz, “my poor mother thinks him dead; and, of course, after she gets the letter he tells me he has just sent home, it will be as bad as a second death to her to know that he has now started on another voyage without returning to see her first! Besides that, I’ve read and heard that whaling life is terribly dangerous—isn’t it?”

“Not a bit of it,” said the skipper bluntly, in sea-dog fashion. “I reckon it’s nary half so dangerous as sailin’ back’ards an’ for’ards across the herrin’ pond ’twixt Noo Yark an’ your old Eu-rope in one o’ them ocean steamers, thet are thought so safe, whar you run the risk o’ bustin’ yer biler an’ gettin’ blown up, or else smashin’ yer screw-shaft an’ goin’ down to Davy Jones’ locker! Why, thaar ain’t a quarter the per’l ’bout it, much less half, as I sed jest naow! You jest ax my friend haar, whom you seem to hev known afore. Say, Nat, what d’ye think o’ whalin’ life?”

“Safe as the National Bank, I guess, Job,” promptly responded the individual addressed, Fritz’s acquaintance the “deck hand,” whose full name he now learnt was Nathaniel Washington Slater—usually addressed as “Nathaniel W Slater,” or called familiarly “Nat” by his friends!

“Thaar!” exclaimed the skipper, “what more d’ye want than thet, hey? You see, mister, the Pilot’s Bride don’t do whalin’ up in Baffin’s Bay an’ further north, whar I’ll allow the fishin’ is a bit risky. We only makes reg’ler trips once a year to the Southern Ocean, callin’ in on our way at Saint Helena an’ the Cape o’ Good Hope. Thaar, I guess, we meets a fleet of schooners thet do all the fishin’ fur us ’mongst the islands. We fetch ’em out grub, an’ sich-like notions, an’ take in return all the ile an’ skins they’ve got to bring home. In course, sometimes, we strike a fish on our own ’count; but, we don’t make a trade of it, ’cept the black fins comes under our noses, so to speak! The b’y’ll run no risk, you bet, if you’re skeart about him.”

“No, not a bit, mister,” corroborated Nat; “and it’s a downright capital openin’ for him, I guess, too. Why, there are scores of people would give something handsome as a premium to get the cap’en to take their sons along o’ him!”

“Thet’s a fact,” said the skipper; “though I reckon I don’t kinder like to be bothered with b’ys—’specially sich as are mother’s darlin’s. They’re gen’rally powerful sassy, or else white-livered do-nuthins! I’ve taken a fancy to this lad, howbeit; an’ thet’s the reason I wants fur to hev him with me.”

“Besides, Fritz,” put in Eric, who had refrained from speaking as yet throughout the conversation, although so interested in it, “you must recollect what a sum mother paid for my outfit? Well, I have lost every stitch of it, and shall not get the slightest return from the owners for what went down in the Gustav Barentz—merchant sailors have to run the risk of all such casualties, you know! Now, I should not like to go back on mother’s hands again, like a bad penny, with nothing to bless myself with; but, here’s a capital chance for me. As Captain Brown says, I shall return in a year, and then my wages would be something handsome to take home to mutterchen, even if I then gave up the sea.”

“Did you tell mother of this in your letter?” asked Fritz.

“Certainly; for, of course, I did not expect to see you here. I told her that I had almost pledged my word with Captain Brown to go with him, even if it were only to pay him for what he had already done for me, in advancing me money to buy clothes and other necessaries, for I hadn’t a rag on when he rescued me, as well as promising to keep me here till the vessel is ready to start again on her next voyage. Why, Fritz, he’s so kind, that he actually offered to pay my passage home, if I were bent on seeing mother first before deciding about his offer!”

“That settles it then, Eric, for mother will be certain to say that the right thing to do will be to pay your debts first; in addition to which, knowing I am now out here, she will not expect you to return yet. Really, Captain Brown,” added Fritz, turning to the skipper, who appeared to be anxiously awaiting the result of the colloquy between the two brothers, “I’m quite at a loss to express my gratitude to you, both on my brother’s and my own behalf! I hope you will not think me lukewarm in the matter, from my taking so long to make up my mind?”

“Sartenly not, sirree,” said the Yankee skipper with emphasis, as he gripped Fritz’s hand again. “Sartenly not, sirree. Bizness is bizness, an’ pleasure’s another kind o’ notion altogether! I only gev’ the b’y an invitation, thet’s all, I reckon!”

“An invitation which he now accepts with thanks,” replied Fritz. “Eh, Eric?” he added, turning to the lad, who was looking at Captain Brown with a face as beaming as his own.

“Of course I will,” answered Eric, without a moment’s hesitation. “I should be a donkey to refuse such an offer.”

“Waall,” drawled out the skipper in high good humour, “I’m raal glad to hear you say thet so. You won’t repent j’inin’ me, I ken tell you, nor regret slingin’ yer hammock aboard the Pilot’s Bride!”

He then proceeded to wring Eric’s hand as cordially, and forcibly too, in his big fist as he had done his brother’s.

“Now thet’s all settled an’ fixed up slick,” said Captain Brown, when he had finished hand-shaking, passing on the friendly civility to Mr Nat Slater. “I guess we’d better hev a liquor-up to seal the barg’in; an’ when thet’s done, if you’ve got nuthin’ better to du, I reckon you’d better come along o’ me to my little shanty at the head of the bay—your brother’s ben made welcome thaar already.”

“You are very kind,” replied Fritz, to whom this courteous speech was addressed; “but this gentleman here,” indicating Nat, “was just going to show me a boarding-house where I can put up at. He has also promised to introduce me to some shipping firm where I can get work.”

“Out o’ collar, then?” asked the skipper, with deep interest.

“Yes,” answered Fritz. “I could get no employment in New York, and that is what made me come up here, so providentially as it has now turned out.”

“Waall, come home along o’ me, anyhow, till you find sunthin’ to put yer hand to,” said the other kindly. “My folks’ll make you downright welcome, you bet, mister.”

“Thank you, I will,” replied Fritz, accepting the kind invitation in the same spirit in which it was offered; and presently the two brothers, reunited so strangely, were on their way, in company with the good-hearted skipper to his “shanty,” as he called it, on Narraganset Bay—a comfortable, old-fashioned house, as Fritz presently found out, commanding a fine view of the Providence river on one hand, and of the wide Atlantic, rolling away into the illimitable distance, on the other.

“Nat” declined to accompany the party, on the plea of an engagement He made an appointment, however, with Fritz for the morrow, promising then to introduce him to some business men, who, he said, would probably find the young German employment; after which he took leave of the Yankee skipper and the two brothers, with a brief parting, “So long!”

Chapter Seventeen.

Eric’s Project.

Fritz was not long in the company of Mr Nathaniel Washington Slater on the following day before he discovered, much to his disappointment, that he was one of those superficial characters who are given largely to dealing in promises that they either have no intention of keeping when making them originally, or which they never were or would be in a position to carry out.

When coming up Long Island Sound on board the Rhode Island steamer and having that friendly chat in the bows of the boat, the deck hand had been lavishly expansive as to what he would be able to accomplish for his newly-made acquaintance, in the way of procuring him employment; but, when Fritz met him again, according to their arrangement of the previous afternoon, “Nat” did not appear to exhibit that eager alacrity in introducing him to business men—or “big bugs,” as he termed them—which his words of the night before had led Fritz naturally to expect.

Whether this arose from the fact that the deck hand’s desire to aid the young German had evaporated as rapidly as it had arisen, or because his morning reflections had convinced him that he had too rashly promised something which he was unable to perform, Fritz, of course, could not precisely tell. Whatever was the reason, the result came to the same thing, that Mr Slater showed a most unmistakable inclination to “back out” of the matter in the same easy way in which those double-ender floating palaces Fritz had noticed on the way up could go astern in order to avoid an obstruction; albeit Nat was prolific in the extreme with all manner of excuses—excuses that were as baseless and unsubstantial as the foam churned up by the steamboat’s paddle-wheels!

He “felt ugly” and was “no end sorry,” but he really “hadn’t the time that morning.” This was his first attempt at shunting the engagement; but then, when Fritz, in the exuberance of hopeful possibilities, offered to meet him at the same place and time on the following day, “Nat” “couldn’t think of putting him to the trouble,” as he “might have to return to New York in the boat at a moment’s notice.” Besides, he said, it would be “better to put off the appointment awhile,” as he’d just heard that the “boss” of the very identical shipping firm where he thought he could have got Fritz a berth had started “right away” for Boston, and he was such a “durned electric eel of a cuss, here, there, and everywhere,” that it would be “just dubersome to kalkerlate” when he would “reel his way back to hum!”

Fritz could not understand many of these very choice Americanisms; still, he was sufficiently gifted with common sense to see pretty plainly that all the deck hand’s “tall talking” of the previous evening had been, to use his own expressive vernacular, nothing but “bunkum,” and that, if he wished to get any situation in the place, he must trust more to his own good fortune than to Mr Slater’s kind offices as a go-between.

This disheartened him at the time; but when he got back to Captain Brown’s shanty later on, the worthy old skipper, noticing his despondency, soon cheered him out of it.

“Bless you, sonny,” said he affectionately, for he seemed to have taken as great a fancy to Fritz as he had to Eric—the young fellow having told him all his plans and prospects, besides giving him an epitome of his adventures during the war when narrating the same for his brother’s edification,—“Bless you, sonny, nary you mind what thet ne’er-do-well Nat Slater sez. I’d half a mind to tell you thet yesterday, when I seed you so thick with him! Jerusalem, mister, he’s a coon thet’s bin allers a loafer all his life, stickin’ to nuthin’ even fur a dog-watch, an’ as shifty as one o’ them sculpens in the creek thaar! You jest wait an’ make yourself comf’able haar till bye-em-bye, an’ I reckon we’ll fix you up to sunthin’.”

The same evening, when the two brothers were alone together, and speaking of old Captain Brown’s kindness, Eric suddenly, as if in a moment of inspiration, said, “Why should you not come along with me in the Pilot’s Bride when we start next month?”

“What!” exclaimed Fritz in astonishment.

“Don’t look so startled, brother,” said Eric, laughing at the expression of the other’s face. “Recollect, that as you say, you’ve been unable to get any work here, so, why not go with me? I’m sure Captain Brown would take you with us if you ask him.”

“But I’m not a sailor,” argued Fritz; “and, besides, if I were one, going to sea would not be the way to make the fortune I have planned, so that I may be able to return home and marry Madaleine.”

“Ah, that dear Madaleine!” said Eric. “I wonder when I’ll see her, and whether I shall think her all that you describe? Never mind,” he added, seeing that Fritz appeared vexed at this speech, “I’ve no doubt she’s a beautiful maiden, and that you’ll both be as happy as the day is long! But, I’m going to speak about business now, my brother; and, if you listen, you’ll see that my idea of your coming in the Pilot’s Bride is not such a wild-goose chase, after all.”

“I confess I don’t see it yet,” interposed Fritz, with a smile at Eric’s boyish eagerness. “In what way will going whaling with Captain Brown and your important self advance my fortunes?”

“Listen,” said the other, “and I’ll soon tell you. Do you recollect when I was recounting my story, that after I was picked up from the boat and taken on board the Pilot’s Bride, I mentioned the fact of the ship calling at Tristan d’Acunha?”

“Yes; and you also said that you would inform me of something important about the place ‘bye-and-bye,’ if you alluded then to what you’re going to tell me now.”

“Precisely, ‘bye-and-bye’ is ‘now,’” said Eric, laughing again and tossing his mane-like hair back from his forehead in the old fashion. “We landed at Tristan d’Acunha—”

“Where on earth is that place?” interrupted Fritz. “I’ve a confused notion that it is an island of some sort; but, in what precise spot it is situated, I’m sure I can’t tell!”

“Well, then,” commenced Eric grandiloquently—only too glad of the opportunity of having to instruct his elder brother, who had been regarded in the family circle as the centre of all wisdom—“‘Tristan d’Acunha’ is the centre island of a group, so-called after the Portuguese navigator who discovered them in the early beginning of the sixteenth century. The islands are probably the most isolated and remote of all the abodes of men, lying as they do almost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and nearly equidistant from the continents of America and Africa; for, they are situated nearly on the line that could be drawn between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope—from the latter of which they are distant some fifteen hundred miles in a westerly direction, while Saint Helena, the nearest other land to them on the north, is thirteen hundred miles away.”

“You’re very explicit, I’m sure,” said Fritz in a chaffing way; “you must have been coaching up your geography recently.”

“I disdain vulgar interruption and idle clamour,” returned the other in a similar vein. “But, to proceed. The group consists of the larger island of Tristan and two smaller islands—Inaccessible Island, some eighteen miles to the south-west, and Nightingale Island, twenty miles to the south. These islands are uninhabited, save by penguins and seals; but an interesting little colony of some eighty souls occupies Tristan, breeding cattle and cultivating vegetables, with which they supply passing vessels, mostly whalers—these calling there from time to time, on their way to and from their fishing grounds in the great Southern Ocean.”

“Your account is highly interesting, my dear Eric,” said Fritz, when his brother had completed this exhaustive description of the Tristan d’Acunha group; “still, I confess I do not see in what way it affects me.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Then you will soon; listen a moment longer. I told you that, with the exception of the larger one, these islands are uninhabited save by the penguins and seals and such-like marine animals.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that; and I don’t wonder at it when they are situated so remotely from all civilisation.”

“That fact has its advantages none the less,” proceeded Eric. “Being so cut off from communication with men makes these islands just the favourite resort of those animals that shun the presence of their destroyers. Seals, as you know, are very nervous, retiring creatures seeking their breeding-places in the most out-of-the-way, deserted spots they can find; and the advance of the human race, planting colonies where the poor things had formerly undisputed sway around the shores of the South American continent, has driven them further and further afield, or rather to sea, until they are now only to be met with in any numbers in the Antarctic Ocean, and such islands as lie adjacent to that great Southern continent which has never yet been discovered—although Lord Ross pretty nearly put foot on it, if any explorer can be said to have done that.”

“Really, Eric,” exclaimed Fritz jokingly, “you surpass yourself!”

“Oh, I’ve read up all this in some books Captain Brown lent me,” said the boy. “I wanted to learn everything that was to be learnt about a whaler’s life, and to become acquainted with the special parts of the ocean that have to be visited by vessels in the trade in order to find a profitable fishing ground.”