"To that may God help me!" ejaculated Catherine. "And now, Lambert, we must think about the obligations resting on us. While you go and feed Hans, I will prepare our noonday meal. After dinner we will start, for I suppose you mean to take me along. Now, no more talking; we have already trifled away too much time." She drove out the beloved one with kisses and scolding, and then turned to her work, which she pushed forward in a lively manner, though she often pressed her hand on her heart, which it seemed would burst with sheer happiness. Wherever she looked, she, in imagination, saw the form of her beloved--the true, good, thoughtful eyes; the face embrowned by exposure, with its handsome, clear expression; the powerful frame, which moved with such calm assurance. In the crackling of the fire; in the measured tick-tack of the old Swartzwald clock, she seemed ever to hear his deep, friendly voice; and she mentally recalled the words he had said to her, and trembled with pleasure as she thought how her name rang out from his lips: "Catherine!" So she had always been called. Her father, friends, neighbors, all the world had called her Catherine, and yet it seemed as though to-day she had heard it for the first time. Oh! everything had turned out so different and so much better than she had dared to hope. How doubtingly she had looked toward the land with fixed eyes, which had already learned to weep on the torture-ship. What more could it bring her besides terrible, inconceivable misery? How unhappy she had yesterday felt on her arrival, and again this morning. Could she then now be in reality happy, so very happy that her dear, dead father, were he still living, could wish for her nothing better--nothing more desirable? Catherine bowed her head and folded her hands in prayer, and then looked up with brightened glances. "Yes," said she softly, "he would have blessed our engagement with his fatherly, priestly blessing. I can call myself his before men, as I am before God and in my own heart. And though I have no friend, male or female, to rejoice with us and to wish us joy, I am on that account none the less his and he mine. But I will make friends of the whole world--the strange old aunt and the wild Conrad. I am no longer afraid of anybody--of anything." So spoke Catherine to herself as she was setting the table, and yet she was badly scared as, at that moment, she heard the stamping of a horse before the house, and a loud human voice calling: "He, holla! Lambert Sternberg!" Trembling, she laid down the plates and stepped to the door to see the caller, who again and again screamed: "Lambert Sternberg! He, holla, Lambert Sternberg!" CHAPTER VII