nswered Leonhard, "if it can be done at once."

These words were in the highest degree satisfactory. Here was a man
who knew the worth of a minute. He was the man for Spener. "Come with
me," he said, "and I'll show you a building-site or two worth putting
money on;" and so they walked together out of the factory, crossed a
rustic foot-bridge to the opposite side, ascended a sunny half-cleared
slope and passed across a field; and there beneath them, far below,
rolled the grand river which had among its notable ports this little
Spenersberg.

"What do you think of a house on this site, sir?" asked Spener,
looking with no small degree of satisfaction around him and down the
rocky steep.

"I think I should like to be commissioned to build a castle with
towers and gates of this very granite which you could hew out by
the thousand cord from the quarry yonder. What a perfect gray for
building!"

"I have always thought I would use the material on the ground--the
best compliment I could pay this place which I have raised my fortune
out of," said Spener.

"There's no better material on the earth," said Leonhard.

"But I don't want a castle: I want a house with room enough in
it--high ceilings, wide halls, and a piazza fifteen or twenty feet
wide all around it."

"Must I give up the castle? There isn't a better site on the Rhine
than this."

"But I'm not a baron, and I live at peace with my neighbors--at least
with outsiders." That last remark was an unfortunate one, for it
brought the speaker back consciously to confront the images which were
constantly lurking round him--only hid when he commanded them out of
sight in the manfulness of a spirit that would not be interfered
with in its work. He sat looking at Leonhard opposite to him, who had
already taken a note-book and pencil from his pocket, and, planting
his left foot firmly against one of the great rocks of the cliff, he
said, "Loretz tells me you stayed all night at his house."

"Yes, he invited me in when I inquired my way to the inn."

"Sister Benigna was there?"

"She wasn't anywhere else," said Leonhard, looking up and smiling.
"Excuse the slang. If you are where she is, you may feel very certain
about her being there."

"Not at all," said Albert, evidently nettled into argument by the
theme he had introduced. "She is one of those persons who can be in
several places at the same time. You heard them sing, I suppose. They
are preparing for the congregat