four years ago."

"But, mother recollect, that now we shall be fighting all together for
the Fatherland," said Fritz, who like most young Germans was well read
in his country's history, and to him the remembrance of the old war
time, when Buonaparte trampled over central Europe, was as fresh as if
it were only yesterday. "We've long been waiting for this day, and it
has come at last! Besides, dear mutterchen, you forget that the
Landwehr, to which I belong, will only act as a reserve, and will not
probably take any part in the fighting--worse luck!" He added the
latter words under his breath, for it was not so long since he had
abandoned his barrack-room life for him to have lost the soldierly
instincts there implanted into him; and, truth to say, he longed for the
strife, the summons to arms making him "sniff the battle from afar like
a young war-horse!" The French declaration of war and the proclamation
of the German emperor had roused the people throughout the country into
a state of patriotic frenzy; so that, from the North Sea to the Danube,
from the Rhine to the Niemen, the summons to meet the ancient foe was
responded to with an alacrity and devotion which none who witnessed the
stirring scenes of that period can ever forget.

Fritz was no less eager than his comrades; and, considerably within the
interval allowed him for preparation, he and the others of his corps
living in the same vicinity were on their way to Hanover.

This second parting with another of her children almost wrung poor
Madame Dort's heart in twain; but, like the majority of German mothers
at the time, she sent off her son, with a blessing, "to fight for his
country, his Fatherland"; for, noble and peasant alike, every wife and
mother throughout the length and breadth of the land seemed to be
infected with the patriotism of a Roman matron. Madame Dort would be
second to none.

"Good-bye, my son," she said, "be brave, although I need hardly tell
your father's son that, and do your duty to God and your country!"

"I will, mother; I will," said Fritz, giving her a last kiss, as the
train rolled away with him out of the station to the martial strains of
"Der Deutsche Vaterland," which a band was playing on the platform in
honour of the young recruits going to the war.

The widow had to-day no son left to support her steps homeward to the
desolate house in the Gulden Strasse, now bereaved of her twin hopes,
Fritz and Eric both; only old