The men and women whose history I am relating in this book were no better than the rest of their kind, and acted in the same way as their neighbours would have done. Two things that God has sent into the world especially form our joy and sorrow; in the first there is no gall mixed, and our feelings about the other cannot be laughed away; these are Birth and Death, the Beginning and the End. And in the little world of which I am writing there was also Beginning and End, Birth and Death. A beautiful young wife was sitting in the manor-house at Pümpelhagen with to little daughter on her knee, and the child had reopened the doors of the mother's heart, so that she was able to feel the sunshine of God's goodness. The dark shadowy figures which had surrounded Frida ha vanished in the clear light of day, and she was happy, very happy.--Close by Gürlitz parsonage was a grave often visited by two women clothed in deep mourning, who, when spring came on, planted flowers upon it, and who later in the season, when the old lime-tree came into leaf, sat side by side on the bench beneath it, as in the old days when Mrs. Behrens and her little Louisa had been wrapped in the folds of the same shawl. But now it was Louisa who sheltered her foster-mother, and wrapped her own shawl round her. Thus the two women sat silently blessing the memory of him who was gone from them; they were often joined by Hawermann, and then the three mourners would sit together till the shades of evening fell; none of them thrust aside the cup of consolation which had been given them, and so when they separated they felt comforted and refreshed.