if upon swan's pinions the promise of a fair future hovered above her from the page that she was reading. "Shall I ever be such a swan?" she asked again and again. Her heart overflowed with new emotions of joy and pain, she covered her eyes with her thin hands and sobbed as if she would, as the saying is, "cry her soul out." Then her father awoke, and called out, "Who is there?" Ernestine hastened to him and fell on her knees at his bedside. She seized his hand and would have kissed it; he snatched it angrily away, but the tears that she had shed had melted her very heart. "Father, dear father!" she cried, "I have been very naughty and self-willed. Forgive, and love me only a little, and I will love you dearly!" Hartwich turned his face to the wall, and growled, "Why did you wake me? Where's the use of slipping in here at this hour? Do you think I had rather listen to your stupid whining than sleep?" "Father," cried Ernestine, taking his lame hand that he could not withdraw from her. "Father, do not send me away from you. I will be good,--help me to be so. I cannot be good if you are always harsh to me. I saw to-day how all the children have parents who love them. I only am disliked by every one, and yet I have a heart too, and would love to see kind looks and hear kind words. I will not cry ever any more, if you will not make me cry, and I will try my best to be just like a boy, that you may not be sorry any more that I am a girl. Ah, father, it seems to-day as if the dear God in heaven had told me what I long for. Love, father, love,--ah, give me some, and take pity upon your poor ugly child!" The invalid had turned towards the child again, and was staring at her in amazement, with lack-lustre eyes; it seemed as if some unbidden feeling were struggling for utterance from the depths of his moral and physical degradation; his breath came quick, he tried to speak. Ernestine did not venture to look at him; a strong odour of brandy told her that her father's face was near her own, but this odour was so utterly disgusting to her that she involuntarily recoiled, and thus avoided the lips that would perhaps have bestowed upon her the first kiss that she had ever in her life received from them. The invalid must have known this, for he turned away again, muttering something unintelligible. After a long pause, he felt for a tumbler that stood on a table beside his bed, but it was empty. "I'm thirsty!" he said peevishly. "Shall I bring you some water, father?" asked Ernestine. The sick man made a gesture of disgust "No! but you can go up to your uncle and tell him to send me that medicine that he spoke of; he will know what I want. But ask him only,--do you hear?--him only. And tell no one that I sent you, or you shall suffer for it, I promise you. And now go quickly: I'm tortured with thirst!"