forgotten; Roland seemed to himself humiliated. He sat a long time
silently buried in thought, his face covered with his hands.

The priest approached him at last, and admonished him not to let this
accident dishearten him, but only let it teach him not to place his
trust in the treasures of this world, particularly in his own
possessions; neither to have that so-called faith in humanity, which is
a deceitful faith, exposed to daily shocks; for there was but one sure
and abiding faith, that in God, the supreme being, eternal and
unchanging, who never deceives.

Roland remained silent and absorbed for some time after he and Eric
were left alone; finally he asked:--

"Does my father know what you once were?"

"Yes."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"Why? I had no reason for concealing it from you, or for telling you."

The boy again covered his face with his hands, and Eric, feeling that
the course he was here called upon to defend was one undertaken from
the purest motives, while within him he was conscious of a guilt which
none but himself could upbraid him with, explained to Roland how he had
felt it his duty to devote himself to the most unhappy. He spoke so
touchingly that the boy suddenly raised his head, and, holding out his
hand to him, exclaimed in a tone of the deepest feeling:--

"Forgive me! Ah, you are better than all."

The words smote Eric to the soul.

The officers of the law had left the villa, and even Pranken had ridden
away. Roland went about the house, looking fearfully behind him, as if
he had seen a ghost, an evil spirit. The stairs had been trodden by
wicked men, the doors had been tried by their instruments; the house
and all its treasures had been desecrated; he had lost pleasure not
only in the things which had been plundered, but still more in those
which could not be taken, which the thieves had been obliged to leave.

He begged Eric not to leave him for a moment, so great was his fear. At
night he was unwilling to go to bed; rest seemed impossible to him in a
place where the hands of robbers had taken the pillows from his bed.
Eric yielded to his entreaties that he would remain by him, and said,
after Roland had finally gone to bed,--

"I owe you an answer to your question,--What would Franklin have said
to this robbery? I think I know. He would have had no compassion on the
thieves; he would have given them up to the full penalty of the law;
but at the same time he would have mai