And Daniel Sadenwater sat by the stove, and did what he had done every evening for thirty years; he had a basket of silver forks and spoons on his lap, and on the chair near him lay a polishing cloth, and a silk pocket-handkerchief; and he rubbed alternately the spoons and forks with the handkerchief, and as he looked at his master's name on the fork which he had polished every evening for thirty years, his eyes were so dim that he couldn't see whether it were bright or not, and he set the basket down, and looked at the fork till his eyes ran over with tears. Amid all this trouble and sorrow, the pendulum of the old clock moved steadily back and forth, back and forth, as if old Time sat by a cradle and rocked his child safely and surely to sleep. And he slept. Two eyes closed themselves forever, the dark curtain between Here and Beyond dropped softly down, and this side stood the poor maidens, lamenting and vainly stretching their arms after that which was gone, and wringing their hands over that which was left behind. Fidelia threw herself down by her father's body, and sobbed and cried until she was taken with spasms. Franz, full of sympathy, lifted her in his arms, and carried her out of the room, and her two sisters followed, in new anxiety for their darling, and Habermann was left alone with Daniel Sadenwater. He pressed down the eyelids of the dead, and after a little turned away with a heavy heart; but Daniel sat on the foot of the bed, looking with his quiet face into the still more quiet face of his master, and he held the fork still in his hand. CHAPTER IX. Axel arrived three days after, having travelled by extra post, too late to hear the last words of his father, but not too late to render the last honors to his remains. The postillion blew lustily on his horn, as he drove into the court-yard, and at the door of the mansion-house appeared three pale mourners in black raiment. The young master knew what had happened. Everything came upon him at once,--thoughts for which he was, or was not accountable,--God's providence, his own weakness and frivolity, his sisters' desolate condition and his own inability to help them, more than all, his father's thoughtfulness and kindness, which were never wanting in good or evil times. He was quite beside himself. His nature was one to be easily excited even by less serious causes than the present. He wept and mourned and lamented, and kept asking how this and that had happened, and, when he heard from Franz that the last words of his father had been spoken to Habermann, he took the old Inspector aside and questioned him, and the latter made a clean breast of it, and told him that his father's last earthly care had been about his future, and how he and his sisters might get along by a prudent management of the estate.