"Your graceful politeness last evening, Herr Anthrops, saved me much perplexity, and procured me a delightful waltz. One should indeed be well protected by fortune, to find so readily such a courteous little sword," ("She does not know the difference between a sword and a dagger," thought Anthrops, and he was pleased at her ignorance,) "to supply one's awkward deficiencies." (Anthrops slightly winced as he thought of the little black pins.) "The old man on the hilt is really charming. I actually was obliged to kiss him at parting, he looked so kindly and pleasantly at me. Besides, he was my true benefactor; and my grandmother has often told me, that in her day maidens were very properly more expressive in their gratitude than now." (Anthrops fervently longed for a retrogression in the calendar.) "And I really think my old friend must have been alive then, and have been changed into wood, on purpose to preserve his looks till I could see him. It would be a right pleasant destiny, when one begins to grow old and ugly, to be transformed into wood, and carved as one would wish to appear perpetually. And happier fate still, like Philemon and Baucis, to change into living trees, and flourish for hundreds of years in youth and vigor. There are willow-trees growing on the banks of the river that may easily have been girls who wept themselves into trees, because their hair would soon be gray, and they have exchanged it for tresses of green. Near those willow-trees the princely stranger who has lately occupied the castle will next week give a boating _fête_, to which I am invited; I suppose you also, courteous Sir, will be present, a knight-errant for distressed damsels? "HAGUNA." Anthrops kissed the little old man on the dagger's hilt again and again, and made two equally firm, but entirely disconnected resolutions, simultaneously: namely, never to give his nephew the intended present, and by all means to be at the boat-_fête_ the following week. The day of the _fête_ arrived,--a clear, lovely day in early June. The host had provided for the accommodation of his guests a number of boats of different sizes, holding two, three, or a dozen people, according to the fancy of the voyagers. Anthrops, descending the flight of steps that led to the river, came unexpectedly upon his old friend the philosopher, apparently emerging from the side of the hill. "I expected you here," said he; "are you going on the river?" Anthrops replied in the affirmative. "Haguna is here, and I have come to exact a promise that you will not sail with her. You will repent it, if you do." "Better than starvation is a feast and repentance," cried the young man, gayly. "What harm is there in the girl? Though, to be sure, I had no particular intention of sailing with her." "It would be of no use to warn you explicitly," said his friend; "you would not believe me. But you must not go."