rybody can go but me!
I'll be going too some day, Carlen. I can't stand things here. If it
weren't for you I'd have been gone long ago."

"I wouldn't leave mother and father for all the world, John," cried
Carlen, warmly, "and I don't think it would be right for you to! What
would father do with the farm without you?"

"Well, why doesn't he see that, then, and treat me as a man ought to be
treated?" exclaimed John; "he thinks I'm no older than when he used to
beat me with the strap."

"I think fathers and mothers are always that way," said the gentle,
cheery Carlen, with a low laugh. "The mother tells me each time how to
wind the warp, as she did when I was little; and she will always look
into the churn for herself. I think it is the way we are made. We will
do the same when we are old, John, and our children will be wondering at
us!"

John laughed. This was always the way with Carlen. She could put a man
in good humor in a few minutes, however cross he felt in the beginning.

"I won't, then!" he exclaimed. "I know I won't. If ever I have a son
grown, I'll treat him like a son grown, not like a baby."

"May I be there to see!" said Carlen, merrily,--

"And you remember free
The words I said to thee.

"Hold the candle here for me, will you, that's a good boy. While we have
talked, my yarn has tangled."

As they stood close together, John holding the candle high over Carlen's
head, she bending over the tangled yarn, the kitchen door opened
suddenly, and their father came in, bringing with him a stranger,--a
young man seemingly about twenty-five years of age, tall, well made,
handsome, but with a face so melancholy that both John and Carlen felt a
shiver as they looked upon it.

"Here now comes de hand, at last of de time, Johan," cried the old man.
"It vill be that all can vel be done now. And it is goot that he is from
mine own country. He cannot English speak, many vords; but dat is
nothing; he can vork. I tolt you dere vould be mans come!"

John looked scrutinizingly at the newcomer. The man's eyes fell.

"What is your name?" said John.

"Wilhelm Ruetter," he answered.

"How long have you been in this country?"

"Ten days."

"Where are your friends?"

"I haf none."

"None?"

"None."

These replies were given in a tone as melancholy as the expression of
the face.

Carlen stood still, her wheel arrested, the yarn between her thumb and
ringer, her eyes fastened on the stranger's face. A