Friend?--A man like that one who is sitting in the oak arbour can have no friends? He _had_ true-hearted friends, but they could not help him, they had nothing to give or lend. Wherever he looked, it seemed to him as though he were surrounded by a high wall which hemmed him in and stifled him, and so he cried with all his strength to God to save him in his sore distress. A linnet and a chaffinch were singing in the oak-boughs above his head, their feathers shining in the sun, the flowers in the neglected garden scattered their fragrance all around, and the oak-trees cast their cool shadow over him. If two lovers had been sitting there, they would never have forgotten the place and how it looked all their lives long. And had _he_ not sat in that shady bower with a gentle hand clasped within his own? Had not the birds sung as cheerily, and was not the perfume of the flowers as sweet then as now? Had he not dreamt of sitting on that very seat in his old age, and while immersed in that dream of the future--who was it who had brought him a cool draught to refresh him after his hard day's work? Who was it who had shared the toil and care of his daily life, and had encouraged him by her sympathy? Gone--all gone!--Everything he had was to be sold, and the gentle loving hand he had held in his own was stiff and cold. Then the man felt as if the birds no longer sang their glad songs for him, as if the flowers no longer grew for him in their sweetness and beauty, and as if the glorious sun no longer shone for him, although his poor overcharged heart still went on beating as strongly as before; and so he stretched out his hands beyond birds and flowers, and even the golden sun, to the divine Comforter, who better than any earthly joy can soothe the wounded heart. Hawermann sat thus in silent prayer, his hands clasped, and his brave blue eyes, in which a wondrous light was shining as though from God's own sun, raised to heaven, when a little girl came up to him and laid a daisy on his knee. He drew the child,--she was his only one--closer to him, and rising, took her in his arms. His eyes were full of tears as he walked down the garden-path carrying his little girl and holding the daisy she had given him in his hand. He came to a young tree that he himself had planted; the straw rope by which it was fastened to the pronged stick that supported it had become loose, and the young tree was leaning all on one side. He straightened it and fastened it again to its prop, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, for his thoughts were far away, but it was his nature to give help wherever it was wanted.