He had many things to rejoice over besides his own prosperity. His
daughter was in all respects a perfect being, to his thinking. For six
years now she had been under the instruction of Sister Benigna,
not only in music, but in all things that Sister Benigna, a
well-instructed woman, could teach. She sang, as Leonhard Marten would
have told you, "divinely," she was beautiful to look upon, and Albert
Spener desired to marry her.

Surely the Lord had blessed him, and remembered no more those years
of wanderings when, alienated from the brethren, he sought out his
own ways and came close upon destruction. What should he return to the
beneficent Giver for all these benefits?

Poor Loretz! In his prosperity he thought that he should never be
moved, but he would not basely use that conviction and forget the
source of all his satisfaction. He remembered that it was when he
repented of his misdeeds that Spener came to him and drew him from the
pit. He could never look upon Albert as other than a divine agent;
and when Spener joined himself to the Moravians, led partly by his
admiration of them, partly by religious impulse, and partly because
of his conviction that to be wholly successful he and his people must
form a unit, his joy was complete.

The proposal for Elise's hand had an effect upon her father which any
one who knew him well might have looked for and directed. The pride of
his life was satisfied. He remembered that he and his Anna, in seeking
to know the will of the Lord in respect to their marriage, had been
answered favorably by the lot. He desired the signal demonstration of
heavenly will in regard to the nuptials proposed. Not a shadow of