"Well, well," said the father, running his fingers through his thick hair, only faintly streaked with gray, as was his wont when anything went "against the grain" with him, as he expressed it,--"well, well, it will all come right in the end, and you will reconcile yourself to the law, as I did to carpentering. You see, Herr von Eichhof, I believed I was more of an artist than an artisan, and I was wild to take up the brush instead of the chisel and plane. I longed to study, but that would have cost money. I turned to the plane instead, and, thank God, all came right in the end." "And you never could have married me, Nikolas," said Frau Nordstedt, who had entered the room meanwhile, "if you had been a learned man. For I have heard my blessed father say a hundred times that like should mate with like, and that a master-carpenter's daughter should marry some one skilled in her father's trade." "So, you see, my carpentering brought me happiness," said old Nordstedt. "Nevertheless, now that my days are all holidays, I look back with indulgence upon my youthful dreams. And since my wife and I took our Italian journey together, she has nothing but respect and admiration for art." "As if I ever had anything else for what you delighted in," his wife said, parenthetically. "Take care," the old man rejoined, holding up a warning finger. "But no, Therese, I must admit that you are and always were the most sensible of women." "We women always are sensible," she said; "and, since you acknowledge the fact so frankly, you shall have some punch brewed by my own hands in which to drink success to Herr von Eichhof." She left the room on hospitable thoughts intent; the doctor pushed forward the large, leather-covered arm-chair in which Walter had so often sat, and the young man took his place between the father and son and discussed the past, present, and future. The old man related many an episode from his past life, which had been full of trials and struggles, which he recounted as a soldier recounts the victories he has won, lingering upon the incidents of many a well-fought field. And the punch having been brought in and placed upon the table by a stout maid-servant, Frau Nordstedt filled the glasses of the three men, and in snowy cap and apron seated herself with her knitting at her husband's elbow, nodding now and then with a smile as he spoke of early days in their life together, her kind old eyes beaming with placid content and pride in her 'boy' and his father. "It is strange, and no less true than strange, Herr von Eichhof," said the latter, "that life is made up so largely of mistakes and errors. And it is an impregnable fact that content is the result of the performance of one's duty, and that no man need look for anything beyond genuine content." "You are right, Herr Nordstedt," Walter said, eagerly, and the doctor nodded a silent assent.