This had been the conclusion for the last ten years of every conversation between the worthy people, whenever the subject was the health of the good pastor. What availed him his duties so faithfully performed, the love and veneration of his flock, his gay world of flowers just outside the door, and his circle of blooming children? There he sat in the great arm-chair, while without the birds were singing, the lindens in full leaf, the little six-years-old Paul was exercising a troop of wooden soldiers, the gentle Hermine dancing merrily, and in a distant part of the garden the beautiful Theodora was walking with her youngest brother, the little pet, Ernst. Indeed, the worthy Seidelman might well be happy, surrounded by all these treasures. But he was bowed down by disease, not of mind, but of body; and he was very poor, though that was no one’s fault but his own. For how in the world was any one with such a soft heart ever to grow rich. His house was always open to the needy, and not rarely to the wolf even in sheep’s clothing, and often when on his return from some wedding, his wife would search anxiously in his pockets for the fee, he would say, with a look of shame and contrition, “Don’t be vexed, Catharine, I have given it to Gottlieb, he has broken his leg;” then both would smile through their tears, and the orders to the butcher for the next week would be countermanded. But one other grief burdened the worthy people. Anxiety on account of their favorite child Theodora, just eighteen years old, and so gentle, who became every day more and more estranged from them. In his sleepless nights of pain, she left the care of her father entirely to her mother and her sister Hermine, and shut herself up in her room, where they saw her candle burning until long after midnight, and to their anxious questionings she gave only confused, unsatisfactory replies. But now, when the roses in her cheeks had begun to fade, her father and mother had determined that, when twilight came, when she always went to walk in the large garden, they would penetrate into her securely-locked apartment, and solve, if possible, the sad riddle. And they had selected this evening for the attempt.