Walcot-shaking a little leather purse, "God has prospered us already! One such week more and Carl may get a corner in a big black ship, and go again to his dear Virginia. Pity that Liverpool, as they tell us, is so far, far off! he must walk there, poor fellow, before he can find one!"

"Perhaps we may find means to save him the tramp," said Mr. Walcot kindly; "but in the meantime, my little man, you must tell us your story. Can you speak English?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy, coloring, and looking, in the inspiration of the thoughts of home which hist companion's speech had conjured up, quite a different creature, "I can; for though mother can't, and keeps all with her own people, I always went to school, and played with the Rockville boys, and never spoke German but to please her and old Hans Wort, till I went to Germany, thinking to please her better still. God knows, the news I came for will make her sorry instead!"

"And did you come all alone to Germany, to get tidings for your mother of the friends she had left ?”

"Oh! yes, sir!" said the boy, rather surprised at the

astonishment implied in the question. "You see, as long as father lived, she never minded so much not hearing of grandfather, and Aunt Trudchen, and Uncle Johann: though she prayed for them by name I'm sure every night, and taught me to do the same; and when any new German people came to the Alleghanies, would send me a matter of twenty miles into the bush, to see if they came from near Erbach. For long after I was born we lived close to a number of Erbach people, and mother just thought she was at home, and was merry all day long. But when I was a little boy, just able to run about and gather strawberries in the woods for the Rockville market, father grew tired of having little to do with his axe (for he was a forester in the Schwartzwald at home), and said we must leave the clearings and go into the bush. Mother cried at first a good deal, and I cried to leave Herbert, and Paul, and Claus; but we all got into a wagon, and went a great, great way, where father had plenty to cut all day long, and built us a shanty of the logs himself-he, and old Hans Wart, that would not be left behind, and lives with my mother still, now that father is dead."

"Poor woman!" exclaimed all the party-" to lose her husband in this remote place must have been a double misfortune! How came he to die ?"

"He got very weak first, and could only stay half the day in the bush; and then pale and sick, and lost all his color; and for a long time could eat nothing but my strawberries, that I brought him fresh every morning. They said he had the fever; I only know he shook sadly, till the whole bed shook under him; and at last he lay quite still, and people came and took him away. Mother sat in the wagon with me on her lap, and a great ugly wooden box at her feet, and Hans Wart and a gentleman in black did all they could to comfort her, till we came to a large house with a bill on the top of it, and then, in the garden close by, they dug a hole and put the box in. Mother made me kneel, and said it was father's grave. I've been there with her twice since, and she always cried as much-but there were many other people there, and we went into the church (she called it), and heard good words in German, and she went away better."

"Poor, poor mother!" once more exclaimed the

young auditors. "I hope you were good to her, Carl -how could you find in your heart to leave her ?”

"Me find in my heart!" echoed the boy-his eyes filling with tears at the picture he himself had conjured up" If she had not put it in my head do you think I should ever have seen Erbach? But she called it always 'Fatherland;' and when she did that it put me in mind of father, and in spite of the box and the deep hole I was silly enough half to expect to see him there if I went. All last winter, mother sat at her fireside in the snow, with old Hans Wart and sister Guttchen, talking of Germany, and wishing she could hear something of her father and mother, and Aunt Trudchen, and Uncle Johann, and all the friends she had left at Erbach. At length she fell sick, and then she would cry, and say that one word from her 'Fatherland' would do her more good than all the stuff Hans Wart would send me to get from Rockville.

"One day when I was in the doctor's shop there, I heard a tall man, with a big riding-whip, talking like a German (though he spoke English), so I thought he must come from Erbach, and I asked him about grandpapa.

"He stared, and said he never was at Erbach in his life, but was going back next day to a place not very far from it, to tell the people there all about coming to America.

"Take me with you, sir, if you please,' said I— 'I want sadly to go to Fatherland.'

6

"Fatherland!' cried he, are you a little German?' and the big man kissed me, and I think he cried a little, big as he was, though he wouldn't show it- What do you want to do in Fatherland?"

"I want to see about grandfather, and Aunt Trudchen, and Uncle Johann. Mother pines night and day to hear if they are all living-so take me with you-pray, pray do.'

"The big man laughed this time instead of crying, and said it was a proper queer notion-but he thought a little, and then took his horse out of the stable, and put me on it before him, and rode as fast as he could to mother's shanty-with the doctor's stuff (which I had quite forgot) in his pocket.

"Mother shook terribly when he came in first, and spoke to him in German-and when he asked her if she would really like to send me to Fatherland, she