rose to perform it, but Spener, as we know, had gone away
the day before.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MEN OF SPENERSBERG.

This Spenersberg, about which Leonhard was not a little eager to know
more when he shut the door of the apartment into which his host had
ushered him--for he must remain all night--what was it?

A colony, or a brotherhood, or a community, six years old. Such a fact
does not lie ready for observation every day--such a place does not
lie in the hand of a man at his bidding. What, then, was its history?
We need not wait to find out until morning, when Leonhard will proceed
to discover. He is satisfied when he lies down upon the bed, which
awaited him, it seems, as he came hither on the way-train--quite
satisfied that Spener of Spenersberg must be a man worth seeing.
Breathing beings possessed of ideas and homes here must have been
handled with power by a master mind to have brought about this
community, if so it is to be called, in six short years, thinks
Leonhard. He recalls his own past six years, and turns uneasily on his
bed, and finds no rest until he reminds himself of the criticism
he has been enabled to pass on Miss Elise's rendering of "He is a
righteous Saviour," and the suggestion he made concerning the pitch
of "Ye shall find rest for your souls." The recollection acts upon him
somewhat as the advancing wave acts on the sand-line made by the wave
preceding. When he made the first suggestion, Sister Benigna stood
for a moment looking at him, surprised by his remark; but, less than a
second taken up with a thought of him, she had passed instantly on to
say, "Try it so, Elise: 'He is a righteous Saviour.' We will make it
a slower movement. Ah! how impressive! how beautiful! It is the
composer's very thought! Again--slow: it is perfect!"

Was this kind of praise worth the taking? a source of praise worth
the seeking? Leonhard had said ungrateful things about his
prize-credentials to Miss Marion Ayres, and I do believe that these
very prizes, awarded for his various drawings, were never so valued
by him as the look with which priestly Benigna seemed to admit him at
least so far as into the fellowship of the Gentiles' Court.

He would have fallen asleep just here with a pleasant thought but for
the recollection of Wilberforce's letter, which startled him hardly
less than the apparition of his friend in the moonlight streaming
through his half-curtained window would have done. Is it always so