Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/onlyagirlaroman00wistgoog
2. This was published also in England under the title "Ernestine: A Novel", translated by S. Baring Gould.

ONLY A GIRL:

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

A ROMANCE

FROM THE GERMAN

OF

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

BY

MRS. A. L. WISTER.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1871.

Entered, according to act of Congress, In the year 1870, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

CONTENTS.

ONLY A GIRL;

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

[CHAPTER I.]

"ONLY A GIRL."

In a level, well-wooded country in Northern Germany, not far from an insignificant village, stood a distillery, such as is frequently to be found upon the estates of the North German nobility, and in connection with it an extensive manufactory,--the estate comprising, besides, a kitchen-garden overgrown with weeds, a few fruit-trees overshadowing the decaying remains of rustic seats long fallen to ruin, and a dwelling-house, well built, indeed, but as neglected and dirty as its guardian the lean, hungry mastiff, whose empty plate and dusty jug testified to the length of time since the poor creature had had any refreshment in the oppressive heat of this July day. No one who looked upon this picture could doubt that the interior of the house must correspond with its cheerless outside, and that the gentle, beneficent hand was wanting there that keeps a house neat and orderly, cares for the garden, and attends to the wants of even a dumb brute. Where such a hand is wanting, there is neither order nor culture, no love of the beautiful, nor sometimes even of the good,--too often, indeed, no joy, no happiness. There was no one in the court-yard or garden; nothing was stirring but a couple of cheeping chickens that were peeping around the corner of the dog's kennel, in hopes of stray crumbs from his last meal. They came on cautiously, their little heads turning curiously from side to side, in fear lest the dog should make his appearance; but he kept in his kennel, his head resting upon his paws, and his bloodshot eyes blinking over the distant landscape. The hungry fowls, grown bolder, pecked and scratched around his plate, but vainly: there was nothing to be found but dry sand.

Beside the well stood a churn, and a bench upon which lay a roll of fresh butter, which, neglected and forgotten, was melting beneath the sun's hot rays, and dripping down upon the weeds around. Perhaps the starving dog was suddenly struck by the thought how grateful this waste would be to him were it only within his domain; for he started up and ran out as far as he could from his kennel, dragging his rattling chain behind him, as if to prove its length, then stood still, and finally bethought himself and crept back with drooping head beneath his roof. Outside of a window, upon the ground floor, stood a couple of dried cactus-plants, and several bottles of distilled herbs; the cork of one of them was gone, and its contents filled with flies and beetles. Everything, far and near, betrayed neglect and dirt; but the excuse of poverty was evidently wanting. The extensive stables and accommodations for cattle, the huge out-houses and far-stretching fields of grain testified to the wealth of the proprietor of the estate. A comfortable rolling-chair standing in the court-yard, its leathern cushions rotting in the sun, seemed to indicate the presence of an invalid or a cripple. Only the lowest and uppermost stories of the house appeared to be inhabited; the windows of the middle floor were all closed, and so thickly festooned with cobwebs that they could not have been opened for a long time. It seemed as if the swallows wee the only creatures who could find comfort in such an inhospitable mansion; their nests were everywhere to be seen. The chickens looked enviously up at them, and hopped upon the low window-ledges of the lower story, as if to remind the inmates of their existence and necessities. Suddenly they fluttered down to the ground again, for from one of the open windows there came a child's scream, so piteous and shrill that the large dog pricked his ears and once more restlessly measured the length of his chain.

In a low room, the atmosphere of which was almost stifling from the heat of an ironing-stove and the steam from dampened linen, that two robust maid-servants were engaged in ironing, a little girl, about twelve years of age, was standing before an old wardrobe. She was half undressed, and the garments falling off her shoulders disclosed a little body so wasted and delicate that at sight of it a mother's eyes would have filled with tears. But there was no mother near, only an old housekeeper, whose bony fingers had apparently just been laid violently upon the child, who was crying aloud and covering one thin shoulder with her hand, while she refused to put on a dress that the woman was holding towards her.

"What is the matter now?" an angry voice called from the adjoining room. The child started in alarm. The old woman went to the door, and replied, "Ernestine is so naughty again that there is no doing anything with her. She has torn her best dress, because she says she has outgrown it, and it hurts her; but it isn't true: it fits her very well."

"How can the miserable creature have outgrown any dress?" rejoined the rough voice from within. "Put it on this moment, and go!"

The child leaned against the wardrobe, and looked obstinate and defiant.

"She won't do it, sir; she does not want to go to the children's party!" said the unfeeling attendant.

"I ordered you to go," cried the father. "When a lady like the Frau Staatsräthin does you the honour to invite you, you are to accept her invitation gratefully. I will not have it said that I make a Cinderella of my daughter!"

Little Ernestine made no reply, but looked at the housekeeper with such an expression in her large, sunken eyes, that the woman was transported with rage; it seemed scarcely possible that so much contempt and hate should find place in the bosom of a child. The housekeeper clasped her hands. "No, you bad, naughty child! You ought to see how she is looking at me now, Herr von Hartwich!"

With these words she tried again to throw the dress over Ernestine's head; but the girl tore it away, threw it on the ground and trampled upon it, crying in a transport of rage, interrupted by bursts of tears, "I will not put it on, and I will not go among strangers! I will not be treated so! You are a bad, wicked woman! I will not mind you!"

"Oh, goodness gracious! was ever such a naughty child seen!" exclaimed the housekeeper, looking with a secret sensation of fear at the little fury who stood before her with dishevelled hair and heaving chest.

"When are you going to stop that noise out there?" roared the father. "Must I, wretched man that I am, hear nothing, all day long, but children's and servants' squabbles? Ernestine, come in here to me!"

At this command, the little girl began to tremble violently; she knew what was in store for her, and moved slowly towards the door. "Are you coming?" called the invalid.

Ernestine entered the room, and stood as far as possible from the bed where he was lying. "Now, come here!" he cried, beckoning her towards him with his right hand,--his left was crippled,--and continuing, as Ernestine hesitated: "You good-for-nothing, obstinate child! you have never caused a throb of pleasure to any one since you came into the world; not even to your mother, for your birth cost her her life. In you God has heaped upon me all the sorrows but none of the joys that a son might afford his father; you have the waywardness and self-will of a boy, with the frail, puny body of a girl! What is to be done with such a wretched creature, that can do nothing but scream and cry?"

At these words the child burst into a fresh flood of tears, and was hurrying out, when she was recalled by a thundering "Stop! you have not had your punishment yet!"

Ernestine knew then what was coming, and begged hard. "Do not strike me, father! Oh, do not strike me again!" But her entreaties were of no avail.

With lips tightly compressed, and her little hands convulsively clasped together, she approached the bed. The sick man raised his broad hard hand, and a heavy blow fell upon the transparent cheek of the child, who staggered and fell on the floor. "Now will you obey, or have you not had enough yet?" the father asked.

"I will obey," sobbed the little girl, as she rose from the floor.

"But first ask Frau Gedike's pardon!" ordered the angry man.

"No!" cried Ernestine firmly. "That I will not do!"

"How! is your obstinacy not yet conquered? Disobey at your peril!"

"Though you should kill me, I will not do it," answered the child, with a strange gleam in her eyes, as her father, endeavouring to raise himself in his bed, stretched put his hand towards her.

"Oh, fie! are you crazy?" suddenly said a melodious voice, just behind Ernestine. "Is that the way for a man of sense to reason with a naughty child,--playing lion-tamer with a sick kitten!"

Then the speaker turned to the little girl and said kindly, "Go, my child, and be dressed; you will enjoy yourself with all those pretty little girls."

Ernestine's long black eyelashes fell, and she obeyed silently.

The strange intercessor for the tormented child was a tall, slender, almost handsome man, with delicate features and a certain air of repose which might rather be called impassibility, but which was so refined in its expression that it could not but produce a favourable impression. His tone of voice was soft, melodious, and grave; his pronunciation faultlessly pure. An atmosphere of culture which seemed to surround him gave him an air of superiority. His dress was simple, but in good taste, his step light, his manner and bearing supple and insinuating. It would have struck the common observer as condescending, but the closer student of human nature would have found it ironical and treacherous.

In moments of passion such human reptiles exercise a soothing influence upon heated minds, and check their violent outbreaks, as ice-bandages will arrest a flow of blood. Upon his entrance the invalid became quiet, almost submissive; the room seemed to him suddenly to become cooler; he was, he thought, conscious of a pleasant draught of air as the tall figure approached the bed and sank into the arm-chair beside his pillow.

"It would be no wonder if I did become crazy!" Herr von Hartwich excused himself. "The child exasperates me. When a man suffers tortures for months at a time, and is crippled and confined to bed, how can he help being irritable? He cannot be as patient as a man in full health, who can get out of the way of such provoking scenes whenever he pleases!"

"You could easily do that if you chose, by keeping the child in the rooms above, which have been empty for years. Then you might be quiet, and people would not be able to say that the rich Hartwich's delicate child had to sit in the ironing-room in such hot weather,--it is worse than unjust; I think it unwise!"

"What!" Hartwich suddenly interrupted him, "shall I leave the child and the servants to their own devices above-stairs, whilst I lie here alone and neglected? Or shall I hire an expensive nurse, and make every one think I am dying, and let the factory-hands suppose themselves without a master?"

"That last cannot happen, for they long ago ceased to regard you as their master; they know that I am the ruling spirit of the whole business. As for your talk about the expense of a nurse, such folly can only be explained on the score of your incredibly avarice, which has become a mania with you of late. For whom are you hoarding your wealth? Not for your child; you will leave her no more than what the law compels you to leave her; still less for me, for you have always been a genuine step-brother, and have bequeathed me your property only because I would not communicate to you the secrets of my discoveries without remuneration; and you would rather give away all your wealth at your death than any part of it during your lifetime. And I assure you that if I am to be your heir, which perhaps may never be, I would far rather go without a few thousand thalers than witness such outrageous neglect of a child's education!"

The invalid listened earnestly. "You are talking very frankly to me to-day, and are, it seems to me, reckoning very confidently upon my not altering my last will and testament," he said, in an irritated tone of menace.

Without a change of feature, the other continued: "With all your faults and eccentricities, you are too upright in character to punish my candour in the way at which you hint. You know well that I mean kindly by you, and that I am an honest man. I might have required large sums of money from you. Upon the strength of the increase of income accruing from my exertions, I might have insisted upon your constituting me your partner, and much else besides; but I have contented myself with the modest position of superintendent, and with the certainty that by your will (God grant you length of days!) a brilliant future may be prepared for my child when I am no more. These proofs of disinterestedness, I think, give me a right to speak frankly to you!"

"What is all this circumlocution to lead to?" asked Hartwich, who had grown strikingly languid, while his speech was becoming thick. "Be quick, for I am sleepy."

"Simply to this,--that you either remove Ernestine to the upper story, or, what would be better still, away from the house."

"Away from the house! Where to?"

"Why, to some institution where she may be so educated that it need be no disgrace hereafter to have to own her as a relative. The child will be ruined with no society but that of servant-maids, grooms, and village children."

"Bah!" growled the invalid, "what does it matter?"

"If you are indifferent as to what becomes of your daughter, I am by no means indifferent as to my niece, or as to the influence that, if she lives, she may exercise upon my own daughter. As Ernestine now is, the thought that in a year or two she may be my child's playmate gives me great anxiety. Should she remain here, I must send my little girl from home, or she will be ruined also. But, setting all this aside, I wish her sent away for your sake. You cannot control yourself towards the obstinate, neglected child; and, as long as she is with you, such scenes as have just occurred are unavoidable. And I have learned to-day that the whole village resounds with your 'cruel treatment' of your own child. This throws rather a bad light upon your character, just when you wish our new neighbours to think well of you."

"That's all nonsense; if they think the factory worth fifty thousand thalers, they'll buy it, whether they think me a rogue or an honest man," said Hartwich.

"Think the factory worth--yes, that's just it," the silken-smooth man continued; "but that they may think it worth so much, much may be necessary,--among other things, some degree of confidence in the present proprietor."

"And you have the sale very near at heart, because you would far rather put the fifteen thousand thalers profit, that I have insured to you, into your pocket than win your bread by honest labour," said the invalid with sarcasm. "'Tis a fine gift for me to throw into your lap!"

"A gift?" his brother asked--"an indemnification for the loss of income that the sale of the factory will occasion me, and without which indemnification I shall certainly prevent any such sale. You are always representing our business transactions as generous on your part. I require no generosity at your hands. You pay me for my services: I serve you because you pay me. Why pretend to a feeling that would be unnatural between us?--we are step-brothers; it would be preposterous sentimentality to try to love each other."

"Most certainly you take no pains to attach me to you," the invalid remarked.

"Why should I?" his brother replied with a smile. "There must be some reason for everything in the world--there would be none in that. You would not give me a farthing for my amiability; whatever I get from you must be earned by services very different from brotherly affection."

"You are a downright fiend, that no man, made of flesh and blood, could possibly love! You always were so from a child: how you tormented my poor mother! You know nothing of human feeling. In the warmest weather your hands are always damp and cold, and your heart, too, is never warm. I am cross and irritable, but I am not as utterly heartless as you are, God forbid! You are one of those beings at discord with all natural laws, who cast no shadow in the sunshine." The sick man closed his eyes, exhausted, and large drops of moisture stood upon his brow.

His brother took a handkerchief and carefully wiped them away. "Only see how you excite yourself, and all for nothing!" he said in the gentlest, kindliest voice. "Because I have no sympathy with fictitious sentiment and exaggerated outbursts, you call me unfeeling. Because I am quiet by nature, not easily aroused, you picture me in your feverish dreams as a vampire. I will leave you now, or I shall excite you. Lay to heart what I have said about the child; for if the present course is persevered in, it will bring disgrace upon us, and that would be to me unendurable!"

Hartwich made no reply; he had turned his face to the wall, and did not look around until his brother had noiselessly left the room.

During this conversation little Ernestine had allowed her dress to be put on. When this was done, the housekeeper left the room, and the child busied herself with lacing upon her feet an old pair of boots that were really too small for her.

"That's right, Ernestine," one of the maid-servants whispered. "Frau Gedike is a bad woman: none of us can bear her--it is good for her to be vexed, and we are glad of it!"

"I do not want to vex her, but I hate her--and my father, too--he is cruel to me," said the child, with the bitterness with which a defenceless human being, when ill used, seeks to revenge itself.

"Indeed he is a dreadful father," Rieka, the elder of the maids, whispered softly to her companion, but Ernestine heard all that she said perfectly well. "He always wanted a son, and talked forever of what he would do for his boy when he had one. And when the child was born, and was not a boy after all, he was quite beside himself, and cried furiously, 'Only a girl! only a girl!' and rushed out of the house, banging the door after him so that the whole house shook. The young mother--she was a delicate lady--fell into convulsions with sorrow and fright, and took the fever, and died on the third day. Then he was sorry enough, and raved and tore his hair over the corpse, but he could not bring her to life again. He has been well punished since he had his stroke, and perhaps it was to punish him that Ernestine has grown so ugly; but he ought at least to show his repentance for what he did, by kindness to the sickly little thing, instead of abusing her. It isn't the child's fault that she's not a boy."

Ernestine listened to all this with a beating heart, and now slipped out gently that the maid might not know she had overheard her. Outside she stopped to stroke the dog, but the poor thirsty brute growled at her. She saw that he had no water, and took his can to the well and filled it. When she saw the water gushing so sparkling from the pipe, she could not resist the temptation to let it run upon her burning head.

"Ernestine, what mischief are you about now?" the housekeeper screamed from the window; but the water was already dripping down from the child's long hair upon her shoulders, breast, and back.

"The sun will dry it before I get to the Frau Staatsräthin's, she thought, and carried the dog his drink; but when she attempted to pat him, he growled again, because he did not wish to be disturbed while drinking.

"Even the dog does not like me," she thought, and crept away. "Only a girl! And my father is so cross to me because I am not a boy." And as she went on she repeated the phrase to herself, and her step kept time to it as to a tune, "Only a girl--only a girl!"

From the window of the upper story her uncle and his wife looked after her. The wife presented an utter contrast to her husband. She was uncommonly stout, and her jolly face was so flushed that if her husband had really been a vampire she might have afforded him nourishment for a long term of ghostly existence. But he was no such monster, although his meagre body seemed to bask in his wife's warm fulness of life as some puny, starving wretch does in the heat of a huge stove. Any more poetical comparison is impossible in connection with Frau Leuthold; for, in spite of her massive beauty, her thick bushy eyebrows, her sparkling black eyes, her thick waves of dark hair, the whole expression of her large face, with its double chin and pouting mouth, was coarsely sensual. Yet there was something in this expression that showed that, however great the dissimilarity between the husband and wife in mind and body, there was still one thing in which they were alike: it was the heart,--in his case ossified, in hers overgrown with fat.

There are some persons whose mental organization can be excellently well described by the medical term "fat-hearted." They are no longer capable of any healthy moral activity, because an indolent sensuality has taken possession of them, crippling their energies like fat accumulating around the heart. Although the natures of husband and wife were radically dissimilar, still in the results of their modes of thought there was enough similarity to produce that sort of harmony which is maintained between the receiver and the thief. The stout brunette was a worthy accomplice of her slender, fair husband; and that she possessed the art of sweetening existence for him after a fashion, to which no one possessing nerves of taste and smell is altogether insensible, a table, upon which were delicious fruits, biscuits, and a bowl of iced sherbet, bore ample testimony. Thus the refined thinker endured the narrowness and coarseness of his better half for the sake of material qualifications, and of the ease with which she entered into his projects for selfish aggrandizement. As a cook she possessed his entire approbation, and the union between these utterly different natures was universally considered a happy one.

"She's an ugly thing, that Ernestine," said the affectionate aunt, looking after her pale little niece, who was walking slowly along with drooping head. "Kind as I may be to her, she will have nothing to say to me. They say dogs and children always know who likes them and who does not; so I suppose the child knows I can't abide her."

"Whether you like her or not is not the question," replied her husband. "You have not attached her to you, and that is a mistake; for it makes us sharers in the common report of Hartwich's cruelty to the child. She is considered in the village as the victim of unfeeling treatment. The pastor thinks her a martyr, whose cause he is bound to adopt; the schoolmaster talks about her clear head; and who can tell that all this nonsense may not waken the conscience of my fool of a brother, and induce him at the eleventh hour to make, Heaven only knows what changes for her advantage! That would be a blow--such people easily fall from one extreme into the other. Therefore the child must be separated from him. If I cannot succeed in having her sent away, we must manage somehow to attach her to us, and so stop people's mouths." An involuntary sigh from his wife interrupted him. "I know it is troublesome, up-hill work; but, Heaven willing, it cannot last long. Hartwich is failing. He may live a year; but, if he should have another stroke, he may go off at any moment; then, for all I care, you may be rid of the disagreeable duty at once, and send Ernestine to boarding-school. Still, appearances must be kept up, my dear. You know how much I would sacrifice for the sake of my reputation. I cannot bear a shabby dress or to dine off a soiled table-cloth; and just so I cannot endure a stain upon my name."

While speaking, he had seated himself at the table and filled a goblet of sherbet from the fragrant bowl. As he was sipping it delicately, with his lips almost closed, his wife threw herself down upon the sofa by his side with such clumsy violence that the springs creaked, and her husband was so jolted that he lost his balance, and the contents of his glass were spilled upon his immaculate shirt-front. Much annoyed, he carefully dried his dripping garment with his napkin. "Now I shall have to dress again," he said in a tone of vexation.

"To spill your glass over you just in the midst of such a conversation as this means no good," said his superstitious wife.

"It means that you never will learn to conduct yourself like a lady," was the quiet reply.

"Indeed!" she cried with a laugh. "So I must learn aristocratic manners that I may do more credit to your brother, who has drunk himself into an apoplexy! A fine aristocrat he is!"

"Just because he disgraces his standing I will respect mine; and you should assist me to do so, instead of laughing. And when his estate is ours, I will show the world that it is not necessary to be born in an aristocratic cradle in order to be an aristocrat. The dismissed Marburg professor will yet play a part among the élite of the scientific and fashionable world that a prince might envy him. Wealth is all-powerful; and where there is wealth with brains, men are caught like flies upon a limed twig."

"Ah, how fine it will be!" cried his wife, excited by this view of the subject; and she hastily filled a glass from the bowl and drank it greedily.

"It is indeed such good fortune that a man less self-controlled than myself might well-nigh lose his senses at the thought of it!" her husband rejoined. And there was a dreamy look in his light-blue eyes.

"Then we can keep a carriage, and I shall drive out shopping, with footmen to attend me, and Gretchen shall have a French bonne, and shall be always dressed in white and sky-blue. We will live in the capital, and you, Leuthold, need never do another day's work,--you can amuse yourself in any way that pleases you."

And the wife tossed her head proudly, as though already lolling upon the soft cushions of her carriage.

"Do you suppose I could ever be a robber of time?" he asked her with a sharp glance. "No, most certainly not. If I had made the ten commandments, the seventh should have been, 'Thou shalt not steal a day from the Lord.' He who steals a day seems to me the most contemptible of all thieves."

Ills wife laughed and displayed a double row of fine white teeth, whose strength she was just proving by cracking hazel-nuts.

"Do you suppose," continued Leuthold, "that I should ever be content with the reputation of a merely wealthy man? No; I long for other honours. As soon as the means are in my power, I will resume my old scientific labours, and will soon distance the miserable drudges who daily lecture in our schools. I will have such a chemical and physiological laboratory as few universities can boast. Ah! when I am once free from all the hated servitude, the miserable toil day after day, in that detestable factory, I will bathe in the clear, fresh stream of science, and make a name for myself that shall rank among the first of our time."

"Is that all the happiness you propose to yourself?" asked his wife with a sneer.

"There is no greater happiness than to play a great part in the world through one's own ability; and if my poverty has hitherto prevented my doing so, my wealth, in making me independent, shall help me to my goal. Make a man independent, and he has free play for the exercise of his talents; while the hard necessity of earning his daily bread has crushed many a budding genius before his powers were fully developed. It is glorious to be able to work at what we love!--as glorious as it is miserable to be forced to work at what we hate." He smoothed with his hand his thin, glossy hair, and murmured with a sigh, "No wonder it is growing gray; I wonder it is not snow-white, since for ten years this miserable fate has been mine. It is enough to destroy the very marrow in one's bones, and dry up the blood in the veins."

His wife stared at him with surprise. "Why, Leuthold, think what good dinners I have always cooked for you!"

Leuthold looked up as if awakening from a dream, and then, with the ironical expression which his unsuspicious fellow-men interpreted as pure benevolence, he said, "You are right, Bertha! Your first principle is 'eat and drink;' mine is 'think and work.' That yours is much the more practical can be mathematically proved!" He glanced with a smile at his wife's portly figure.

"Only wait until we are settled in the capital, and see what I will do for you. Then you shall have dinners indeed!" said Bertha.

"Your skill will be needed, for we shall have plenty of guests. Men are like dogs: they gather where there is a chance of a good dinner, and the host is sure of many friends devoted to him through their palates. 'Tis true, such friends last only as long as the fine dinners last; we can have them while we need them, and throw them overboard, like useless ballast, when they can no longer serve our turn."

"Yes, you are right; what a knowing fellow you are!" cried Bertha. "Heavens!" she added, clapping her hands with childlike naïveté, "if he would only die soon!"

Her husband looked at her sternly. "I trust that in case of the event, which will be as welcome to me as to you, no human eye will be able to discern anything but grief in your countenance. Should you be too awkward to simulate sorrow, I must invent some method for making you really feel it; for appearances must be preserved at all costs! Remember that!"

Bertha clasped her hands in dismay. "Mercy on me! I really believe you would do anything to torment me into seeming sorry. It would be just like you; for what people say of you,--or 'appearances,' as you call it, are dearer to you than wife or child, or anything else in the world."

She sprang up, and her breath came quick and angrily. Leuthold contemplated her with a kind of satisfaction as she stood before him with flashing eyes and curling lip. She displayed some emotion,--only the emotion of anger, 'tis true; but as enthusiasm is always passionate, so passion will sometimes seem enthusiasm, and lend a kind of nimbus to insignificance.

"I like to see you so!" said Leuthold, drawing her down beside him and laying his cool hand upon her shoulder.

Just then the cry of a child was heard in the adjoining apartment. "Gretchen is awake," cried Bertha, forgetting her anger, and leaving the room so quickly that the boards creaked beneath her heavy tread, and the sofa upon which her husband was seated shook. She soon returned, with a pretty child of three years of age in her arms. After tossing it, notwithstanding its size and strength, up and down like an india-rubber ball, she threw it with maternal pride into her husband's lap. He caressed the little thing tenderly, and a ray shot from his eyes like the gleam of a wintry san across a snowy landscape. For, though there was no genuine paternal love in his heart, there was at least in its place,--what is hardly to be distinguished from it,--fatherly pride.

"How strange to think," said the mother, "that that should be your child!"

"Why?" asked Leuthold with surprise.

"It is so odd that such a slim, delicate-looking man as you are should have such a healthy, chubby little daughter. It is just as if a wheat-stalk should bear penny rolls instead of wheat-ears." She laughed immoderately at the idea, without perceiving that her husband was far from flattered by the comparison. "They say," she continued, "'long waited for is good at last,' and we waited long for the little thing, and she is good." And she put up the child's plump little hand to her mouth as though she would bite it. The little girl shouted with glee, and the sound so sweet to maternal ears did not fail to awaken a return. Bertha shouted too, until her husband's ears tingled. "If Ernestine had only been a boy, she could have married Gretchen, and our child would have been all provided for," she said, after a pause.

"Do not talk such nonsense," said Leuthold. "Hartwich would have loved a son as thoroughly as he detests his daughter, and would have bequeathed to him all his property. We owe our inheritance there to the happy chance that made his child a girl. But even supposing that she were a boy, with the inheritance still ours, do you think I would mate her so unworthily? No! our Gretchen, lovely and rich as she will be, can never marry a simple Herr von Hartwich. She will one day make me father-in-law to some great statesman, some illustrious scholar, or, at least, to some count!"

"And me mother to a countess!" cried his wife with glee.

[CHAPTER II.]

THE STORY OF THE UGLY DUCKLING.

In the mean time Ernestine had pursued her way. She walked slowly on through the extensive fields in the glare of the four-o'clock sun, whose rays were broken by no friendly tree or shrub. The waist of the dress which she had outgrown was so tight that she was frequently obliged to stand still and recover her breath. The perspiration rolled down her poor worn little face. The sunbeams felt like dagger-points upon her weary head; but she could not go back: fear of her father was more powerful than the torments she was enduring. Better to be pierced by the sun's rays than struck by her father's hard hand. Still, she could not help weeping bitterly that every one seemed so unkind to her. What had she done, that her father should hate her so? It was not her fault that she was so ugly and not a boy. "Ah, why am I a girl?" she sobbed, and sat down upon the hard, sun-baked clods of earth among the brown, dried potato-plants. She clasped her knees with her arms, and pondered why boys were better than girls, wondering whether she could not learn to do all that boys could. The schoolmaster had often told her that she had more sense and learned her lessons better than the boys. What was it that she needed, then? Strength, boldness, courage! Yes, that was a good deal, to be sure; but could she not make them hers in time? She thought and thought. She would exercise her strength. She had once read of a man who carried a calf about in his arms daily, and was so accustomed to his burden that he never noticed how the calf increased in size and weight, until at last he bore a huge ox in his arms. She would do so too; she would accustom herself at first to the weight of little burdens, and go on increasing them until at last she could carry the very heaviest. And she could be bold too, if she only dared, and if her shyness would only wear off. Then, she hoped, her father would be quite content with her. She sprang to her feet comforted and walked on. Her mind was made up. She would be just like a boy.

At the end of an hour Ernestine reached a beautiful and extensive grove, through which she passed, and entered a garden, at the end of which stood a charming country-house. Upon the wide lawn in front, a merry throng of children were running and leaping hither and thither, and from the fresh green a sparkling fountain tossed into the air a crystal ball. At the open doors of a room leading out into the garden sat a company of elegantly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and servants in rich liveries were handing around refreshments upon silver salvers. Ernestine stood as if dazzled by all this pomp and splendour. She dared not approach. How could she? To whom could she turn? No one came towards her; no one spoke to her. Her embarrassment was indescribable, when suddenly the beautiful, gaily-dressed children on the lawn broke off their play and looked towards her with astonishment. Ernestine saw how the little girls nudged each other and pointed at her. She distinctly heard some say to the others, "What does she want?" She was almost on the point of turning round to run away, when she was observed by the group of ladies and gentlemen, and a servant was dispatched to ask whom she was looking for. Everything swam before her eyes as the tall man with such a distinguished air stepped up to her and asked sharply, "What do you want here?"

"Nothing," replied Ernestine; "I would not have come if I had known!"

"Who are you, then?" asked the servant

"I am Ernestine Hartwich."

"Ah, indeed!" he said, with a slight bow; "that's another affair; you are invited. Permit me." With these words he conducted the passive child to the ladies, and announced, "Fräulein von Hartwich!"

The looks that were now fastened upon Ernestine were more piercing and burning, she thought, than the sun's rays. Those people never dreamed that the quiet little creature standing before them was possessed of a goal so delicate in its organization, so finely strung, that every breath of contempt that swept across it created a shrill discord, a painful confusion; they only looked with the careless disapproval, which would have been all very well with ordinary children, at the straight, black, dishevelled hair, the sunken cheeks, the wizened, sharp features of the pale face, the deep dark eyes, with their shy, uncertain glances, the lips tightly closed in embarrassment, and last, the emaciated figure in its faded short dress, and the long, narrow feet and hands. In the minds of most, an ugly exterior excites more disgust than sympathy; and, to excuse this feeling to one's self, one is apt to declare that the child or person in question has an "unpleasant expression," thus hinting at moral responsibility in the matter of the exterior, as if it were the result of an ugliness of soul which would, in a measure, excuse one's disgust. This was the case with all who were now looking at this strange child. It seemed as though they were drinking in with their eyes the poison that had wasted Ernestine's little body,--the poison of hatred which her being had imbibed from her father and her unnatural surroundings, and as if this poison reacted from them upon herself. The little girl felt this instinctively without comprehending it, and as she met, one after another, those loveless glances, it was as though a wound in her flesh were ruthlessly probed. She could not understand what the ladies whispered to each other in French, but their tones intimated displeasure and contempt. She suddenly saw herself as in a mirror through their eyes, and she saw, what she had never seen before, that she was very ugly and awkward,--that she was meanly dressed; and shame for her poor innocent self flushed her cheeks crimson. In that single minute she ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,--that fruit which has driven thousands, sooner or later, from the Eden of childlike unconsciousness. She had entered upon that stage of life where a human being is self-accused for being unloved, unsought,--despises herself because others despise her,--finds herself ugly because she gives pleasure to none. Hitherto, whatever she had suffered, she had been at peace with herself; now she was at enmity with herself and the world. She felt suffocated; everything swam before her sight, and hot tears gushed from her eyes. Just then a tall, stately woman came out of the drawing-room. "Frau Staatsräthin," one of the ladies called to her in a tone of contempt, "a new guest has arrived!"

"Is that little Ernestine Hartwich?" asked the hostess, evidently endeavouring to conceal behind a kindly tone and manner her amazement at the child's appearance. She held out her hand: "Good day, my child; I am glad you have come. Will you not take some refreshment? You seem heated. You have not walked all the way? Yes? Oh, that is too much in such hot weather! Such a delicate child!" she said with a look of sympathy. She sprinkled sugar over some strawberries and placed Ernestine on a seat where she could eat them, but the rest all stared at her so she could not move a finger; she could scarcely hold the plate. How could she eat while all these people were looking on? She trembled so that she could not carry the spoon to her lips.

She choked down the rising tears as well as she could, for she was ashamed to cry, and said softly, "I would like to go home!"

"To go home?" cried the Staatsräthin. "Oh, no, my child; you have had no time to rest, and you are so tired! Come, my dear little girl, I will take you to a cool room, where you can take a little nap before you play with the other children." She took Ernestine by the hand and led her into the house and through several elegant rooms to a smaller apartment, with half-closed shutters and green damask furniture and hangings, where it was as quiet, fresh, and cool as in a grove. The air was fragrant, too; for there was a basket of magnificent roses upon the table.

Ernestine was speechless with admiration at all the beauty around her here. She had never seen such a beautiful room in her life, never breathed within-doors so pure an atmosphere. The Staatsräthin told her to lie down upon a green damask couch, which she hesitated to do, until at last she took off her dusty boots, heedless that she thereby exposed stockings full of holes, and when the Staatsräthin, with a kindly "Take a good nap, my child," left her, and she was alone, a flood of novel sensations overpowered her. The pain of the last few moments, gratitude for the kindness of the Staatsräthin, the enchantment that wealth and splendour cast around, every childish imagination,--all combined to confuse her thoughts. But the solitude of the cool room soon had a soothing effect upon her. The green twilight was good for her eyes, weary with weeping and the glare of the sun; she felt so far away from those mocking, prying glances; everything was so calm and quiet here that she seemed to hear the flowing of her own blood through her veins. She thought of the ironing-room and her father's gloomy chamber at home. What a difference there was! Oh, if she could only stay here forever! How can people ever be unkind who have such a lovely home! How can they laugh at a poor child who has nothing of all this!

But the Frau Staatsräthin, whose room this was, was kind. Ah, how kind! Yet so different from every one at home--so--what? So distinguished! Yes, every one at home seemed common compared with her, and Ernestine herself was common, although the lady had not treated her as if she were; she felt it herself; and was ashamed. What if the lady could have seen how naughty she had been to-day, how she had torn off her dress and stamped upon it, and scolded Frau Gedike?

She blushed at these thoughts, and resolved never again to conduct herself so that she should be ashamed to have the Frau Staatsräthin see her. A new sense was suddenly awakened in the child; but it fluttered hither and thither like a timid bird, terrified by her late surroundings, and not yet accustomed to all that was so novel about her.

The child never dreamed of the innate refinement that distinguished her from thousands of ordinary children; she was only crushed as she compared herself with the gentle lady and the gaily-dressed children upon the lawn; and this very feeling of shame, this disgust at herself, was a proof how foreign to her youthful mind was the absence of beauty in her exterior. In the midst of all these new, confusing thoughts, sleep overpowered her; she stretched herself out comfortably upon the soft couch. The beating of her heart, the painful pressure upon her brain, and the singing in her ears, grew fainter and weaker, and soothed her to slumber like a cradle-song.

On the lawn, in the mean time, nothing was talked of but the child, and her family. It was thought inconceivable that a Freiherr von Hartwich should allow his daughter to be so neglected. But then he had never been a genuine aristocrat; for his mother was of low extraction, as was proved by her return to her own rank of life after the death of her husband Von Hartwich. She soon after married the widower Gleissert, thus giving her son a master-manufacturer for a father, then purchased her husband's heavily encumbered factory, which she had bequeathed to her son with the condition that he should continue to keep it up,--a condition most distasteful to the heir. Gleissert had a son by his first marriage, named Leuthold, who had studied, but had not been much of a credit to his brother, with whom he was living at present.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of an elderly gentleman, who drove up in a very elegant but very dusty carriage. The number of orders upon his breast testified to his high position, and the haste with which the hostess went forward to receive him, and the trembling of the hand which she extended towards him, showed of what importance his arrival was to her.

"Vivat!" he cried out to her. "Your Johannes takes the first rank--a splendid examination--there has not been such another for ten years!"

"Thank God!" said the Staatsräthin, with a long sigh of relief.

"Yes, yes!" the kindly voice continued. "A superb fellow! I congratulate you upon such a son--not a question missed--not one! And answered with such ease and confidence, yet without the slightest particle of conceit. Deuce take it!--I wish I had married and had such a son. Come," he said, turning to a boy of about fourteen years of age, who had arrived with him, "perhaps you may one day be such another,--keep your eyes steadily upon Johannes. Permit me, dear madam, to present to you the son of my late friend, Ferdinand Hilsborn. He lost his mother a few months ago, and is now my adopted son."

The Staatsräthin held out her hand to the boy, and said with emotion, "Although I never knew your mother, it pains me deeply to know that she left this world before she could enjoy such a moment as your adopted father has just given me by his tidings."

The gentle boy's eyes filled with tears as she spoke.

"Only think, my dear friends," said the Staatsräthin, turning to the company, "Johannes never told me that this was his examination-day, that he might surprise me. I only learned it this afternoon from a few thoughtless words of my brother's. Our kind Geheimrath Heim has just brought me the tidings of his promotion."

The guests, with sympathy and congratulations, crowded around the proud mother, whose heart was too full to do anything but reply mechanically to their kind speeches.

"But, dear Frau Möllner," a Frau Landräthin remarked maliciously, "was it not a little strange that your Johannes should not have told you of his examination-day?--certainly a mother has a sacred right to share such hours with her son."

"When a mother's claims are held as sacred as are mine by my son," replied the Staatsräthin, with dignified composure, "he may well be left to do as seems to him best in such a matter. He wished to spare me hours of anxiety; and I thank him."

"The woman is blindly devoted to her son," the Landräthin whispered to a friend.

"She is growing perfectly childish with maternal vanity," remarked another.

"But how can any one as wealthy as the Staatsräthin allow her son to study?" said the Landräthin.

"Yes, yes!" several others joined in, "he certainly need never earn his living in such a way. Why did she not buy him a commission? 'Tis too bad for such a handsome young man!"

"Yes, yes!" the old Geheimrath called out to the ladies, as if he had heard only their last words, "Johannes is a man,--a man, although hardly twenty years old! Only such a mother could have such a son!" And he laid his hand kindly upon the Staatsräthin's arm.

"I wish every woman, left alone in the world, had such a friend as you are," she said, holding out her hand to him gratefully. "You are the best legacy left me by my dear husband. But where is Johannes? Why did he not come with you?"

"He sent me before to announce his arrival in the evening," replied the old gentleman. "He was obliged to make a few visits this afternoon. Ah," he sighed, as the Staatsräthin handed him some refreshments, "it is a hot journey hither from town,--and a tedious one too,--but it is all the cooler and more delightful when you get here." He wiped his forehead and looked around the circle with the kindly, penetrating glance of a man who sees through the weaknesses of his fellow-men, but judges them with the gentleness of a superior nature. "Well, ladies," he asked good-humouredly, "did the old doctor interrupt a most interesting conversation? I cannot believe that sitting here so silent and serious is your normal condition. What were you talking of when I arrived?"

"Of nothing very pleasant, Herr Geheimrath," said the Landräthin venomously; "we were only speaking of Herr von Hartwich and of his brother, who went wrong some years ago,--we don't know exactly how."

"I can tell you all about it, ladies," said the Geheimrath.

All instantly entreated him, "Oh, tell us; pray tell us!"

The Geheimrath began: "I was professor of medicine at Marburg when that strange occurrence took place. It was about ten years ago. Gleissert was then Extraordinarius in the university, and a young man of great ability. By his diligence and insinuating manners, he had won for himself the good-will of every one; and one of my colleagues, Hilsborn, the father of the boy whom I brought with me to-day, was his intimate friend. Their spécialité was the same, and Hilsborn filled the professorial chair which was the object of Gleissert's desire. Both were physiologists, but Hilsborn had the chair of special physiology, and Gleissert, as Extraordinarius, was occupied only with physiological chemistry. One day Hilsborn confided to me that he was upon the track of a new discovery. It would be of great importance to science if he could only succeed in carrying it out and establishing it upon a firm foundation. The difficulty in doing so lay principally in the procuring of the necessary material for his experiments,--a species of fish found only at Trieste, and which he could not procure alive. Hilsborn, a poor widow's son, lamented his want of means to travel thither and prove his hypothesis. I promised to obtain for him from my friend the minister, by the next vacation, a sufficient sum to meet his expenses, and I did so; but there was the same delay in the matter that is usual in such cases, and the necessary sum came so late that the journey had to be postponed until the following vacation, Hilsborn comforting himself with the thought that, although he must wait another six months, nothing but time would be lost. Suddenly Herr Gleissert married the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper, and begged for leave of absence for his wedding-trip. It was granted, and he was absent for four weeks. Strangely enough, his friend never heard from him during all that time; and, when he returned, we all noticed that he was unwilling to let us know where he had been. We thought he had private grounds for such unwillingness, and did not question him further. The term was over at last, and Hilsborn set off for Trieste. There he worked night and day with superhuman diligence. The result of his investigations was perfectly satisfactory, and he came back with the materials for a work which was sure to establish his fame and fortune. One day--I shall never forget it--he was in my room when the publisher sent me several new scientific papers. Hilsborn was looking through them carelessly, when suddenly he grew ashy pale. Among the pamphlets was one by Gleissert, embodying Hilsborn's idea. I was as shocked and astounded as he was. It could not be chance which led two men at the same time to so novel an idea, especially as Gleissert's course of study could not have directed him to such investigations as Hilsborn's. After a long and evident struggle with himself, Hilsborn confessed to me that he had communicated his ideas to Gleissert, and had frequently from the beginning discussed the matter thoroughly with him, without Gleissert's ever hinting even that the subject had occurred to him before. On the contrary, he was at work upon a paper upon a chemical subject, a paper which had never appeared. Difficult as it was for my high-minded friend to bring himself to it, the conviction was unavoidable that his friend had basely deceived him; for we discovered, upon close inquiry, that Gleissert's wedding-trip had been to Trieste, where he had pursued the investigations proposed by Hilsborn, and hurried on the printing of their results with the greatest haste. All outside proof of his contemptible treachery was perfect, and we were all morally convinced that he had stolen Hilsborn's idea. As pro-rector, I called him to a strict account. His defence was cunning, but not convincing. He did not attempt to deny the principal accusation brought forward, namely, the suspicious fact that he had induced Hilsborn to promise him not to impart his discovery to any one else, 'lest it should be used to his disadvantage.' He wished to be the sole depositary of the secret, that there might be no witnesses to Hilsborn's proprietorship of the stolen idea. I ask this worthy assemblage," the old gentleman here interrupted himself with indignation, "if there can be any doubt of the baseness of the man in the matter?"

"No, most certainly not, Herr Geheimrath, most certainly not," was the unanimous reply.

"Well," the narrator continued, "so we thought. We, one and all, determined to avenge poor Hilsborn, thus deprived of all his fair hopes. It is true we had no legal weapon at our disposal. Our stupid laws punish forgers and counterfeiters, but they cannot recognize the theft of the coinage of the brain. There are jails for the hungry beggar who steals a loaf; but the rogue who robs a man of his thought, the painfully-begotten fruit of his mind after years of labour, goes free. We professors undertook to do what the law does not. We published the matter far and wide in the scientific periodicals, and all handed in our resignations to the government, stating that we held it inconsistent with our honour to remain the colleagues of such a man. Of course Gleissert was instantly dismissed in disgrace, and an academic career closed to him forever. I was called away from Marburg soon after; and, since I have lived in the capital as royal physician, I have lost sight of my former colleagues. Hilsborn died after some years, and his son is now my adopted child. What became of Gleissert I do not know."

"I can tell you," said a fine-looking man, whose resemblance to the Staatsräthin declared him her brother. "I have informed myself about matters here, because I propose to purchase Hartwich's factories for my son. According to the schoolmaster, the fellow is playing a double part here also. It cannot be denied that under his guidance, and owing to his chemical discoveries, the factories have doubled in value since his arrival, for Hartwich is a very narrow-minded man, incapable, from his wretched avarice, of venturing upon any important speculation; but the way in which his brother contrives to be paid for his services is, to say the least, striking. For five years he contented himself with the salary of an overseer and free lodging--he bided his time. It came at last. One day Herr von Hartwich had a paralytic stroke, and the physicians declared that he had but few years to live. Gleissert made use of this time of helplessness, and threatened to leave the factory immediately and dispose of his discoveries elsewhere if Hartwich did not appoint him his heir. Hartwich, who of course stood more in need of him than ever, accepted his conditions, set aside that poor little girl as far as the law would allow it, and made a will in Gleissert's favour."

"He's a thorough scoundrel, that Gleissert,--a legacy-hunter, then, besides. I should like to know what the fellow holds sacred?"

"Let us ask the child about him," cried one of the ladies.

"Yes, yes," joined in several others. "It would be so interesting. Pray, dear Staatsräthin, bring the little girl here."

The Staatsräthin looked at her watch, and, finding that Ernestine had slept nearly an hour, went to fetch her. She soon returned with her, and again the child had to run the gauntlet of those piercing glances. But her rest had refreshed her, and she was not so timid.

She heard the old Geheimrath whisper to his next neighbour, "How did that stupid Hartwich ever come to have such a clever child? Look--what a remarkable head. Pity the little thing is not a boy! something might be made of her!"

His words struck to her very soul. Again she heard the same phrase,--this time from a perfect stranger, "Pity she's not a boy!"

She straightened herself, as though she had suddenly grown an inch taller, and looked up at the thoughtless speaker as if to say, "Something shall be made of me!" Then she glanced wistfully at the children who were playing ball; if she were only among them now, she would show that she could be like a boy. The Landräthin took her hand and said, "Well, my dear child, tell us something of your father. How is he now?"

Ernestine seemed surprised at the question.--"I did not ask him."

The ladies looked significantly at each other.

"Have you not seen him to-day?"

"Yes," she answered briefly.

"Do you not love your father very dearly?" the Landräthin asked further.

Ernestine paused, and then said quietly and firmly, "No!"

Her interrogator dropped the child's hand as if stung by an insect. "An affectionate daughter!" she sneered, while the rest shook their heads. "Whom do you love, then?--your uncle?"

"I love no one at home; but I like my uncle better than my father--he never strikes me!" Ernestine answered.

"Like likes like, as it seems," one of the ladies observed; the rest nodded assent, and all turned away from Ernestine.

"She is an unfortunate child," said the Staatsräthin; and arose to lead her to the children. "Angelika, here is Ernestine von Hartwich," she cried to her own little daughter, who was about nine years old; "take good care of her,--remember you are hostess!"

The children, towards whom the Staatsräthin led her protégé, scattered like a flock of birds at the approach of a paper kite. Collecting then in single groups, they whispered together, and stared at the stranger. Ernestine found herself alone, avoided by all the gay crowd which she had just so fervently admired. She played the part of a scarecrow, but with the melancholy superiority that she was conscious that she was one. She knew that she had scattered the gay circle, that she had chased away the children, that they all avoided her; and again she felt as if she should sink into the ground, her feeble limbs trembled beneath the burden of derision and contempt that she was forced to bear. The Staatsräthin cast a stern glance--which Ernestine noticed--at little Angelika, and said, "Give your hand to your new friend!"

Two of the larger girls giggled, and Ernestine heard them whisper, "A lovely friend!"

Angelika now approached Ernestine, and held out her soft little hand, but instantly withdrew it, stood mute before her for a moment, looking at the old brown straw hat that Ernestine held in her hand, then ventured one look into her eyes, and nestled confused and shy against her mother, who spoke seriously but kindly to the pretty child. She spoke in French, and Angelika answered in the same language. Ernestine was amazed. The little girl understood a strange tongue, and yet she was smaller than herself! She, who wanted to be as clever as a boy, did not even know as much as the little girl. And she had to endure their speaking before her as if she were not present; there she stupidly stood, well knowing that they were saying nothing good of her or they would have said it in German. She was weighed down by a double disgrace, that of her ignorance, and of knowing that they were speaking of her as if she were not there.

"Frau Staatsräthin," she said in a quivering voice, "I will not stay here; the children do not like me; I am too bad for them!" She turned away, and would really have gone, but little Angelika's good heart conquered.

She ran after her and held her fast: "No, no, dear Ernestine; you are not too bad for us; you are only odd--different from the rest of us. Come, we will play with you!"

Then the Staatsräthin took Angelika in her arms, and kissed her, saying, "That's right; now you are my little Angelika again, my good sweet child."

Ernestine looked on at this caress with amazement, and hot tears rose to her eyes. No one had ever been so kind to her. What happiness it must be to be so embraced and kissed! But it could never happen to her. Why not? Why did no one love her? Angelika, too, was only a girl: why was she not blamed for it? But she was so lovely, so beautiful; who could help loving her? Then her heart gave a throb as though it had been stabbed with a knife. "So beautiful," she repeated: "that is why every one pets and fondles her. It is not only that I am a girl; I am an ugly girl,--that is why no one loves me."

"Come," said Angelika. "Why do you look so? Come to the others." She led her to the fountain, around which the little company had gathered meanwhile. The children were amusing themselves with throwing stones at the ball of glass which the water tossed up and down. No girl or boy could hit it; the ball could only be struck while it was dancing on the top of the spray, and always fell before it was reached. The children laughed merrily at each other, and even the parents and grown people were interested and drew near. Ernestine looked on after her usual brooding fashion. She soon divined where the mistake lay. The stone was longer in reaching its aim than the ball lingered in the air. She quickly concluded that if a stone were aimed at the top of the fountain while the ball was still below, the latter in ascending would strike the stone. Hilsborn, the boy fourteen years old, had just declared that he could not understand why they could not strike it. Ambition took possession of her,--if she was ugly, she would show them that she was clever,--if she was only a girl, she would show them that she had force and skill. Involuntarily she looked across to the old Geheimrath, to ascertain if he saw her, and, as this seemed to be the case, she stooped down and hastily picked up a larger stone than the others, to insure success,--took the attitude which she had often observed in the village boys, and, with her feet planted firmly wide apart, swung her arm round three times to take sure aim, and hurled the stone with all her force towards the point in the air which the fountain reached in its leaping. Fate was cruel enough to favour her; the stone met the ascending ball, and so exactly that the latter was hurled out of the column of water, and, flying over the heads of the nearest by-standers, fell upon the head of a child, and the thin glass was shivered in pieces. The child screamed, more from fright than pain,--a commotion ensued,--the mother of the sufferer rushed towards her darling with frantic gestures,--the "wound" was examined, embroidered handkerchiefs were dipped in the basin of the fountain and bound around the head, while like a dark cloud there hovered over the sympathetic crowd a fear lest "some fragment of glass should have penetrated the skull." Ernestine stood there like a culprit; she felt convicted of murder, and when she heard from all sides, "What unfeminine conduct! How savage and rude! How can they bring up the girl to be such a tom-boy?" she was utterly confounded. She had been like a boy, and it was all wrong,--what should she do to please people and make them like her a little? Then the old Geheimrath approached her and unclasped the hands which she was silently but convulsively wringing. "Be comforted, you pale little girl,--there is no great harm done. In future you must leave such exploits to boys." Then he left her and examined the wound, and declared laughingly that he needed a microscope to see it. The mothers of the party, however, showed all the more sympathy and anxiety in the matter that they were chagrined that Ernestine had displayed more skill than their own children.

Ernestine's delicate instinct surmised all this. She looked at the buzzing throng of her enemies with aversion, as at a swarm of wasps that she had disturbed. She listened to the noise that was made about the slight accident with infinite bitterness, and thought how at home, when her father's blows had bruised her, no one cared anything about it. When a few days before she had fallen and cut her forehead, she had had to wash it herself at the brook. And even the old gentleman had said that she should leave such exploits to boys. Then must she not contend even with boys if she could? Why not? Why were they so superior? It was unjust! She clenched her little fists. When she grew up she would show people how great the injustice was! That she was resolved upon.

Then little Angelika came running up, calling the children together for a game. "Come, Ernestine," she cried. "You did not mean to do it,--come, play blindman's buff with us."

Ernestine did not venture to make any objection; she was so cowed that she did just as they told her, and let them make her "blind man," and tie the handkerchief over her eyes. She never complained, although when they were tying on the bandage they pulled her hair so that she ground her teeth with pain. And then they all began to tease her. One pulled at one of her long locks; another terrified her by putting beetles and caterpillars upon her neck,--the usual tricks of the game, that are easily borne when they are understood among little friends, but enough to drive a shy child, that does not know how to defend herself, to despair. No one would be caught by the ugly stranger, who had only been admitted to the game at the express desire of the hostess, and all felt themselves justified in playing all manner of tricks upon her. Ernestine caught no one, and ran hither and thither in vain. She was too conscientious to raise the handkerchief a little that she might see where she was,--that would have been acting a falsehood, and she never told falsehoods. Suddenly a hand seized her straw hat, and the worn old brim gave way, and fell upon her shoulders like a collar, to the great delight of the rest. It was a terrible loss for the poor child; for she knew that she should get no other hat at home, but would be punished for her carelessness. She grasped after her tormentor, and seized her by the skirt; but she was one of the larger girls, and tore herself away, leaving a piece of her elegant summer dress in Ernestine's hands, which had clutched it tightly. She could not see how the girl ran to her mother, bewailing the injury to her dress; the bandage over her eyes beneficently shielded her from perceiving the angry looks of the ladies, and absorbed the tears which she was silently shedding for her straw hat. She stood motionless in the middle of the lawn, and did not know what to do,--for no children seemed to be near,--the game appeared to be interrupted. Suddenly she received a sound box on the ear. The younger brother of the aggrieved young lady had stolen up and avenged his sister. Then the tormented child was filled with indignation and rage that almost deprived her of reason. She seized the boy as he tried to pass her, and began to straggle with him. He forced her backwards, step by step. She could not free her hands to untie the bandage; she did not know where she was; she would not let go her enemy, for her sufferings had filled her little heart with hate and fury. There was a scream, and at the same instant she stumbled over something and fell; she kept her hold of her foe, but she felt that she was up to her knees in water,--she had stumbled into the basin of the fountain. The guests hurried up. First seizing the boy, who was still in Ernestine's grasp, they placed him in safety, and then they helped out the trembling child, who stood there with torn, dripping clothes, an object of terror and disgust to herself and to everybody else.

What mischief the horrible creature had done! She had almost fractured one child's skull, she had torn the expensive dress of another, and had tried to drown a third!

"Pray, my dear Staatsräthin, have my carriage ordered," said one of the injured mothers; "one's life is not safe here!"

"Supper is ready," replied the Staatsräthin. "Let me entreat you all to go into the house. I will answer for the lives of your children as long as they are my guests," she added with a slight smile.

The ladies all called their sons and daughters to them, to protect them from the little monster, who still stood there, bewildered and crushed, upon the lawn, looking on with a bleeding heart, as the children, laughing and joking, clung to their parents, whom they kissed and caressed with affectionate freedom. Every child there had a mother or a father who fondled it. She--she alone was thrust out and forsaken,--no one remembered that she was tired and wet through,--no one cared for her. The charming little Angelika was everywhere in requisition, and could not come to her,--the Staatsräthin was entreating her guests to pardon her for inviting a child whom she did not know; how could she possibly suppose that Herr von Hartwich had a daughter so neglected? Ernestine heard it all. She could no longer stand,--she fell upon her knees, and, sobbing violently, hid her face in her hands. The Staatsräthin was now free to come to her, and hastily approached.

"Oh, you poor little thing, you are wet through, and no one has thought of you," she cried kindly, at sight of Ernestine. "Go into the house quickly, and put on a pair of my little girl's shoes and stockings; my room is just to the right of the drawing-room. Go immediately,--do you hear? I cannot stay away from my guests."

"Forgive me,--it is not my fault!" stammered Ernestine.

"Indeed it is not, my dear child," said the Staatsräthin gravely. "I only pity you,--I am not angry with you! But hurry now and take off your dress,--I will send you your supper to my room. I know you would rather eat it alone."

And she hastened away to her guests just as a vehicle drove up and a strikingly handsome young man about twenty years old sprang out and hurried up to her. "My dear boy," she cried, "is it you? I did not expect you yet!"

The youth kissed her hand and bowed courteously to the rest. The Staatsräthin's eyes rested upon him with the pride with which a woman during her life regards two men only,--a lover and a darling son. The guests surrounded him with congratulations upon the day's success; Angelika danced around him, and the other children all wanted a hand or a kiss. There was quite a little uproar of delight.

Suddenly the Staatsräthin cried out in a startled tone, "Little Ernestine has gone! Heavens, that poor child wet through in the cool evening air! I cannot allow it! Johannes, my dear son, run quickly, bring her back."

"Who,--what?" he asked in amazement.

"But, my dearest Staatsräthin," said the mother of the boy whom Ernestine's shot had wounded, "how can you worry yourself about the little witch? she is tougher than our children."

The Staatsräthin glanced at her contemptuously, and, turning to Johannes, continued: "She is a pale, meanly-clad little girl, eleven or twelve years of age; you cannot miss her if you take the path to Hartwich's estate; she is his daughter. Hasten, Johannes, hasten!" He obeyed, while she conducted her guests to their sumptuous repast.

Meanwhile Ernestine ran through the grove as quickly as she could, and began to breathe freely as she lost sight of the house where she had undergone so much. But her strength soon failed her. Her wet shoes and stockings clung like heavy lumps of lead to her weary feet and impeded her steps; she was conscious of gnawing hunger, and the first care for the future that she had yet felt in her short life assailed her,--she was afraid that it would be too late for her to get anything to eat when she reached home; it was growing dark, and it would be ten o'clock; Frau Gedike would be in bed. And that was not the worst that she had to look forward to; the straw hat, whose brim was still having around her neck,--the heavy, torn straw hat, would certainly bring her a severe chastisement. She sat down upon a mound on the borders of the grove, and took off the brim to see if she could contrive some way of fastening it to the crown, which she carried in her hand. The tree above her shook its boughs compassionately and threw down its leaves upon her dishevelled locks. She never heeded them,--the conviction lay heavy upon her childish heart that she could not possibly mend the hat before Frau Gedike would see it. Tear after tear dropped upon the fragments, and her large, swimming eyes glimmered in the moonlight from out her pale face like glow-worms in a lily-cup. Suddenly she started violently, for some one stood before her, and she recognized the young man whose arrival had just enabled her to make her escape. He looked at her silently for a while, and then said, "Are you the little girl who came to us to-day, and then ran away secretly?"

"Yes," stammered Ernestine.

"Why have you done so?" he asked further.

Ernestine made no reply. She was more ashamed before Johannes than before all the rest of the company. He was very different from every one else there,--so proud and strong,--he would despise her more than the others had done, for he was much handsomer and finer than they, and worth more than all of them. She did not venture to look up at him; she was afraid of meeting another of those glances that had so tortured her. Then the young man took her hand and said kindly, "Well, you pale little dryad, can you not speak? Will you go with me, or would you rather spend the night in your tree?"

"I want to go home!" said Ernestine.

"I cannot let you go home. I must take you to my mother. She is afraid you will take cold. Come!"

Ernestine shrunk back. "I cannot go there any more!"

"Why not? What have they done to you?"

"They laughed at me, and jeered me," cried the irritated child; "they despised me; and I will not be despised! I will not!"

The young man looked at her thoughtfully.

"Even if I am ugly," she continued, "and poor, and badly taught, and awkward, I will not be treated like a dog!" There was a tone of despair in her voice, her chest panted within her narrow dress, her teeth chattered with cold and excitement.

"Poor child!" said Johannes; "they must have used you ill,--but my mother was surely kind to you?"

"Yes, she was kind, but she was vexed with me at last; I heard her blaming me to the others. And I do not want to see her again,--not until I am grown up and can be as dignified and gentle as she is."

"Are you so certain, then, that you will one day be as gentle and dignified?" asked Johannes smiling.

"Yes, the schoolmaster says, and the old gentleman said too, that if I were a boy something might be made of me. Oh, something shall be made of me,--if I am only a girl. I will not always have boys held up to me; when I am grown up, they shall see that a girl is as good as a boy; all these bad, unkind people shall respect me; if they do not, I would rather die!"

"You queer child!" laughed Johannes, "it would be hard to tame you. But see, if you stay any longer here with me in the night air, you will take cold, and then you may die before you have carried out all your resolutions; think how bad that will be!"

With these words he attempted to lead the child away with him, but she snatched her hand from him and clung to the tree beneath which she had been sitting. "No, no," she breathlessly entreated, "dear sir, let me go--do not take me back again--please, please, not there!"

"Obstinate little thing, you must come," laughed Johannes. "Do you suppose I can go back without you, after having been sent to find you like a stray lamb? My mother would shut me up for three days upon bread and water if I did not bring you back; you would not like that, would you?"

"Ah, you are laughing at me. I will not go back with you, I will not," sobbed Ernestine.

"Will not? What is the use of such words from a weak little girl who can be easily carried in arms?" With these words Johannes good-humouredly lifted Ernestine from the ground and placed her on his shoulder to take her back to the castle. But she succeeded in grasping an overhanging branch of the oak-tree just above her, and, before Johannes could prevent it, she had swung herself up by it, and was clambering like a squirrel from bough to bough.

"This is delightful!" cried Johannes, much amused; "you are really, then, a dryad in disguise? Such a prize must not escape; to be sure, I never dreamed to-day, when I passed my examination, that the new Herr Doctor's first feat would be to climb a tree after a wayward little girl; but the episode is much more poetic than marching up and down stairs, making my best bow to my old examiners." Daring this soliloquy be had taken off his coat and climbed into the tree.

But when he tried to seize Ernestine, she retreated to the extremity of the bough upon, which she was sitting, and was quite out of his reach; he could not follow her, for the slender branch creaked and drooped so, even beneath the child's light weight, that he momentarily expected it to break. The jest had become earnest indeed: if the little girl fell, she would fall a double distance,--the height of the tree and of the hill which the tree crowned. Quick as thought the young man swung himself down to the ground, and took his station where he might, if possible, receive Ernestine in his arms if she fell. For the first time he now saw how high she was perched, and a cloud before the moon just at the moment prevented his perceiving the exact direction that she must take in falling. His anxiety was intense. The responsibility of a human life was suddenly thrust upon him. If he did not succeed in catching the falling child, she would shortly lie before him, if not a corpse, at least with broken limbs. The steep hill, too, made it almost impossible for him to maintain a firm footing; wherever he planted his feet, they slipped continually. The blood rushed to his face; his heart beat audibly; with outstretched arms he gazed up at the child, who sat above him, all unconscious of her danger.

"Little one," he cried breathlessly, "the branch where you are sitting will not bear you! scramble back again, or you will fall!"

"I will not come down until you promise me not to carry me back! I shall not fall," she panted, and snatched at a stronger bough above her, but it sprang back from her grasp, leaving only a few twigs in her hand.

"I will promise anything that you want," cried Johannes in deadly terror, "only go back quickly to the trunk--quickly--quickly!"

The bough cracked, just as the child swung herself towards the trunk, and it fell to the ground,--leaving her clinging to the stump where it grew from the trunk; and when Johannes climbed up to her and she could at last reach his shoulder, she was trembling so with fright that she willingly clasped her thin arms around his neck. With difficulty he reached the ground again with his burden, his hands scratched and bleeding and his shirt-sleeve torn. He put down Ernestine, and, stepping back a pace or two, regarded her gravely; then, after wiping the moisture from his brow, he began in a serious tone of voice, "Do you know what I would do if I were your father?"

Ernestine looked up at him inquiringly.

"I would give you a taste of the rod, that you might learn not to frighten people so just for your own wayward whims!"

These words, prompted by the young man's irritation at the anxiety to which he had been subjected, had a fearful effect upon the child. She gave a piercing cry, and threw herself upon the ground. "Oh, nothing but blows, blows--he too, he too! Who will not strike me and abuse me? who is there to take pity upon me?" and she sobbed uncontrollably.

"Good heavens," said Johannes, half compassionately and half annoyed, "was there ever such a child! First you climb into a tree at peril of your life, just that you may gratify your self-will, and then a single word of blame crushes you to the earth. I never saw anything like it!" Saying this, he lifted her up and held her out before him in the moonlight, regarding her as one would some rare animal or natural curiosity.

"Here is a thing," he said, more to himself than to Ernestine, "so frail and delicate that you could crush it in your grasp, but there is such strength of will in the little frame that one is forced to yield to it, and such a wildly throbbing heart in the little breast that one is carried away by it in spite of one's self. I should like to know what odd combinations have produced this strange piece of humanity. Do not cry any more, little one; I will not harm you--what eyes the creature has! You are a remarkable child, but I would not like to have the charge of you--you would puzzle one well, and force and blows would have no effect upon you!"

With these words he put her down upon the ground again and picked up his coat to put it on. As he did so, he felt something hard in the pocket; he looked to see what it was, and drew out a book in a splendid binding.

"Ah," he cried gaily, "I had forgotten this. Can you read?"

Ernestine nodded. She was glad that she had not to say no; how ashamed she would have been!

"Come, that's right!" said the young man; and Ernestine was very proud of those first words of commendation, and determined instantly to be doubly diligent, that she might some time hear just such another "That's right!"

Johannes put the book into her hand. "There, you shall have that, that you may carry something pleasant home with you after such a dreary day. The stories are charming. I brought it out for my little sister Angelika, but I could not give it to her because I had to run after you. Now I am glad that I have it still and can give it to you."

"Yes--but Angelika?" Ernestine asked hesitatingly.

"She shall have another to-morrow. Take it, and read the story of the Ugly Duckling; that will comfort you when people are cross to you. Take it--why do you hesitate?"

The child took the book as carefully and timidly as if it were in reality a fairy book and would vanish at her touch. When she had it in her hands and it did not disappear, and she could really believe in her happiness in receiving such a present, she uttered a scarcely audible "Thank you very much!" but the look that accompanied the words touched Johannes.

"You do not often have presents?" he asked.

"Never!"

"Oh! you seem not to be very affectionately treated. Does not your mother ever give you anything?"

"I have no mother. She died because I was not a boy."

"A most remarkable cause of death," observed Johannes, half dryly, half compassionately.

"Ah, if I had a mother, everything would be different." And the large tears rolled down over her cheeks.

"Listen, little one," said Johannes kindly, after a pause. "I have a dear mother, and I will share her with you--half a mother's heart is better than none at all. Come home with me. You shall be my little sister, and you will be gentle enough when you know us better."

Ernestine shook her head decidedly. The thought of returning to the castle again filled her with dismay. "No, no, never!" she cried in terror. "Your mother would not love me--she could not! You promised me a minute ago not to force me to anything, and if you think now that I ought to do as you please, because you have given me the book, I would rather not have it. There, take it--I will not have it!"

Johannes rejected the offered book with some vexation. "Keep it," he said. "I gave it to you unconditionally. I only thought that my kindness had made you gentler and more docile, but I was wrong. You are not to be moved by kindness either. Sad to see a heart so early hardened!"

Ernestine stood motionless, with downcast eyes--she scarcely breathed; the emotions that agitated her were so novel, so different from anything she had hitherto experienced, that she struggled in vain to give utterance to them; her childish lips had no words to express them. She was pained, and yet her pain, although deeper than any she had already suffered, had no bitterness in it. She did not hate him who had caused it--she could have kissed his hand, and, falling at his feet, begged him to forgive her--but she did not dare to do so.

"Well," he asked, after a moment's silence, "shall I go home with you?"

Ernestine shook her head.

"Not that, either? Will you go alone?" he asked impatiently.

Ernestine nodded.

"Well, I have promised to do as you pleased, and I shall keep my promise, although I do not think it right to leave you to go home alone so late at night. Let me at least go with you across the fields? Are you grown dumb?"

Ernestine lifted to his her large melancholy eyes so beseechingly that he lost his composure. "You are enough to drive one insane, you enigmatical little creature! Who taught you that look--the look of an angel imprisoned by some evil magician in the body of a kobold? God knows what will become of you! You will not let me come, then? No? Are you not afraid? Nothing to be got out of you but a shake of the head! Well, go! I cannot force you. Good-night, then!" He held out his hand; she seized it, pressed it with passionate energy, and then ran across the fields as fast as her feet could carry her. Johannes let her run for some minutes, and then followed her at a distance; he could not allow the helpless child to go home without watching over her safety. She ran as if she had wings, without once looking round; but Johannes noticed that she kissed the book several times, and pressed it to her heart, as if it had been some living thing. When at last he came in sight of Ernestine's home, he stopped. "Heaven be merciful to the man who will one day take her for a wife!" he thought, and slowly turned away.

Ernestine entered the garden of her dreary home with a throbbing heart. A grumbling maid-servant opened the door for her. "You are late," she scolded. "That is just like you--first you wouldn't go, and then you don't want to come home. You always want to do something else than what you should."

Ernestine made no reply. "Can I have something to eat?" she asked briefly.

"To eat! Likely, indeed! Am I to go to the stable at ten o'clock at night and milk a cow for you? for there is nothing else that I can get. You know well enough that I have no keys!"

"Is Frau Gedike in bed, then?"

"If you were not so stupid, you might know that!"

"But I am hungry!"

"That serves you right; you should have eaten enough at the party. Of course they gave you something to eat?"

Ernestine was silent, and followed the maid into the room, where she hastily concealed her torn hat in the wardrobe. "My feet are wet," she said, shivering. "Give me some dry stockings."

"Of course you have been dragging through all the puddles, and then want dry stockings at this hour of the night! Get into bed as soon as you can; you will have no other stockings to-night. Good-night--I am going to bed myself." And the servant left the room, taking with her the dim tallow candle that she had in her hand, and Ernestine was left alone in the apartment, into which the moon shone brightly. Suppressed rage at the servant's coarse harshness burrowed and gnawed in the child's heart like a hidden mole. Everything that had lately happened vanished at this rude contact. Her soul had expanded at the first touch of a large, kindly nature, like a bud in the air of spring--the frost that now fell upon it was doubly painful. She was again the same forsaken, abused child whose vital energies were consumed by impotent hate of her tormentors. Had she really lived the last hour! Had any one really spoken so kindly to her--one, too, better and handsomer than all the others?

She caught up her book as if it were a talisman; it was real; it had not vanished; it was all true, then. And yet she had been so self-willed and cross to the kind, kind gentleman, and had not even told him how grateful she was; how he must despise her! He could not do otherwise. She understood now how different she must be before she could hope to win the liking of such a man as Johannes. How should she do it? She could not tell; but something stirred within her that exalted her above herself. She looked up to heaven in childlike entreaty, and prayed, "Dear God, make me good!" Then she pressed the book to her heart; it was her most precious possession, her first friend; and the desire took hold of her to see now what this friend would tell her. But she could not read by moonlight, and she dared not get a candle, for she slept next to Frau Gedike, who allowed no reading at night. She stood hesitating and looked sorrowfully at the beautiful binding, with its gay arabesques. Suddenly it occurred to her that there was always a night-lamp burning in her father's room; it was a happy thought. She drew off her wet boots with difficulty, and crept softly into Hartwich's apartment. The invalid was lying upon his back, sound asleep. He breathed and snored so loudly that the child was almost terrified; but she was determined to proceed, and slipped past the bed. She seated herself cautiously, opened the book in a state of feverish expectation, and of course turned to the story that Johannes had mentioned to her. The book contained the charming, touching tales of Hans Andersen. Ernestine, greatly moved, read the story of the Ugly Duckling. She read how it was abused and maltreated by all because it was so different from the other ducks, and how at last it came to be a magnificent swan, far finer and more beautiful than the insignificant fowls who had despised it. The impression made upon her by this story is not to be described. The poor duckling's woes were hers also, and as if upon swan's pinions the promise of a fair future hovered above her from the page that she was reading. "Shall I ever be such a swan?" she asked again and again. Her heart overflowed with new emotions of joy and pain, she covered her eyes with her thin hands and sobbed as if she would, as the saying is, "cry her soul out." Then her father awoke, and called out, "Who is there?" Ernestine hastened to him and fell on her knees at his bedside. She seized his hand and would have kissed it; he snatched it angrily away, but the tears that she had shed had melted her very heart. "Father, dear father!" she cried, "I have been very naughty and self-willed. Forgive, and love me only a little, and I will love you dearly!"

Hartwich turned his face to the wall, and growled, "Why did you wake me? Where's the use of slipping in here at this hour? Do you think I had rather listen to your stupid whining than sleep?"

"Father," cried Ernestine, taking his lame hand that he could not withdraw from her. "Father, do not send me away from you. I will be good,--help me to be so. I cannot be good if you are always harsh to me. I saw to-day how all the children have parents who love them. I only am disliked by every one, and yet I have a heart too, and would love to see kind looks and hear kind words. I will not cry ever any more, if you will not make me cry, and I will try my best to be just like a boy, that you may not be sorry any more that I am a girl. Ah, father, it seems to-day as if the dear God in heaven had told me what I long for. Love, father, love,--ah, give me some, and take pity upon your poor ugly child!"

The invalid had turned towards the child again, and was staring at her in amazement, with lack-lustre eyes; it seemed as if some unbidden feeling were struggling for utterance from the depths of his moral and physical degradation; his breath came quick, he tried to speak. Ernestine did not venture to look at him; a strong odour of brandy told her that her father's face was near her own, but this odour was so utterly disgusting to her that she involuntarily recoiled, and thus avoided the lips that would perhaps have bestowed upon her the first kiss that she had ever in her life received from them. The invalid must have known this, for he turned away again, muttering something unintelligible. After a long pause, he felt for a tumbler that stood on a table beside his bed, but it was empty. "I'm thirsty!" he said peevishly. "Shall I bring you some water, father?" asked Ernestine. The sick man made a gesture of disgust "No! but you can go up to your uncle and tell him to send me that medicine that he spoke of; he will know what I want. But ask him only,--do you hear?--him only. And tell no one that I sent you, or you shall suffer for it, I promise you. And now go quickly: I'm tortured with thirst!"

Ernestine arose from her knees, and looked at her father with the grief that we feel when we have lavished our best, our most sacred emotions upon an unworthy object. Hitherto she had required nothing of him; to-day, for the first time, as she looked around for some one to whose love, in her loneliness, she possessed a right, it had occurred to her that she had a father. She had turned to him with an overflowing heart, and had found a drunkard, who had resigned all claims to respect, both as a man and a father. Mute and crushed alike physically and mentally, she slipped out and up the stairs to her uncle. She was to bring brandy to the sick man, although she remembered that the physician had forbidden all heating drinks; but she must fulfil her father's commands, or receive the cruellest treatment at his hands. She entered her uncle's room, slowly and timidly; she was afraid of his wife. But Bertha had gone to bed; there was no one in the room but Leuthold, who was standing by the open window, to the frame of which he had screwed a long tube.

"Ah, little Ernestine, have you come so late to see your uncle?" he said kindly.

"Uncle, what is that?" asked Ernestine, forgetting her errand in her wonder at the strange instrument.

"That is a telescope," her uncle informed her.

"What are you doing with it?" she asked further.

"I am looking into the moon, my child."

"Ah! can you do that?" she cried, in the greatest amazement.

"Certainly I can. Would you like to look through it?"

"Ah, yes; if I only might!" whispered Ernestine, enchanted at the offer.

Leuthold lifted her upon the window-sill and adjusted the telescope for her. She was half frightened when she suddenly found the shining sphere, which she had always seen hovering so far above her in the sky, brought so near to her eyes. Her breast expanded to receive such an inconceivable miracle. She gazed and gazed, looking, breathless with the desire of knowledge, at the mountains, valleys, and jagged craters that were so magically revealed. The warm night air fanned her burning brow. Everything around her faded and was forgotten as the tired heart of the child throbbed with fervent longing for the peace of that new, distant world.

[CHAPTER III.]

ATONEMENT.

The day began slowly to dawn, for a dim, cloudy sky usurped the throne of departing night. Drops of rain fell here and there,--it was a cheerless morning. Not a cock crowed--not a bird was stirring. The dog remained hidden in his kennel.

Now and then an early labourer, with his spade upon his shoulder, would pass along the fence encircling Hartwich's estate, and would look over it with surprise at the strange bustle prevailing in house and court-yard. Doors were opened and shut; servant-maids, with eyes heavy with sleep, were running hither and thither; water was brought from the well; no questions or answers were exchanged. It was as if every one avoided speaking of what had occurred. A groom brought a saddled horse from the stable, mounted, and galloped furiously in the direction of the estate of the Staatsräthin. "Is there a fire anywhere?" a couple of peasants shouted after him, but he made no reply. Without a word, he galloped across field and moor, never drawing rein until he reached the garden of the Staatsräthin. He tugged violently at the bell until a sleepy servant came to the door and asked him angrily what he wanted.

"Wake up the Geheimrath Heim, he is here on a visit. The village doctor sent me,--a human life is at stake!"

The servant opened his eyes wide, and stared inquiringly at the groom.

"Yes, yes; quick, be quick! Hartwich has beaten his child so, we think she is dying. The barber says perhaps the Geheimrath can save her."

"Good gracious, that is terrible!" cried the horrified servant, and ran to call the old gentleman.

The Geheimrath was up in a moment; without losing time by a single word, he dressed himself, mounted the groom's horse, and rushed off to the scene of the disaster.

Before the door of the house, awaiting his arrival, stood the village barber-surgeon, who received him with the deepest reverence. "Herr Geheimrath, I pray you to excuse me,--but, as I knew you were in the neighbourhood, I conceived it my duty to entreat your assistance before sending for the physician, who lives three leagues off. The case seems to me a serious one."

"Never excuse yourself," said Heim, taking off his hat and coat in the hall; "it is my duty to aid wherever I can. But, in Heaven's name, how did it happen? Where is the child injured?"

"She has a wound in her head, and I fear the skull is fractured," replied the barber, opening the door of the room leading to Hartwich's apartment. The Geheimrath heard a loud sobbing as soon as the door was opened. He entered, and before him lay the invalid, weeping and wailing like a maniac, with the child stretched out stiff and corpse-like upon the bed; her eyes were closed and deep-sunk in their large sockets; her pale lips were slightly parted,--it was a sorry sight. Hartwich supported her bandaged head upon his arm, and, weeping loudly, pressed kiss after kiss upon her white brow.

"Ah, Herr Geheimrath!" he shrieked, "come here! I am a wicked, miserable father. I have killed my child! I am a man given over to the worst of all vices,--drunkenness; it is my only excuse. Accuse me; have me sent, crippled as I am, to jail,--I care not; but bring my child to life, or the sting of conscience will drive me mad!"

The Geheimrath took the passive hand of the child and felt the pulse. "It is greatly to be regretted that your conscience was not as active before the deed as it appears to be now that it is committed," he said coldly and sternly, as he removed the bandage from the child's head.

"Oh, oh," wailed Hartwich, shutting his eyes, "do not do that here! I cannot see the blood; I cannot see the wound; it will kill me!"

"What! you could make the wound and cannot look at it!" said the Geheimrath inexorably, beginning to probe the wound. "It is a most serious case," he said. "Has the child moved at all?"

"Yes, yes; oh, heavens, yes; until she grew so rigid!" gasped Hartwich, seizing Ernestine's hand to kiss it. Then he looked up at the physician in mortal terror. "How is it? must she--oh, Christ! must she die?" And again he broke out into the loud childish weeping peculiar to persons unnerved by sickness or drink.

"Control yourself," ordered the Geheimrath. "I cannot come to any decision yet. The injury to the skull is not fatal; what the effect of the concussion will be, I cannot tell. But, with the child's delicate constitution----" He shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, you give me no hope," moaned Hartwich. "Ernestine, wake up! only look once at your father, your cruel, wicked father! Ah, Herr Geheimrath, I disliked the child because she was so weak and ugly. If she had only been a fine, healthy girl, I might perhaps have been reconciled to having no son; but I was ashamed of her, and silenced the voice of my heart. Oh, these hands, poor little hands, and these pale, thin cheeks!--how could I ever strike them! God be merciful to me, miserable sinner that I am!" And he beat his breast fiercely.

The Geheimrath looked at him and shook his head. "Do not excite yourself so. It does your daughter no good, and only injures yourself."

"My daughter! my daughter!" repeated Hartwich. "Oh, I have never treated her as such. She seemed to me a changeling, left in her cradle by some spiteful witch in place of the boy I so coveted. Now, when I am in danger of losing her, I feel that she is my child indeed."

"The truth is as old as the world, that nature avenges the transgression of the least of her laws," replied the physician. "You have sinned grievously against the mighty law of paternal affection, and now it demands its rights with resistless authority. Let me entreat you to testify your repentance by the tenderest care of the sick child, and permit me to call some one to put her to bed,--it should have been done long ago."

"Ah, must she be separated from me?" moaned Hartwich. "I long to beg her forgiveness when she comes to herself."

"You will hardly be able to do that very soon," said the Geheimrath, ringing the bell.

Frau Gedike made her appearance, as gentle and submissive as she had previously been harsh and overbearing to Ernestine.

"Assist me in carrying this child to her bed," said Heim, carefully placing his arm beneath the rigid little body to raise it up.

"Oh, I beg of you, Herr Geheimrath, do not trouble yourself," cried Frau Gedike, evidently greatly humbled. "I can carry the poor child without help."

Heim glanced at her keenly, and then quietly directed her to show him the way.