st without knowing it, and hoping never to return. At Horb, on
seeing the signpost to Freudenstadt, which is on the way to Strasbourg,
he stopped a long time and thought of deserting to France. Unexpectedly
he found himself addressed by Mechtilde, who asked, "Why, Aloys, are
you going back to Stuttgart already?"

"Yes," he answered, and went on his way. Mechtilde had come like an
angel from heaven. With a friendly good-bye, they parted.

As he walked, he found himself ever and anon humming the song he had
heard George sing so long ago, and which now, indeed, suited poor Mary
Ann's case:--

"In a day, in a day,
Pride and beauty fade away.
Do thy checks with gladness tingle
Where the snows and roses mingle?
Oh, the roses all decay!"

At Stuttgart he never said a word to the sentry at the Tuebingen gate
nor to the one at the barrack-gate. Like a criminal, he hardly raised
his eyes. For eight days he did penance in a dark cell,--the "third
degree" of punishment. At times he became so impatient that he could
have dashed his head against the wall; and then again he would lie for
days and nights half asleep.

When released from prison, he was attached for six weeks to the class
of culprits who are never permitted to leave the barracks, but are
bound to answer the call at every moment. He now cursed his resolution
to become a soldier, which bound him for six years to the land of his
birth. He would have gone away, far as could be.

One morning his mother Maria came with a letter from Matthew, in
America. He had sent four hundred florins for Aloys to buy a field
with, or, if he wished to join him, to buy himself clear of the army.

Aloys and Matthew of the Hill, with his wife and eight
children,--Mechtilde among them,--left for America that same autumn.

While at sea he often hummed the curious but well-known old song, which
he had never understood before:--

"Here, here, here, and here,
The ship is on her way;
There, there, there, and there,
The skipper goes to stay;
When the winds do rave and roar
As though the ship could swim no more,
My thoughts begin to ponder
And wander."

In his last letter from Ohio Aloys writes to his mother:--

"... My heart seems to ache at the thought that I must enjoy all these
good things