"Well! That embarrassment is luckily over!" said Albert, pushing a parcel of bank-notes into a bulky, worn-out pocket-book, which contained among other things a number of mercantile communications, unanswered yet in spite of their ancient date. "After all, she is a nice little woman; not over-bright--but that is in this case only an additional virtue. I really think I could deny my nature and marry the little Samaritan. Perhaps it would not be so bad. Who knows? There may, after all, be somewhere within me the germ of a most excellent steady citizen, which only needs the warmth of a domestic hearth to sprout merrily. The thing is problematic, I admit, but not impossible, for all that I see myself walking soberly of a Sunday, by the side of my wife, through the fields, listening to the quarrels among the sparrows and the complaints of my better half against the extortionate bills of butchers and bakers, while before us walk two young citizens of the world who bear a slight resemblance to myself, and behind us, in a little wagon drawn by a maid of all works, a shrill little voice is heard, which furnishes unmistakable evidence of my wife's admirable qualities! Oh!..."

Albert groaned as if he had sprained his foot on a real stone during this imaginary promenade. He started up from the sofa, and walked thoughtfully up and down in the room, folding his hands behind his back. "The plats are ready," he said, stopping before his drawing-board; "Anna Maria has paid me; I have nothing more to do here, and the baroness' question, when I thought I would leave, was clear enough. How I hate this proud, good-for-nothing race--all of them, not one excepted, not even the beautiful, high-nosed Helen, who always looks at me with such cool contempt in her big, cold eyes; and least of all my noble friend Felix, who I think would be delighted if he could cut me out with Marguerite. If I could but play you all a good trick, that you should think of me your life long! If I could, for instance, discover the heir to Stantow and Baerwalde in the person of--Ah! There is the rub! In whose person?"

"I can do something with the letters I have, but not much. As yet I cannot even frighten excellent Anna Maria with them. If I could only have a chance of examining that big chest of Mother Claus'! It is a fixed idea of mine that there must be something to be gotten there. But I have in vain reconnoitred the whole house; I have in vain watched it by day and by night, to find a moment when the old witch should leave it for a moment--she sits there like a toad in the rock.--Apropos of that amiable young man! I thought of making him the Pretender, nolens volens, for he is too stupidly honest to look at the whole thing as a merry, and at the same time profitable, masquerade. It is wonderful how honest people are when they have all they want! The best way to get rid of thieves would be to pension every one of them. And this Stein is not even so lucky as that. He cannot have any money--why else would he plague himself with these boys? He would be just the man to spend a fortune handsomely. And so far everything seems to fit exactly. He has the requisite age; he has told me himself that he has never known his mother, or--his father excepted--any other relative. And, besides that, he has a striking likeness to the older line of the Grenwitz family. I only wish I were he, that is to say, with my brains added to what he has ..."

A timid knock at the door interrupted Albert's meditations. As upon his "Come in!" no one entered, he went to open the door. A little peasant boy, fair-haired and bare-footed, stood there, looking at him with his stupid eyes wide open.

"Whom do you want, my boy?"

"Are you the candidate here?"

"To be sure!" said Albert, always ready for any fun or joke.

"Mother Claus sends me----"

"Who?" "Mother Claus sends me----"

"Come in, little one," said Albert, taking the boy by the hand and locking the door when they were both inside.

"What does Mother Claus want of me?"

"Mother Claus is dying, and sends me to tell the candidate to come and see her."

The boy breathed deep when he had relieved himself of the fearful burden of his message. Albert took up his cap.

"I'll come directly. You run on and tell her I am coming directly. And look here: If anybody in the house asks you whom you come from, just say you have delivered your message. Here is a groschen, and now make haste to get home again."

The boy scampered off, proud of Albert's generous present, and of course utterly forgetful of the order to run home. When he had reached the courtyard, he sat quietly down on the fountain of the Naiad, to decide at leisure whether he should buy at once the whole world, or for the present only a bullfinch, which another boy had offered him that morning.

He might have been sitting there a quarter of an hour when he fell fast asleep, tired as he was from running about all day. Thus Oswald found him when he returned from a lonely walk. As the sight of the ragged sleeping boy on the edge of the fountain looked picturesque, he walked up to him. The boy started up and rubbed his eyes in bewilderment.

"How do you get here, boy?" asked Oswald.

"Mother Claus sent me!" said the boy, not knowing at that moment whether he had delivered his message or not.

"What is the matter with Mother Claus?" asked Oswald, who at once suspected that something must have happened to his old friend.

"Mother Claus sends me," repeated the boy; "she is dying, and sends me to tell the candidate to come and see her!"

Oswald did not stop to hear more. He thought of the poor old woman, in whom he had from the beginning taken so warm an interest, now lying on her deathbed, perhaps alone, helpless, and no kind hand to smooth her pillow--and he hurried as fast as he could through the small gate on the road that led to the tenants' cottages, taking the same road on which Albert had passed a quarter of an hour before....

Albert had slipped through the small gate and the garden as soon as the boy was out of sight. No one had seen him leave the chÂteau. The family had gone out, and he thought Oswald was in his room.

"Fortes fortuna juvat," he thought as he was running along under the willow trees. "They are all out in the fields now. The old woman could not have died at a more suitable hour. I only hope she is dead when I get there, for I do not want to have to explain...."

He had reached the village in a few minutes, but he avoided the main street, running along the little gardens behind the cottages, till he came to Mother Claus' hut. Here he jumped over a low fence and entered through the open back door into the passage. He listened. Nothing was stirring. He only heard the ticking of the large Black Forest clock in Jake's room, and from the village street the laughter of a couple of children--Mother Claus' foster-children--who were wrestling in the sand to enjoy the evening sun.

"Now I hope to heavens there won't be some benevolent soul in the room," murmured Albert, cautiously pushing open the door which led into the old woman's room.

He entered on tip-toe. It was quite dark in the low, small chamber. Albert's first glance fell upon the chest, which was safe in its place in the corner; his next upon the old woman. She was sitting in the large arm-chair, "in which Baron Oscar had died." She had dressed herself in her Sunday costume, her oaken stick was by her side--one might have imagined she had been ready to go to Fashwitz to church, and had fallen asleep a little before undertaking the long, long journey.

"Is that you, young master?" she said, with trembling voice, and raising her head with the snow-white hair to look at the door. "Come nearer, quite near, that I may touch you. Where are you? It is all dark around me; I cannot see you. Is not the moon shining through the trees? Do you hear the nightingale sing? Listen! How sweet! how beautiful! Oscar, you must not abandon Lizzie; she will cry till she blinds her beautiful eyes; and you must tell Harald not to worry poor Marie so much, else she'll go out into the black night. Good-by, dear child!--Yes, I'll burn everything; it is all safe in the chest. Mother Claus cannot read, but the right man will come at the right time!"

The head of the poor woman fell on her bosom. Albert thought she was dead. He went to the chest, raised the heavy top, and hastily searched the contents. There were women's dresses, which could not have belonged to Mother Claus--city-made dresses, such as young ladies wore twenty-five years ago! withered bouquets, faded ribbons, a few simple articles of jewelry; a string of red corals; a little gold cross on a black velvet ribbon. All this might be of very great interest to somebody else; but Albert pushed it impatiently aside. And still he went on searching and found not what he looked for. At last--there! at the very bottom of the chest, in a corner, and hid under a black silk dress, quite a parcel--letters, documents--there they were! He slipped it into the pocket of his coat; he took with both arms what he had pulled out and stuffed it in again, pell-mell, as it came, closed the lid; and as he rose from his knees, was not that somebody coming? In an instant he was at the little window that looked upon the small garden behind the house. He opened it, he squeezed himself through the narrow aperture with a rapidity which would have done credit to an experienced housebreaker, crept on all fours through the currant-bushes, leaped the low fence, and disappeared amid the golden waves of a field of rye.

Just as Albert thus accomplished his retreat through the window, Oswald entered the room, breathless with haste. He feared he had come too late; he knelt down by the side of the old woman and chafed her withered, cold hands in his own.

And this touch seemed to restore the dying woman once more to life. She raised herself, and placing her hand on his head, she said, with a voice which sounded as if it came already from beyond the grave: "The Lord bless thee and preserve thee! The Lord give thee peace!"

"Amen," said Oswald.

The hands of the old woman fell gently on her knees. Oswald looked up. The light of the setting sun fell through the low window upon her face; it looked as if it were spiritualized in the rosy light. But the rosy light vanished, and the gray evening looked upon the pale face of the dead.

Oswald closed her eyes. From the other side of the house came the ticking of the big clock, from the street the laughing and shouting of the children at play.--What does life know of death? what death of life? What does eternity know of either?