Carlen alone looked grave, anxious, unhappy. She could not laugh. Tale
after tale, jest after jest, fell from Wilhelm's lips. Such a
story-teller never before sat at the Weitbreck board. The old kitchen
never echoed with such laughter.

Finally John exclaimed: "Man alive, where have you kept yourself all
this time? Have you been ill till now, that you hid your tongue? What
has cured you in a day?"

Wilhelm laughed a laugh so ringing, it made him seem like a boy.

"Yes, I have been ill till to-day," he said; "and now I am well." And he
rattled on again, with his merry talk.

Carlen grew cold with fear; surely this meant but one thing. Nothing
else, nothing less, could have thus in an hour rolled away the burden of
his sadness.

Later in the evening she said timidly, "Did you hear any news in the
village this afternoon, Wilhelm?"

"No; no news," he said. "I had heard no news."

As he said this a strange look flitted swiftly across his face, and was
gone before any eye but a loving woman's had noted it. It did not escape
Carlen's, and she fell into a reverie of wondering what possible double
meaning could have underlain his words.

"Did you know Mr. Dietman in Germany?" she asked. This was the name of
the farmer to whose house he had been sent on an errand. They were