The harmony, though somewhat rude, was true and full; and, softened by distance and the open air, seemed to the young hearers really like a strain from fairy land. Off bounded the young party in quest of the unseen musicians; and while the more sober took a circuitous route, the school-boys, to whom the low sweet-briar hedge was no barrier, beheld, on clearing it at a bound, a group of three strangely attired females, coming hand in hand up the approach, followed at a little distance by a pale and ragged, yet interesting little boy.

The first group (as you have already guessed) were a trio of German broom-girls, whose grotesque costume and national ditties had only very recently been introduced into England, and had never before found their way so far north as Hull. At the first glimpse of their high caps, short petticoats, and broad, good-humored faces, the boys, I am sorry to say, first stared, and then laughed outright; but in a moment half ashamed of their behavior, and anxious to be the first to report the strange sight, they ran back as fast as they came to meet the advancing party.

No sooner did their mamma perceive the poor

foreigners, to whose appearance and costume she was no stranger, than kindly greeting them with the salutation with which a voyage on the Rhine had made her familiar, she led the way back to the garden, where the relics of the feast would, she judged, be very welcome after their sultry walk, and make them sing all the more merrily for the amusement of the young people afterwards.

The strawberries and cream needed no interpreter to recommend them to the way-worn minstrels; whose good-humored nods and smiles of acknowledgment won their way at once to the hearts of their young entertainers; while the joyful exclamation of "Milch!" which burst from their lips on recognising, after long confinement on board ship, their favorite beverage, was echoed by the children with almost equal rapture, that it should so nearly resemble English!

But if the peasant girls of the Black Forest so gladly quaffed the cream, it was at the sight of the strawberries, that the blue eyes of the poor little ragged boy who followed them, sparkled with a delight in which even hunger (much as he seemed to

have felt it), had little share. Virginny!" burst from his pale lips, as he eyed the rich fruit with which the kind boys of his own age had heaped his plate; and he seemed literally to gaze on it with too much fondness to be able to break the spell by beginning to eat. The good-natured broom-girls observed it, and ascribing it naturally to shyness among strangers (of which they themselves have no idea), spoke encouragingly to him in German. "Is he your brother?" asked one of the little English girls timidly. The similarity of the word "brother," to the German "brüder," enabled the person addressed to comprehend the question; while her hasty answer of " Nein, nein !" was made intelligible by the shake of the head which accompanied it. Such pantomine, however, was felt to be a very unsatisfactory way of drawing forth the information for which all the party longed; and it was with more than ordinary joy that papa's step was hailed a few minutes after, as he joined the group, on returning from an early dinner in the neighborhood.

66

"Oh! papa! papa! you are just come in time to help us!" exclaimed the whole circle simultaneously.

"You can speak German, do pray get these good girls to tell us all about themselves, and the little boy there, who seems to love strawberries too well to eat them."

Mr. Walcot, happy at once to oblige his children, and cheer the heart of the little German exiles by the sounds of what they so expressively call their "Fatherland," immediately entered into conversation with the elder girls, whose innocent volubility was proportioned to the long restraint it had experienced among strangers.

Their own simple history was soon told. Having heard of the golden harvest reaped in England by the first band of "Buy a broom" adventurers-the two sisters and a cousin had embarked in quest of a wealth, which the orphan brothers of the one, and the blind father of the others, rendered it most desirable for them to amass. Mr. Walcot, with a goodnatured smile, shook his head at a mode of gain so questionable for unprotected females. But his knowledge of the simple integrity of the German peasant character convinced him that these, if any, might

safely be entrusted to native propriety and the protection of Heaven.

On his repeating the question as to the relationship of the boy who accompanied them, and of whom they took the tenderest care, he was surprised to find that he was a little stranger-of their own national blood indeed-but born on the other side of the globe; where his heart seemed still to be, when the word "America" caught his ear in the broom-girl's narrative, and proved it had evidently been left behind him. He had come, she said, destitute and forlorn to her father's door in M, begging his way back to the seaside to return to America, his reasons for leaving which he would best tell in his own affecting language. She and her sister, who were just setting out for England, felt interested in the poor homesick wanderer, and, in a fit of charitable enthusiasm, determined to devote their first gains in that country to procuring him a passage from its shores back to the western world, and his mother, about whom he talked till their kind hearts were softened, and his own fairly like to break. "Sir!" cried the good creature exultingly, in German, to Mr.