arlen? He would know, and that right speedily. As by a flash of
lightning he thought he saw his father's scheme,--if Carlen were to wed
this man, this strong and tireless worker, this unknown, mysterious
worker, who wanted only shelter and home and cared not for money, what
an invaluable hand would be gained on the farm! John groaned as he
thought to himself how little anything--any doubt, any misgiving,
perhaps even an actual danger--would in his father's mind outweigh the
one fact that the man did not "vork for money."

As he walked toward the house, revolving these disquieting conjectures,
all his first suspicion and antagonism toward Wilhelm revived in full
force, and he was in a mood well calculated to distort the simplest
acts, when he suddenly saw sitting in the square stoop at the door the
two persons who filled his thoughts, Wilhelm and Carlen,--Wilhelm
steadily at work as usual at his carving, his eyes closely fixed on it,
his figure, as was its wont, rigidly still; and Carlen,--ah! it was an
unlucky moment John had taken to search out the state of Carlen's
feeling toward Wilhelm,--Carlen sitting in a posture of dreamy reverie,
one hand lying idle in her lap holding her knitting, the ball rolling
away unnoticed on the ground; her other arm thrown carelessly over the
railing of the stoop, her eyes fixed on Wilhelm's bowed head.

John stood still and watched her,--watched her long. She did not move.
She was almost as rigidly still as Wilhelm himself. Her eyes did not
leave his face. One might safely sit in that way by the hour and gaze
undetected at Wilhelm. He rarely looked up except when he was addressed.

After standing thus a few moments John turned away, bitter and sick at
heart. What had he been about, that he had not seen this? He, the loving
comrade brother, to be slower of sight than the hard, grasping parent!

"I will ask mother," he thought. "I can't ask Carlen now! It is too
late."

He found his mother in the kitchen, busy getting the bountiful supper
which was a daily ordinance in the Weitbreck religion. To John's
sharpened perceptions the fact that Carlen was not as usual helping in
this labor loomed up into significance.

"Why does not Carlen help you, muetter?" he said hastily. "What is she
doing there, idling with Wilhelm in the stoop?"

Frau Weitbreck smiled. "It is not alvays to vork, ven one is young," she
said. "I haf not forget!" And she nodded her head meaningly.

John clenched his