nt acquiescence in all that Gustavus said--of waiting
in all cases, small and great, for his decision--had in the outset been
born of radical and uncomfortable disagreements with him. And as for
Gustavus himself, if anybody had hinted to him that his frau could
think, or ever had thought, any word or deed of his other than right, he
would have chuckled complacently at that person's blind ignorance of the
truth.

"Mein frau, she is goot," he said; "goot frau, goot muetter. American
fraus not goot so she; all de time talk and no vork. American fraus,
American mans, are sheep in dere house."

But in regard to this young stranger, Frau Weitbreck seemed strangely
stirred from her usual phlegmatic silence. Carlen's appeal to her had
barely been spoken, when, rising in her place at the head of the table,
the old woman said solemnly, in German,--

"Yes, Liebchen, he goes with the eyes like eyes of a man that saw always
the dead. It must be as you say, that all whom he loves are in the
grave. Poor boy! poor boy! it is now that one must be to him mother and
father and brother."

"And sister too," said Carlen, warmly. "I will be his sister."

"And I not his brother till he gets a civiller tongue in his head," said
John.

"It is not to be brother I haf him brought," interrupted the old man.
"Alvays you vimmen are too soon; it may be he are goot, it may be he are
pad; I do not know. It is to vork I haf him brought."

"Yes," echoed Frau Weitbreck; "we do not know."

It was not so easy as Carlen and her mother had thought, to be like
mother and sister to Wilhelm. The days went by, and still he was as much
a stranger as on the evening of his arrival. He never voluntarily
addressed any one. To all remarks or even questions he replied in the
fewest words and curtest phrases possible. A smile was never seen on his
face. He sat at the table like a mute at a funeral, ate without lifting
his eyes, and silently rose as soon as his own meal was finished. He had
soon selected his favorite seat in the kitchen. It was on the right-hand
side of the big fireplace, in a corner. Here he sat all through the
evenings, carving, out of cows' horns or wood, boxes and small figures
such as are made by the peasants in the German Tyrol. In this work he
had a surprising skill. What he did with the carvings when finished, no
one knew. One night John said to him,--

"I do not see, Wilhelm, how you can have so steady a hand after holding
the sickle al