After the services were over and the Brethren were wending their ways toward their _Kammers_ for their much-needed rest I asked our superintendent about Sonnlein; for though I had said naught of him during these occurrences, yet he was in my heart and in my anxiety most of the time. I can still see and hear our leader, almost shocking me by laughing, a thing he was most rarely guilty of, as he said, "Thy Sonnlein is safe enough in thy _Kammer_, but I assure thee not only did I pray and hope for thy deliverance for thine own sake and the sake of our Kloster, but I do confess in all love for thee and thy boy that hadst thou not soon returned to take care of him I had either been compelled to give up my life here or give up thy boy." I fear I did not even take time to thank him, but hastened to my cell where I found my boy soundly sleeping. It was no doubt thoughtless for me to waken him, but I could not help it, and when he did awake to throw his arms about my neck and hold me tight, I felt that, perhaps, it was no great sin after all to rouse him from his sleep. After very many questions as to where I had been and why the bad men had taken me, and all such questions as only an eager, trusting child can ask, I finally told him it was time to go to sleep, which he did without any great difficulty. As he lay there sleeping in all the sweet innocence of childhood and health, I looked first at him and then out through the little window at the perfect beauty of God's handiwork in his heavens, and then I went to my rest, proud to be a son of him who created me in his image and who had put me into a world which, though full of dark and evil deeds, yet held in it, if we only looked aright, so much of beauty and joy and peace and love. CHAPTER VIII OUR FIRST LOSS Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, Or too regretful; Be still; What God hath ordered must be right, Then find in it thine own delight, My will. --Paul Fleming. The year 1738 is deeply graven on my memory, because it marked the first death among the Solitary, our Brother Martin Brämer. Secondly, because his death followed so swift upon the appearance of that strange being, woman, witch, or devil, who, time and again, thrust herself so violently into our lives. In the first month of the new year, and on a day when the sun was shining clear and bright, there being no snow on the ground, I was on my way to the Brother woods for an armful of firewood for the hall. Close upon where the Brother woods merged into the Sister woods stood a mighty oak within a little clearing on the Brothers' side, a favorite haunt of the Solitary for their rare moments of rest from their daily work.