"Why hadn't they shouted across 'Horse and carriage.' Did not every baby in arms know by this time that was the right way of summoning the big ferry barge instead of the small boat." "You are quite right, Jürgens," said Leo, tapping him majestically on the shoulder; "it is a grave scandal that your system of governing the stream is not more respected." At the first sound of his voice the old man shook with fright. Then he snatched off his cap and stammered in confusion, "The master! the master!" The post of ferryman at Wengern was in the gift of Halewitz, and it had been given twenty years ago to old Jürgens (for even then he had been old), in reward for his long and faithful services to the family. It was no sinecure; but where does such a thing as a sinecure exist in the country of Prussia? The aged retainer struggled to keep back his tears; he seized the leonine paw that rested on his shoulder, and seemed as if he would never stop stroking it with his horny gnarled hands. Leo, who was every moment feeling more at home in his patriarchal inheritance, ordered his luggage to be left in the little ferry-house, and, lavishly overpaying the young driver, dismissed him. The boat put off and glided with a slight grinding on the pebbles of the shallow water into mid-stream. Leo, content, absently let his hand dip into the water, and delighted in the little sparkling rivulets that ran up his arm. Meanwhile the old man gazed at him from the end of the boat with big tear-dimmed eyes. "It would be best," he said at last, "to row the 'gnädiger Herr' as far as the Isle of Friendship, which is halfway there." Leo nodded. The Isle of Friendship! So well known was the tie which bound him and Ulrich together that their friendship had become a romance current amongst the people, so that even the name they had given in joke to the place where as boys they had loved best to meet, which they had never mentioned except to a few near relations, had grown into a geographical landmark for the public. Ah, but if they knew! If they could see the ghost which had arisen between them! "Repent nothing," a voice cried out within him; and he struck the water with his clenched fist, till a fountain of glistening drops started up around him. Old Jürgens nearly dropped his oars, in alarm, and stuttered out a query. Leo laughed at him. "I didn't mean anything, old man," he said. "I was simply quarrelling with brother within." "No good to be got out of him--maybe he's a devil," said the old ferryman, philosophically, and rowed on. The boat had turned its keel down the river, which shimmered faintly as it wound along between the dusky blackness of the willow-bushes, now widening almost into a lake, then narrowing where a headland, like an outstretched knee, jutted darkly into the ripples.