The next day Leonhard sat staring at Wilberforce's letter with a face as wrinkled as a young ape's in a cold morning fog. After one long serious effort he sprang from his seat, and I am afraid swore that he would go down to Philadelphia that very afternoon. Therefore (and because he clung to the determination all day) at six o'clock behold him passing with his satchel from the steps of the Granby House to the Grand Division Dépôt. He was always going to and fro, so his departure occasioned no remark. He supposed, for his own part, that he was going to talk with his friend Wilberforce, and his ticket ensured his passage to Philadelphia; and yet at eight o'clock he found himself standing on the steps of the Spenersberg Station, and saw the train move on. At the moment when his will seemed to him to be completely demoralized the engine-whistle sounded and the engine stopped. Utterly unnerved by his doubts, he slunk from the car like an escaping convict, and looked toward the narrow moonlit valley which was as a gate leading into this unknown Spenersberg. The path looked obscure and inviting, and so, without exchanging a word with any one, he walked forward, a more pitiable object than is pleasant to consider, for he was no coward and no fool. CHAPTER II. IN THE HAPPY VALLEY. About the time that Leonhard Marten was paying for his ticket in the dépôt at A----, how many events were taking place elsewhere! Multitudes, multitudes going up and down the earth perplexed, tempted, discouraged. What were _you_ doing at that hour? I wonder. Even here, at this Spenersberg, was Frederick Loretz--with reason deemed one of the most fortunate of the men gathered in the happy valley--asking himself, as he walked homeward from the factory, "What is the use?" When he spied his wife on the piazza he seemed to doubt for a second whether he should go backward or forward. Into that second of vacillation, however, the voice of the woman penetrated: "Husband, so early? Welcome home!" The voice decided him, and so he opened his gate, passed along the graveled walk to the piazza steps, ascended, wiping the perspiration from his bald head, dropped his handkerchief into his hat and his hat upon the floor, and sat down in one of the great wide-armed wooden chairs which visitors always found awaiting them on the piazza.