ream of solemn sound!

"Who is gone home?" he hears another ask, but again there is no answer.

He sees a group of children stopping in the midst of their play and
looking at each other with scared faces--one little one suddenly hiding
its face in its mother's apron, as if in the shrinking shyness and awe
of apprehension.

As he approaches his destination a ghostlike face and figure startles
Leonhard: he looks back and sees it is "our little minister, Wenck,"
whom Spener had pointed out to him in their morning walk. He is hurrying
down the street, and it is not likely that any one will stop a man
proceeding at such a rate, with questions.

Loretz stands on his piazza with his trombone in his hand: it is he who
blows that blast which echoes through Spenersberg, announcing a death.

Doubting what the signal means, Leonhard, with a little hesitation,
approaches his host and looks for the information he does not ask. Is it
a calamity that has overtaken the house? One could hardly gather from a
glance at Mr. Loretz. Evidently the stout little man has been moved by
some powerful surprise: his eyes are full of agitation; his dress
betokens it; he has been driven to and fro, distracted, within the hour.
When he sees Leonhard his excitement exhibits itself in a new form: he
lifts the trombone to his lips, and taking another key he sounds again;
it is a note of solemn triumph, so prolonged that it would seem as if
the desire was that all space should be filled with the echoes thereof.

Leonhard sits down on one of the large wooden chairs in the piazza to
enjoy the music: then Loretz comes to him and says, "You have heard it?"

"I have heard it?" repeated Leonhard, interrogatively.

"Sister Benigna--"

"What is it, sir?" exclaimed Leonhard, starting to his feet.

"She has gone home."

"Good God!" exclaimed Leonhard. "Do you mean to say that she is dead?"

"We call it going home," answered Loretz.

"But gone home! When, why, how did she go?"

"It shocks you," said Loretz, finding perhaps not a little satisfaction
in seeing this stranger so moved. He had himself been so horrified by
Benigna's silent, unlooked-for departure, and to be shocked and
horrified by death was so undesirable and so fought against among good
Moravians, that Leonhard's emotion, and much more than emotion, seemed a
real solace for the moment. "We don't know how it was," he continued.
"My daughter was to go to practice the music with her in the ha