d touch that piano, Probationer Marten?"

Rex tremendae Majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, Fons Pietatis!

What voice was this which made the house resound, and thrilled the
hearts of the listeners at the gate as they stood there for a moment in
the moonlight?

"I left Mr. Marten within," said Loretz to his wife and daughter.

"He is singing the Requiem," said Elise. They waited a moment longer,
but just then Leonhard stepped over the window-sill, and began pacing
the piazza with his arms folded on his breast, his head bent. The words
he sang in fact had electrified him, and the rush of thoughts had driven
him from the piano.

Salva me, Fons Pietatis!

CHAPTER XII.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FESTIVAL.

Later in the evening, Mr. Wenck came to the house, not to talk about the
event, but the funeral. In spite of the hint Loretz had dropped when
talking with Leonhard, he seemed somewhat surprised when the minister
proposed that the funeral should take place on the following evening.
The good man made this proposal in the fewest words possible: it had
evidently cost him a good deal to make it. He perhaps felt himself under
constraint in the midst of this very select audience.

Loretz said, "I don't know that we can decide till Mr. Spener gets back.
He went to town this afternoon."

"When will he come?" asked the minister.

"Some time to-morrow--toward night: he usually comes up at six or seven,
unless he is detained."

"We might fix the funeral at six: the concert was to begin at seven. I
think we may take it for granted that the hours would meet his approval.
He would say, if he were here, that we had better decide on the hour
ourselves."

"Yes, yes, he would say so, of course," said Loretz quickly, "and he
would mean what he said, sir," he added, argumentatively. "Of course:
let us then say at six o'clock the procession will move from--from the
corpse-house to the church. She has been taken away just as she was in
the midst of preparation for the festival; let us therefore observe it
even as it would have been observed."

The voice which spoke these words was altogether under the speaker's
control, but the pathos in it so moved the heart of dear little Dame
Loretz that she exclaimed, "Let it be so, father: certainly, it must be.
It would please Sister Benigna beyond anything to have all the little
children there just as she had arranged. And who has done for the church
more