"I need not to premise, worthy Frau Amthor, how not only your family and house, but also your own character are held in honour by every person, public or private, in our good town, and your virtues, as well at the name and memory of your departed husband, looked up to as a Christian example. It is, therefore, the universal wish to keep sorrow far from you, and to offer you whatever consolation lies within human power for such trial as Heaven has appointed. It will not have escaped you that all as by common consent have long avoided touching the wound that your son's conduct has inflicted, and I indeed as your friend and relative, should have been especially bound never to name your lost Andreas in your presence, if my official duty had not required me so to do. Will you, therefore, not render my painful duty still harder to me by suppression or evasion, but openly tell me what accounts of your son you have lately had, and where you have reason to believe him now to be?" "If you ask me thus earnestly," replied the mother, without betraying either in look or tone how fast her heart was beating; "I must, alas! return you for answer, that it will be four years next All Saints' since I saw my unhappy son for the last time, and that since then I have had no manner of communication from him. But now let me enquire what leads you and the rest of the Town-Council to make such enquiries about the absent one who--whatever his offences may be--has at least not given his native town any cause for complaint for a space of nine years?"