she stroked his white hair murmuring "ah--ah." Then he put her down again, and said as he turned to go: "You'd better go straight home, Sophie Degel, it's going to rain." As he walked on a spring shower began to fall in slow drops upon the earth, and his heart rejoiced in it, as much as the tender shoots of grass. What had become of his feeling of hatred? When Hawermann reached his sister's house, Mrs. Nüssler hastened to meet him as fast as her stoutness would allow: "Charles," she exclaimed. "Bless me, Charles! Here you are at last! How much more cheerful you look, and so well too! What has happened, brother Charles? Anything good?"--"Yes, dear, yes, but I'll tell you afterwards. Where's Joseph?"--"Joseph? Good gracious, that's a difficult question to answer. No one knows where he is. Now-a-days he comes and goes like a bird upon a branch. Ever since it was settled that Rudolph and Mina are to be married next week, on Friday--of course you'll come to the wedding?--he has had no rest either day or night. He sometimes goes out to see how the farm's getting on, sometimes he goes to find out that the spring sowing's all right, or perhaps he walks about the fields and comes in late in the evening quite worn out. It really seems as if he were trying to get through all the work in the last eight days before the marriage, that he had neglected to do during the whole five and twenty years in which he has idled away his time."--"Ah, well, leave him alone, there's no harm in that."--"That's just what I say, but Rudolph is angry with him for poking his nose into everything."--"Things will soon right themselves, never fear. Are all your people quiet?"--"Oh yes, and if Joseph hadn't wanted to make a speech about the geese, we should hardly have known that there was such a thing as disaffection in the neighbourhood, but from what I hear matters look badly at Gürlitz and Pümpelhagen."--"At Pümpelhagen too?"--"Yes, indeed. Neither of them confesses it; he doesn't say so, nor does she; but everyone knows that there may be an explosion there any day. He is terribly in debt, and the labourers want their wages, which he has allowed to mount up I suppose. The wisest thing he could do would be to get you to go back to him as bailiff."--"Pshaw! That last is nonsense."--"I said so too. I told Mrs. von Rambow that you could never go back there."--"What?" asked Hawermann quickly, "have you been to see her lately?"--"Yes, didn't Bräsig tell you that we intended to go?"--"He said that you spoke of going, but I didn't know that you had really gone."--"You see, Charles, this was the way of it. Triddelfitz brought all kinds of firearms here, which he told us he was going to use against the people, so I said to Joseph that we ought to go and see Mr. and Mrs. von Rambow. They had rather held aloof from us before, and so we needn't have gone; but, Charles, these are hard times. I wouldn't give much for neighbours who won't do each other a kindness in such times as these.