"I have just received information which compels me to start immediately on a distant journey, which may be extended I know not how long. Certainly not less than a week. I write these lines to drop them at Grenwitz, if I should not see you, which I would regret very much, as I have much to tell you. I take our Czika with me, as the solitude does not seem to me a safe place for her during my absence. I shall certainly be back for the day appointed by the gypsy woman. Until then, farewell. "In great haste, and with still greater friendship, "A. O." Oswald was strangely impressed by this letter, for that divining power which plays so prominent a part in matters of the heart, made him at once suspect some connection between this sudden departure of Oldenburg and Melitta's departure. Whether much that he heard about the relations existing between the two appeared to him now in a new light since Melitta's recital, or whether it was merely the vagueness of Oldenburg's statement--enough, Oswald resented it as a kind of insult, that he was continually encountering riddles in that direction. He determined to go across to Berkow this very day, and to see if old Baumann had a letter for him from Melitta. Then his thoughts turned into another channel when his eye fell upon the verses he had written the night before. He smiled now as he read them over. "There your wretched imagination has played you another trick," he said to himself. "You have only to hear of a pretty girl who is to marry somebody else and not your highness, and you have a paroxysm of pity with the girl and a paroxysm of hate against the man. And then you have only to see the girl, and to find that she has large bright eyes, and looks more attractive than half-grown girls generally do, and a boy has only to tell you stories about this half-grown girl, and you are forced to write miserable verses like these, which I would put instantly in the fire if we were not unfortunately in the dog-days." But Oswald held no _auto da fe_, although the light of a candle would have done him the same service, but put the paper away again in his desk. The morning greeted him so kindly from the dew-refreshed garden, that Oswald could not resist the temptation to saunter about a little among the flower-beds and in the shady avenues. Besides, it was early yet, almost two hour's time, and the boys were still asleep. Oswald hastened down and went to his favorite place, the immense wall which encircled the château, the garden, and the courtyard, and on which he loved to walk under the beeches and the walnut-trees, especially in the morning, when the red rays of the sun were peeping through the waving branches, and the half-wild ducks were enjoying themselves heartily on the moss-grown moat.