ght sometimes; but again the songs would sound in
his soul, and his heart became gentle.

"God's will is best!" he would say then. "It was well that I was not
permitted to keep Molly's heart--that she did not remain true to me.
What would it have led to now, when fortune has turned away from me?
She quitted me before she knew of this loss of prosperity, or had any
notion of what awaited me. That was a mercy of Providence towards me.
Everything has happened for the best. It was not her fault--and I have
been so bitter, and have shown so much rancour towards her!"

And years went by. Anthony's father was dead, and strangers lived in
the old house. But Anthony was destined to see it again. His rich
employer sent him on commercial journeys, and his duty led him into
his native town of Eisenach. The old Wartburg stood unchanged on the
mountain, with "the monk and the nun" hewn out in stone. The great
oaks gave to the scene the outlines it had possessed in his childish
days. The Venus Mount glimmered grey and naked over the valley. He
would have been glad to cry, "Lady Holle, Lady Holle, unlock the door,
and I shall enter and remain in my native earth!"

That was a sinful thought, and he blessed himself to drive it away.
Then a little bird out of the thicket sang clearly, and the old
minne-song came into his mind:

"From the forest, down in the vale,
Sang her sweet song the nightingale."

And here in the town of his childhood, which he thus saw again through
tears, much came back into his remembrance. The paternal house stood
as in the old times; but the garden was altered, and a field-path led
over a portion of the old ground, and the apple tree that he had not
broken down stood there, but outside the garden, on the farther side
of the path. But the sun threw its rays on the apple tree as in the
old days, the dew descended gently upon it as then, and it bore such a
burden of fruit that the branches were bent down towards the earth.

"That flourishes!" he said. "The tree can grow!"

Nevertheless, one of the branches of the tree was broken. Mischievous
hands had torn it down towards the ground; for now the tree stood by
the public way.

"They break its blossoms off without a feeling of thankfulness--they
steal its fruit and break the branches. One might say of the tree as
has been said of some men--'It was not sung at his cradle that it
should come thus.' How brightly its history began, and what has it
come t