United States or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"Brother," she whispered, "why do you think Wilhelm is not good?" "I said not that, Carlen," he replied evasively. "I only say we know nothing; and it is dangerous to trust where one knows nothing." "It would not be trust if we knew," answered the loyal girl. "I believe he is good; but, John, John, what misery in his eyes! Saw you ever anything like it?" "No," he replied; "never.

"He has been worse punished than if he had been hung in the beginning," he said, and turned from the bed, facing the Dietmans as if he constituted himself the dead man's protector. "I think no one but ourselves need know," he continued, thinking in his heart of Carlen. "It is enough that he is dead. There is no good to be gained for any one, that I see, by telling what he had done."

At least, this was true of John; was he to find it no longer true of Carlen? He would know, and that right speedily. As by a flash of lightning he thought he saw his father's scheme, if Carlen were to wed this man, this strong and tireless worker, this unknown, mysterious worker, who wanted only shelter and home and cared not for money, what an invaluable hand would be gained on the farm!

They were new-comers into the town, since spring. "No!" replied Wilhelm, with another strange, sharp glance at Carlen. "I saw him not before." "Have they children?" she continued. "Are they old?" "No; young," he answered. "They haf one child, little baby." Carlen could not contrive any other questions to ask. "It must have been a letter," she thought; and her face grew sadder.

Carlen clasped her hands in an agony of bewilderment. "If he has found his sweetheart, I shall die," she thought. "How could it be? A letter, perhaps? A message?" She dreaded to see him. She lingered in her room till it was past the supper hour, dreading what she knew not, yet knew. When she went down the four were seated at supper.

He leaped lightly over the bars; he stooped and fondled the dog, speaking to him in a merry tone; then he whistled, then broke again into singing a gay German song. Carlen was stupefied with wonder. Who was this new man in the body of Wilhelm? Where had disappeared the man of slow-moving figure, bent head, downcast eyes, gloom-stricken face, whom until that hour she had known?

"You were helping with the supper, I suppose, sitting out with yon tramp!" And he pointed to the stoop. Carlen had, with all her sunny cheerfulness, a vein of her father's temper. Her face hardened, and her blue eyes grew darker. "Why do you call Wilhelm a tramp," she said coldly. "What is he then, if he is not a tramp?" retorted John. "He is no tramp," she replied, still more doggedly.

A strange look of even keener pain passed over the young man's face, and he left the room hastily, without a word of good-night. "He's a surly brute!" cried John; "nice company he'll be in the field! I believe I'd sooner have nobody!" "I think he has seen some dreadful trouble," said Carlen. "I wish we could do something for him; perhaps his friends are all dead.

"Alvays you vimmen are too soon; it may be he are goot, it may be he are pad; I do not know. It is to vork I haf him brought." "Yes," echoed Frau Weitbreck; "we do not know." It was not so easy as Carlen and her mother had thought, to be like mother and sister to Wilhelm. The days went by, and still he was as much a stranger as on the evening of his arrival. He never voluntarily addressed any one.

A sudden revulsion of shame for his unjust suspicion filled John with tenderness. "Mein Schwester," he said fondly, they had always the habit of using the German tongue for fond epithets, "mein Schwester klein, I love you so much I cannot help being wretched when I see you in danger, but I am not angry." Nestling herself close by his side, Carlen looked over into the water.