Gottlieb Adler was the owner of a cotton-mill. The road along which the pastor was driving connected the mill with the railway-station; it was a well-kept road, though it had not been planted with trees. A little country town lay on the left, and the factory on the right, at some distance. The black and red roofs of the workmen's cottages peeped from the sheltering plane-trees, limes and poplars; behind them lay a large four-storied building in the shape of a horseshoe. This was the factory. A thicker clump of trees close by indicated Adler's garden; it surrounded an elegant villa with some farm buildings attached. The sun was flooding everything with golden light. The tall red-brick chimney sent out thick, curling smoke, and had the wind been in his direction the pastor would have heard the busy roar of the engines and the noise of the power-looms. But as it was, nothing disturbed the peaceful silence except the whistle of a distant train and the rattling of his own cart. A quail diving into the corn was singing its little song. The constant attention needed to prevent the fat pony from stumbling at last wore out the pastor; so trusting to the mercy of Him who delivered Daniel from the lions' den and Jonah from the whale's belly, he tied the reins to the back of the seat, and folded his hands as in prayer. Boehme loved to dream, and a gentle doze helped to open memory's enchanted gates. He now recalled (probably for the hundredth time that year and at the same spot) another factory, somewhere in the plains of Brandenburg, where he and his friend Gottlieb Adler had spent their childhood. They were sons of fairly well-to-do master-weavers, were born in the same year, and went to the same elementary school. A quarter of a century passed after they left it before they met again. Boehme had finished his theological studies at the University of Tübingen, and Adler had amassed some twenty thousand thalers. On Polish soil, far away from their Fatherland, they met again. Boehme had been appointed pastor of a Protestant parish, and Adler had set up a little cotton-mill. Another quarter of a century had now passed, during which they had never been separated; they visited each other several times every week. Adler's little mill had grown into a huge factory which at the moment employed some six hundred workmen, and brought him in a clear profit of several thousand roubles a year. Boehme had remained poor except for the profit of several thousand blessings yearly.