By and by, he found a still greater comfort. There were in the neighbourhood of Bridgeton several German families who had come in and taken up small pieces of land shortly before the war. They were very poor and ignorant, and the children were growing up utterly wild and untrained. It occurred to Caspar that here was a place to do something for that Master who had done so much for him. It was perhaps too late to do very much with the parents, but there were the children—such a flock of them! Might they not be got together in some sort of school and taught to read their Bibles and to speak good English? It was not easy at first to gain the confidence of the children or the consent of their parents to any such plan, but the common language was a great help, and at last Caspar carried his point. Sunday-schools, in the present sense, were unknown, but Caspar succeeded after a while in collecting together the urchins of the settlement for an hour or more on Sunday afternoon to teach them to read and to read to them out of the Bible. Presently, the spirit of ambition was roused, and some of them began to be eager to make more progress than was possible with a lesson once a week. Caspar could not be spared in the daytime, but his evenings were free. Three times a week he walked through the woods to the little settlement to hold an evening-school among his German friends. There were not wanting some who smiled at his zeal, and others who plainly hinted that Caspar was not likely to take so much trouble for nothing, and that, most probably, some kind of plot was forming—perhaps to bring the Hessians down and burn the town. But in general, people had learned to believe in him, and his school proceeded in peace and increased in usefulness day by day. On the nineteenth of October, 1781, the English forces at Yorktown under Lord Cornwallis surrendered, and the war was virtually at an end, but it was not till the twentieth of January, 1783, that the treaty of peace was formally and finally signed at Paris. The news reached Congress on the twenty-third of March, and soon spread through the country. When Caspar heard that peace was proclaimed, he felt that he could wait no longer. He must obtain news of his family at any risk. He resolved to go to Philadelphia, and if needful to New York, find out some vessel sailing to Europe, and proceed at least to some point near his former home from which he could communicate with his family. He had abundance of money for the purpose, and only waited till he could leave his former employer and present partner without too much inconvenience, and find a suitable tenant for his house to keep it in order till his return. CHAPTER IX. _NONNENWALD._ WE must now return to Nonnenwald and the family of Gertrude Reinhart.