ey were none the less comfortably discussed,
however, till it was time to bid good night, and leave the stars in
heaven and the affairs of the world to go on their appointed courses.

But the pleasantest resting-place of all was the doctor's pretty
garden, further down the valley, whence a wonderful fragrance arose on
the evening air. And yet not wonderful either, for the garden was
stocked with all manner of medicinal plants in full blossom, the doctor
being a mixer of drugs as well as physician. He was a native of the
village, the son of a clockmaker. His wife came from the capital, but
had made herself so completely at home in her husband's native valley,
that her mother-in-law, the old mayoress, as she was called, who lived
with them, used to say she must have led a previous existence as a
child of the Black Forest, so naturally did she adopt its customs. The
doctor, like his father before him, was mayor of the village. He had
four children. The only son, contrary to general expectation, did not
learn a profession, but preferred to study the science of clock-making,
and, at the time of our story, was absent in French Switzerland. The
three daughters were the most aristocratic ladies in the place, at the
same time that they were unsurpassed in industry by any of their
humbler neighbors. Amanda, the eldest, acted as her father's assistant,
besides having the charge of the garden. Bertha and Minna took an
active part in the housekeeping, and occupied their leisure in plaiting
those fine straw braids that are sent to Italy and come to us in the
shape of Leghorn hats.

This evening, the family in the garden had a visitor,--a young
machinist, called in the village, for convenience, the engineer. His
two brothers married daughters of the landlord of the Lion. One of them
was a rich wood-merchant in the next county town, the other the owner
of one of the most frequented bathing establishments in the lower Black
Forest, as well as of a considerable private estate. It was said that
the engineer was to marry the landlord's only remaining daughter,
Annele.

"You speak well, Mr. Storr," the doctor was saying, in a voice whose
tones showed him to be hale and hearty. "We must not rejoice in the
beauties of mountain and valley, and take no thought for the people who
inhabit them. There is too much of the superficial, restless spirit of
change in the world of to-day. For my part, I have no desire to rove;
my own narrow sphere con