round her father's neck, exclaiming: "Oh father, father, what a good plan it is!"--Why did she kiss her father, and what did it matter to her who got the lease of the glebe?--Well, well, if her father had the land he would have to look after it, and so she hoped to him oftener. When Hawermann was walking down the path leading to the church he met Zachariah Bräsig coming towards him. Bräsig had quite recovered from the unphilosophical state of mind into which a fit of gout always threw him, and now that the pain was over could take things as calmly and philosophically as usual. "Good-day, Charles," he said. "I have been waiting for you for some time in your room, but as the time hung rather heavily on my hands I went at last to pay my respects to the _Counsellor_. He delighted to see me, and received me with the greatest possible kindness; but how dreadfully changed he is." True, Hawermann replied, his master had become terribly aged and feeble, and he feared that he would not long be spared to them.--"Yes," answered Bräsig, "but what is life after all, Charles? What is human life? Look you, Charles, it is as though it were a thing twirled round and round like an empty purse from which not a single farthing can fall, however long one may wait."--"Bräsig," said Hawermann, "I don't know what other people may think of it, but life and work always seem to me to be one and the same thing."--"Oh, ho! Charles, I have you now! You learnt that from parson Behrens. He has spoken to me now and then on the subject, and he always makes out that human life in this world is neither more nor less than a sort of seed-time, and that Christian faith is the sun and rain that makes the seed sprout and grow, and that only hereafter, in the other world, comes the harvest, for while he is on earth, man must labour and toil to the uttermost.--But, Charles, that is a wrong way of looking at it, it goes clean against Scripture.--The Bible tells us of the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet our Heavenly Father feeds them. And if God feeds them, they are alive, and yet they do no work. And when I have that confounded gout, and can do nothing--absolutely nothing, except flap the beastly flies away from my face--can I be said to work? And yet I am alive, and suffer horrible torture into the bargain. And, Charles," he continued, pointing to a field on the right, "just look at those two lilies coming towards us. I mean the lieutenant and his youngest sister; now have you ever heard that lieutenants in a cavalry-regiment do any sort of hard work, or that young ladies of rank and position busy themselves with spinning? Yet there they come, alive and well, walking over the rape-stubble."--"Will you wait a few minutes, Zachariah?" said Hawermann. "They are coming straight towards us, and perhaps wish to speak to us."--"All right," said Bräsig. "But I say, just look at the young lady wading through the stubble with a long train to her gown,