his head inclined to one side, and an expression of
perplexity upon his face--"there's something out of the way here in
this country. I have not more than one name down to a dozen in my
father's record, and twenty in my grandfather's. We do not make
friends, and we do not keep them, as they did in old time. We don't
trust each other as men ought to. Half the time we find ourselves
wondering whether the folks we're dealing with are _honest_. Now think
of that!"

"Are men any worse than they were in the old time?" asked Leonhard,
evidently not entering into the conversation with the keenest
enjoyment.

"I do not know how it is," said Loretz with a sigh, continuing to turn
the leaves of the book as he spoke.

"Perhaps we have less imagination, and don't look at every new-comer
as a friend until we have tried him," suggested Leonhard. "We decide
that everybody shall be tested before we accept him. And isn't it the
best way? Better than to be disappointed, when we have set our heart
on a man--or a woman."

"I do not know--I cannot account for it," said Mr. Loretz. Then with a
sudden start he laid his right hand on the page before him, and with a
great pleased smile in his deep-set, small blue eyes he said: "Here is
your name. I felt sure I should find it: I felt certain it was down.
See here, on my grandfather's page--_Leonhard Marten, Herrnhut_, 1770.
How do you like that?"

"I like it well," said Leonhard, bending over the book and examining
the close-fisted autograph set down strongly in unfading ink. Had he
found an ancestor at last? What could have amazed him as much?

"What have you found?" asked Mrs. Loretz, who had heard these remarks
in the next room, where she was actively making preparations for the
breakfast, which already sent forth its odorous invitations.

"We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have
read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that
an old friend had come."

"That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call,
and reading the name with a pleased smile--"that means that you belong
to us. I thought you did. I am glad."

Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various
ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers
in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought:
they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps
spoke with a little extra em