The Professor remained leaning against the sheaves. The meadow-larks on the tips of the ears of grain over his head warbled joyfully. He pressed his cheek against the stack which half concealed him; thus, in happy forgetfulness, he watched the girl descending toward the distant laborers. When he raised his eyes his friend was standing by him; he beheld a countenance which quivered with inward sympathy, and heard the gentle question: "What will come of it?" "Husband and wife," said the Professor decidedly; he pressed his friend's hands, and strode across the fields to the songs of the larks which greeted him from every sheaf. Fritz was alone. The word had been spoken. A new and awful fate overshadowed the life of his friend. So this was to be the end of it? Thusnelda, instead of Tacitus! Fritz felt alas! that the social custom of marriage might be a very venerable institution. It was inevitable that most men pass through the uprooting struggle which is the consequence of a change in the mutual relations of life. He could not think of his friend amid his books, with his colleagues, and this woman. He felt painfully that his relation to the Professor must be changed by it. But he did not think long of himself, but anxiously worried about his rash friend; and not less about her who had so dangerously impressed the soul of the other. The faithful rash friend looked angrily upon the surrounding stubble and straw, and he clenched his fists against the deceased Bachhuber; against the valley of Rossau; nay, even against the immediate cause of this mischievous confusion--against the manuscript of Tacitus. _CHAPTER IX_. ILSE.