"That it will," said Anton, cheerily. "I am wonderfully hungry. And now let us consider how we shall manage our housekeeping. What we absolutely want we must get from the town; I will make a list at once. We will put out one candle, though--we must be economical." The evening was spent in plans. Karl discovered that he could make part of the necessary furniture out of the boxes and boards about, and the laughter of the two companions sounded cheerfully through the rooms of the starost's dwelling. At last Anton proposed that they should go to bed. They shook down straw and hay, unbuckled their portmanteaus, and produced some blankets and coverlets. Karl fastened a lock that he had brought with him into the room door, examined the loading of his carbine, took up his potato, and said, with a military salute, "At what time does major general the agent wish to be called to-morrow?" "You good fellow!" cried Anton, reaching out his hand from his straw bed. Karl went into the next room, which he had chosen for himself. Soon both candles were extinguished--the first signs of life which had shone for years in the forsaken dwelling. But in the stove the little Kobolds of the castle lingered long over the newly-kindled fire; they hovered in the smoke wreaths, they knocked at doors and windows in amazement at the proceedings of the strangers. At length they assembled in a corner of the old tower, and began to dispute as to whether or not the flames lighted this evening would continue to burn, and to cast henceforth their cheerful glow on meadow, fields, and woods; and as they doubted whether the new order of things had strength enough to endure, the smoke drove the bats from their home in the chimney, and they came flapping down stupefied on the summit of the tower, while the owls in its crevices shook their round heads and hooted in the new era. CHAPTER XXVIII. He who has always trodden life's macadamized ways, hedged in by law, moulded by order, custom, form, handed down from generation to generation habits a thousand years old, and who finds himself suddenly thrown among strangers, where law can but imperfectly protect him, and where he must assert by daily struggles his right to exist--such a one realizes for the first time the full blessing of the holy circle woven round each individual by his fellow-men, his family, his companions in labor, his race, his country. Whether he lose or gain in foreign parts, he must needs change. If he is a weakling, he will sacrifice his own _maniere d'etre_ to the external influences around him; if he has the making of a man in him, he will become one now. The possessions, perhaps the prejudices, that he has grown up with, will wax dearer to him than ever; and much that once he looked upon as things of course, like air and sunshine, will become his most prized treasures. It is in foreign countries that we first enjoy the dialect of home, and in absence that we learn how dear to us is our fatherland.