The minister silently gave him his hand. Spener did himself justice when he took the extended palm and held it a moment reverently in his. "Father, we await your decision," he said to Loretz. He still held Elise's hand, and she would not have flown away had he held it less firmly. Leonhard, quite forgotten, just here accidentally touched the piano with his elbow, and the sound that came forth was the keynote to Mendelssohn's "Wedding March." Forthwith he began to play it. Loretz looked at him, and seemed to feel suddenly reassured. A wavering light fell around him: he beckoned to the minister. "Do any of the folks around here know?" he asked. "About the lot? Who would have told them? I should say no one." "Then 'twill do them no harm: I am my brother's keeper. Go on. We won't make a balk of it this time." "What, father!" exclaimed Dame Loretz. "How! Now?" It was her turn to offer herself as a stumbling-block, but, dear soul! she must always make poor work of such endeavor. "If they are agreed, let it be. Albert Spener never gave his consent out and out to the testing; and look at our girl here! The Lord have mercy on us! If I can understand, though, it isn't Albert's doing." "It is wholly Brother Wenck's," said Spener. "It is Benigna's," said the minister. "Let us therefore celebrate this day of sorrow by a concluding special service;" and he drew from his pocket the manual from which he had read the burial service over Sister Benigna. "We will rejoice together, as she will rejoice if it is given her to know what the friends she loved do on the earth. Is it not as if she had given her life for her friends?" When Leonhard took up the interrupted strain of the "Wedding March," bridegroom had saluted bride, and Loretz, by the light of his daughter's eyes, had taken one decided step toward conviction that he had consented in that hour not to the furtherance of his own will, but the will of Heaven. Have we permitted Miss Elise to figure almost as a mute on this momentous occasion? But does the reader think it likely that she had much to say? She might perhaps have uttered one word that would have proved insurmountable, but Mr. Wenck had spoken as it were with Benigna's authority, and so to yield now was the most obvious duty. The next morning saw Leonhard Marten on his way back to A----. He had submitted to Spener his designs for the monument to be erected among the living to the memory of Sister Benigna, and for the houses to be built on those elected sites; and these all accepted, he had said to himself, "I am an architect and a builder as long as I live," though Spener had embraced him when he said, "I never heard such music, sir--never--as you gave us last night!" He went away, promising to come back and bring with him a young lady to study music of the Spenersbergers, so soon as he should have despatched a letter to a friend who was about to travel abroad.