Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought: they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight--not out of this stranger's sight, but out of their own. "Perhaps you will stop with us a while, and maybe write your name on my page before you go," said Loretz, afraid that his wife had gone a little too far. "Without a single test?" Leonhard answered. "Haven't we just agreed that we wise men don't take each other on trust, as they did in our grandfathers' day?" "A man living in Herrnhut in 1770 would not have for a descendant a--a man I could not trust," said Loretz, closing the book and placing it in its chamois covering again. "Breakfast, mother, did you say?" "Have you wanted ink?" asked Sister Benigna, entering at that instant. "Are we writing in the sacred birthday book?" "Not yet," said Leonhard hastily, the color rising to his face in a way to suggest forked lightning somewhere beyond sight. "You have wanted ink, and are too kind to let me know," she said. "I emptied the bottle copying music for the children yesterday." "The ink was put to a better use then than I could have found for it this morning," said Leonhard. And Mrs. Loretz, who looked into the room just then, said to herself, as her eyes fell on him, "Poor soul! he is in trouble." In fact, this thought was in Leonhard's mind as he went into breakfast with the family: "A deuced good friend I have proved--to Wilberforce! Isn't there anybody here clear-eyed enough to see that it would be like forgery to write my name down in a book of friendship?" The morning meal was enlivened by much more than the usual amount of talk. Leonhard was curious to know about Herrnhut, that old home of Moravianism, and the interest which he manifested in the history Loretz was so eager to communicate made him in turn an object of almost affectionate attention. That he had no facts of private biography to communicate in turn did net attract notice, because, however many such facts he might have ready to produce, by the time Loretz had done talking it was necessary that the day's work should begin. CHAPTER VIII. CONFERENCE MEETING.