Gertrude had never wavered in her determination to go to America. For this end she saved and economized in every corner and worked almost night and day. She made butter and sold it, raised fowls and calves and fatted them for market; and when there was nothing else to be done, her flax-wheel was never idle. Meantime, she and her children ate the plainest food and wore their old clothes as long as they could be kept decent. Once possessed of an object to work for beyond the mere keeping of soul and body together, her spirits returned and increased with her toil, and every one remarked how well Gertrude Reinhart was looking, notwithstanding the fact that her light never seemed to go out by night, and she worked in the field like a man—a thing she had never done while her husband was at home. Circumstances favoured her. A legacy from a distant relation enabled her to buy back the cows she had sold. The landgrave, moved by a tardy sense of justice, exempted from all taxes the families of the soldiers fighting in America. She found a ready sale for all her wares in the market at Fulda. No butter was so hard and yellow as hers, no cheese so well pressed and flavoured, and her fine thread was eagerly sought by the traders and by the lace-makers. She soon had money out at interest, and the interest was constantly added to the principal. People said truly that Gertrude was growing a rich woman, and they added what was not true—that as she grew rich she became stingy in proportion. Gertrude was not stingy. The poor village idiot, the poor widow whose only son had been carried away to die of fever before he was fairly embarked for America, could have told a different story. So could the pastor, if he had chosen, but he was at this time most deeply interested in the heresies of the third century; and, though he did not forget to dispense the alms Gertrude put into his hand, he did forget where they came from, and very likely thought they rained down from the clouds like manna.