"I'll try my hand at it," said Loretz. "Ha! ha!" and he opened the volume, which was bound in black leather, the leaves yellowed with years. "This book," he continued, "is one hundred and fifty years old. You will find recorded in it the names of all my grandfather's friends, and all my father's. See, it is our way. There are all the dates. Where they lived, see, and where they died. It is all down. A man cannot feel himself cut off from his kind as long as he has a volume like that in his library. I have added a few names of my own friends, and their birthdays. Here, you see, is Sister Benigna's, written with her own hand. A most remarkable woman, sir. True as steel--always the same. But"--he paused a moment and looked at Leonhard with his head inclined to one side, and an expression of perplexity upon his face--"there's something out of the way here in this country. I have not more than one name down to a dozen in my father's record, and twenty in my grandfather's. We do not make friends, and we do not keep them, as they did in old time. We don't trust each other as men ought to. Half the time we find ourselves wondering whether the folks we're dealing with are _honest_. Now think of that!" "Are men any worse than they were in the old time?" asked Leonhard, evidently not entering into the conversation with the keenest enjoyment. "I do not know how it is," said Loretz with a sigh, continuing to turn the leaves of the book as he spoke. "Perhaps we have less imagination, and don't look at every new-comer as a friend until we have tried him," suggested Leonhard. "We decide that everybody shall be tested before we accept him. And isn't it the best way? Better than to be disappointed, when we have set our heart on a man--or a woman." "I do not know--I cannot account for it," said Mr. Loretz. Then with a sudden start he laid his right hand on the page before him, and with a great pleased smile in his deep-set, small blue eyes he said: "Here is your name. I felt sure I should find it: I felt certain it was down. See here, on my grandfather's page--_Leonhard Marten, Herrnhut_, 1770. How do you like that?" "I like it well," said Leonhard, bending over the book and examining the close-fisted autograph set down strongly in unfading ink. Had he found an ancestor at last? What could have amazed him as much? "What have you found?" asked Mrs. Loretz, who had heard these remarks in the next room, where she was actively making preparations for the breakfast, which already sent forth its odorous invitations. "We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that an old friend had come." "That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call, and reading the name with a pleased smile--"that means that you belong to us. I thought you did. I am glad."