me out of house and home, who heaped one misery after another on me and my poor wife, so that she at last broke down and died.--Oh, Sir, whatever you do, beware of that man!"--The warning was too emphatic to be passed over unheeded.--"But who can I get to help me?" he enquired.--"Moses," answered Hawermann, firmly and decidedly. The squire made a gesture of dissent, but Hawermann came a little nearer him, and went on still more emphatically than before: "Mr. von Rambow, Moses will help you, we will go to him after dinner, and I assure you on my own knowledge of the man that you will never repent going to him." The squire rose and took Hawermann's arm. He found in him a support both physical and moral, for when a calm, even-tempered man loses his ordinary serene composure, he exerts a greater influence over others than people of a more impulsive nature ever can. The conversation during dinner was slight and subject to long pauses. Each was busy with his own thoughts. Hawermann thought of his new and formidable neighbours, the squire of the money he wanted to raise, and the young lieutenant seemed as if he had lost himself in a long sum in addition which he could not manage to add up rightly, so that if my lady had not ridden her high horse a little, and spoken of the calls she intended to make on the grand people in the neighbourhood, and if the three girls had not chattered about the pleasures of a country-life, and about all the pretty things they had seen during their drive, it would have been a regular quaker's meeting. After dinner Mr. von Rambow and his bailiff drove to Rahnstädt. The squire felt as he entered the door of Moses' house as if he were going to pick a guinea out of the mud with his hitherto clean hands. On the threshold he was greeted with a stuffy smell of tarry wool that had just left the back of the sheep on which it had grown, and which is a very different article from the same wool when it is woven into a carpet for a lady's boudoir. The entrance-hall and business-room were very untidy, for though Flora was a good woman she never could manage to keep the skins out of sight, for Moses said shortly that they were part of the trade, and David was continually adding new items to the list of things lying about, so that finally the house became a very paradise for rats, for these delightful little creatures take as kindly to the fusty smell of a wool-stapler's shop, as doves to oil of aniseed.