on them. No sound was heard, save from a house here and there
the striking of a clock.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WORLD PRESENTS ITSELF.

"Good morning, Lenz! You have had a good night's rest, just as children
do who have cried themselves to sleep." Thus was Lenz greeted the next
morning by Faller's deep bass voice. "O my friend," he answered; "it
brings back all my misery to wake up and remember what happened
yesterday. But I must be calm. I will proceed at once to write the
security for you. Take it to the mayor before he starts on his round,
and greet him from me. I remember I dreamed of him last night. Go to
Pilgrim's too, if you can, and tell him I shall wait at home for him
to-day. Good luck with your house! I am glad to think you will have a
roof of your own."

Faller started off for the valley with the paper, leaving Lenz to his
work. But before sitting down to it he wound up one of his musical
clocks and made it play a choral. The piece goes well, he said to
himself, nodding his head approvingly over the wheel on which he was
filing. It was her--my mother's--favorite tune. The great musical clock
with the handsomely carved nut-wood case, as tall as a good-sized
wardrobe, was called "The Magic Flute," from the overture of that
opera, which was the longest of five pieces that it played. It was
already sold to a large tea-dealer in Odessa. A smaller clock stood
beside it, and near that a third, on which Lenz was working. At noon,
after laboring uninterruptedly all the morning, he began to feel
hungry; but no sooner had he sat down to his solitary meal than all
hunger forsook him. He asked the old serving-maid to eat with him, as
she used to do in his mother's lifetime. She consented, after a great
show of maidenly delicacy at the idea of dining alone with so young a
man; but by the time the soup was finished, she had so far recovered
her self-possession as to bring up the question of his marriage and
gave her advice against it.

"Who says I mean to marry?"

"I think, if you do, you ought to marry the bailiff's daughter
Katharine. She comes of a respectable family, and has the greatest
respect for you; she actually swears by you. That would be just the
right sort of wife,--not one who would treat you like the very ground
she walks on. Girls nowadays are so--so exacting, they care for nothing
but dress and show."

"I am not thinking of marrying; certainl