tten to urge that his nephew--whose frailty of body made him
unfit to enter upon the hard life of a worker in the mines--should
come to America; and with his large knowledge of affairs the uncle had
explained that the best bill of exchange in which money could be carried
from Andreasberg to New York was canary-birds, that could be bought for
comparatively little in the German town, and that would be worth in the
American city a very great sum. And now on this shrewd advice Andreas
acted. The dear old _bauernhaus_ was sold, and its furnishing with
it; and all the money thus gained, together with the greater sum that,
little by little, his father had added to the store in the old leather
bag (saving only what the journey would cost) was spent in buying the
finest canary-birds which money could buy; so that for a long while
after that time Andreasberg was desolate, for all of its sweetest
singers were gone.

Thus it fell out that even in the time of his long journey his birds
still sang to him; and his fellow-travellers by land and sea regarded
curiously this slim, pale youth, who shyly kept apart from human
converse and communed with his companions the birds. And so lovingly
well did Andreas care for his little feathered friends that not one died
throughout the whole long passage; and as the ship came up the beautiful
bay of New York on a sunny May morning, while Andreas stood on the deck
with his cages about him, very blithely and sweetly did the birds sing
their hopeful song of greeting to the New World.

But it was a false song of hope, after all. Hearts were fickle thirty
years ago, even as hearts are fickle to-day; and the first news that
Andreas heard when he was come to his uncle's home (a very fine home,
over a very fine shop, indeed) was that Christine had been a twelvemonth
married--in very complete forgetfulness of all her fine words about the
heart left behind her, and of all her fine promises that she would be
true!

That there be such things as broken hearts is an open question. Yet when
this news came suddenly to Andreas a keen agony of pain went through
his heart as though it were really breaking; and with his hands pressed
tightly against his breast, and with a face as pale as death itself, he
fell to the floor. He would have died then very willingly; and it was
very unwillingly--the fierce pain leaving him as suddenly as it had
come--that he returned to life. Whatever may be said for or against the
pr