When we came in sight of the little plantation prophetically known as "The Grove," I could not help calling the Doctor's attention to it. He took a much more flattering interest in it than you did, I must tell you. He turned his steps towards it immediately, commended the spaces which made full allowance for growth, and, seating himself on one of the benches,--according to you, such premature constructions,--gave me a dissertation on soils, very entertaining and very profitable. When he had finished, I would gladly have carried him back to the subject from which the sight of my trees had diverted us, but I felt that this required a little skill: I had known him repelled by a question of too incautious directness from a topic on which he would have been eloquent, if he had led the way to it himself. However, as soon as we were once walking forward on our former path again, his thoughts, too, returned to the old track. Our intimacy had ripened fast on the common ground of sympathy we had found in the grove. He was more expansive than before, and revealed a latent gentleness I had begun to suspect in him. He went on to tell of Harry's infancy and childhood, and to relate instances of his early daring, self-reliance, and generosity of heart,--smiling, indeed, a little at himself as he did so, and casting now and then towards me a glance of inquiry, almost of apology, like one who is conscious of being indiscreet, but who cannot resolve to refrain. I could not but observe that the anecdotes related with most pleasure illustrated that very side of Harry's character which gave the Doctor uneasiness. Karl and Fritz were employed that day in clearing a piece of ground overgrown with brushwood. We had found them at their work in our morning walk, and Harry had promised to come back and take a hand in it. It was an animated scene that the Doctor and I came upon. Before we reached it, we heard a pleasant clamor of voices and laughter. My German boys are faithful workers, and generally cheerful ones; but now they carried on their task with an ardor and an hilarity which doubled their strength, and gave them an alertness which I had thought was not of their race. "Will you let me finish my stint?" Harry cried, as soon as we were near enough to answer him. The merry light in his eye and the gleeful earnestness of his manner brought up to me the little boy of whom the Doctor had been talking to me. He was taking the lead. He could not have been practised in the work; but the strong sweep of his arm, his sure strokes, did not speak the novice. He directed and encouraged his assistants in familiar and idiomatic German, which made me feel that my carefully composed sentences must be somewhat stilted to their native ears.