"Heavens! It can't be possible----! Why, it's the schoolmaster of Rattenstein!" "Aye, aye, my dear Heath--Peter," said the old man, recovering his breath, "that's so. With your permission, I will sit down at once." The farmer's wife pulled on her dress again and hurried into the kitchen to warm some soup; then she called back into the parlour: "Go and light a candle, Peter. The rush won't burn properly, and the smoke makes one's eyes fairly smart." Then, when a tallow candle was burning on the table and the old man had wiped the sweat from his careworn face, Heath Peter almost shyly offered him his hand and said: "Well, how do you come wandering into the Wilderness like this, Schoolmaster?" "It had to be," replied the old man. "It's a case, with me, of 'Forsaken and beat, like the stones in the street.' I just turned up a footpath and went on over hill and dale as the Lord willed. And so, in the end, I came to you people in the Wilderness." "And, if I may ask, where do you mean to go, Schoolmaster?" The old man made no reply. His head sank down upon his chest. His fingers clutched at his blue handkerchief; but, before he could raise it with trembling hand to his face, he burst into heavy sobs. "Lord Jesus! Schoolmaster!" cried Peter, springing to support him, for the old man threatened to collapse. "Never would I have thought," he sobbed at last, "that such an hour as this would come to me in my old days. God above, Thou knowest, that I have not deserved it!" "There must have been some great misfortune," the farmer said. "But Schoolmaster must not take it too much to heart. And if there is anything I can do he must let me know."