of one of its chief
expectations; she, gladly, watching to clasp her firstborn in her arms
once more. Ample amends she thought this would be to her for all the
anxiety she had suffered since Fritz had left home the previous summer,
especially after her agonised fear of losing him!

Towards the close of March, the Hanoverian regiments returned to their
depot, Fritz being forwarded on to Lubeck.

As no one knew the precise day or hour when the train bearing him home
might be expected to arrive, of course there was no one specially
waiting at the railway station to welcome him back. Only the ordinary
curiosity-mongers amongst the townspeople were there; but these were
always on the watch for new-comers. They raised a sort of cheer when he
and his comrades belonging to the neighbourhood alighted from the
railway carriages; but, although the cheering was hearty, and Fritz and
the others joined in the popular Volkslieder that the townspeople
started, the young sub-lieutenant missed his mother's dear face and
Lorischen's friendly, wrinkled old countenance, both of whom, somehow or
other without any reason to warrant the assumption, he had thought would
have been there.

It was in a melancholy manner, therefore, that he took his way towards
the Gulden Strasse and the little house he had not seen for so long--
could it only have been barely nine months ago?

How small everything looked now, after his travels and experiences of
the busy towns and handsome cities of France which he had but so lately
passed through! All here seemed quiet, quaint, diminutive, old-
fashioned, like the resemblance to some antique picture, or the dream
city of a dream!

Presently, he is in the old familiar street of his youth. It seemed so
long and wide then; now, he can traverse its length in two strides, and
it is so narrow that the buildings on either side almost meet in the
middle.

But, the home-coming charm is on him; love draws him forward quickly
like a magnet! He sees his mother's house at the end of the street. He
is up the outside stairway with an agile bound.

With full heart, he bursts open the door, and, in a second, is within
the parlour. He hears his mother's cry of joy.

"My son, my son!" and she throws herself on his neck, as he clasps her
in a fond embrace, recollecting that once he never expected to have
lived to see her again.

And Lorischen, too, she comes forward with a handshake and a hug for the
boy she has