"Only to your carriage, which I saw standing at the door of the inn." "Not another step, I beg of you." They were standing at the churchyard gate, which opened into the village-street; but the Pastor seemed unable to release Gotthold's hand. "For your own comfort, and the honor of your old schoolmates, I must add one remark in connection with our former subject of conversation. All were not guilty of such uncharitableness--I may surely be permitted to give it that name without being uncharitable myself. Some of them spoke very warmly in your praise; no one more so than Carl Brandow." "Brandow! Carl Brandow!" exclaimed Gotthold; "it is certainly--" "Certainly only his duty, if he tries to make amends to you for an offence committed in youthful thoughtlessness by everywhere asserting the truth, and declaring that the demon of avarice is the very last that could obtain dominion over you; and if your father died as poor as he had lived, it was undoubtedly--" "Farewell!" said Gotthold, extending his hand across the low door to the Pastor. "May God bless and keep you!" said the Pastor. "You ought to spare another hour to spend with an old friend." Gotthold said no more. He had withdrawn his hand with almost uncourteous haste, and was now walking rapidly down the village-street, with his hat pulled far over his brows. Herr Semmel looked after him with a contemptuous smile on his fat face. "The enthusiast!" said he; "it seems as if the ill-luck he has had has turned his brain. But no matter. People must cling to the rich. Carl Brandow is a sly fellow. He probably knows why, from the moment he heard he was coming back, he took a new key, and cannot say enough in praise of the man whom he once abused like a reed-sparrow. Perhaps he wants to try to borrow of him. Well, he certainly needs a loan. Plueggen says he is making his last shifts. He will be at Plueggenhof to-morrow. My news will make quite an excitement." CHAPTER II. The long village-street was empty. Here and there an old woman appeared in the doorway of one of the low straw-roofed huts, or a few half-naked children played behind the tangled hedges in the neglected gardens; every one else had gone to the fields, for this was the first day of the rye-harvest. The village-street was empty, and the swallows had free course. Up and down they moved in their arrowlike flight, now on the ground, now rising in graceful circles, straight lines, or zig-zag course, chirping, twittering, and unweariedly fluttering their slender wings. Gotthold paused, pushed back his hat, which he had drawn over his eyes, and gazed as if absorbed in thought at the graceful little creatures, which he had loved from his earliest childhood. While he stood watching them, the angry displeasure roused by the Pastor's words gradually yielded to a strange melancholy.