Thus talking, they passed by the cannon and many a knot of French plodding heavily through the deep mud. At last, close to the sign of the "Bremsenkranz" they saw the Colonel on horseback slowly making his way onwards, side by side with some of his officers.-- "Drive on a little way past them, Heinrich," said Fieka, "and stop at the edge of the bank, and I will get down." This was done. As the Colonel approached, Fieka stood in the foot-path in his way, advanced a couple of steps towards him and said--"Herr, I have a letter for you." The Colonel stopped, took the letter, and looked at Fieka, rather astonished: "From whom is it, my child?" "From our Herr Amtshauptmann Weber." The Colonel broke the seal and read; his face gradually softened with pity; but when he had finished reading, he silently shook his head. Fieka had watched him with the greatest anxiety; she read the answer to the letter in his face; and when he so sorrowfully shook his head, the tears started to her eyes: "Sir, it is my old father, and I am his only child," she cried. She might have said anything in the world,--the finest speech or the most beautiful text from the Bible,--nothing would have made so deep an impression upon the strong man as these few words in the Platt-Deutsch tongue. He too had an old father and was his only child. His father lived in a high castle in Westphalia; but in loneliness,--discontented with his countrymen and his country. Time and the world had rolled many a stone between father and son, until a broad wall had grown up between them, above which it was only with difficulty that they could understand one another. Discord and dissension had arisen, and where _they_ are, conscience makes its voice heard in quiet hours. How often had this inner voice said to him: "It is your old father, and you are his only child!" Happiness and misery, the thunder of the cannon and the roar of battle had, indeed, at times been able to overpower it; but the wound in his heart always opened afresh like the indelible blood-stain reappearing on a room-floor. Now, for the first time, did he hear these words uttered by stranger lips,--for the first time in the language of his childhood. It seemed to him as if there were no longer any reproach contained in them; they were spoken so gently, they sounded as softly in his ears as if they were words of forgiveness; and, when he saw the poor girl standing there before him with her pale, anxious face, it was too much for him,--he was obliged to turn away, and it was some time before he could speak to her again. At last he recovered himself, and said to her with all the warmth of manner which such a moment calls forth: "My dear child, it is not in my power to set your father free; but he will be soon. You and your love to him shall not, however, have appealed to me in vain; you shall stay near him, and he can go in the waggon with you. And when we get to Brandenburg, come and speak to me again."