"We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have
read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that
an old friend had come."

"That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call,
and reading the name with a pleased smile--"that means that you belong
to us. I thought you did. I am glad."

Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various
ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers
in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought:
they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps
spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they
secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them
unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight--not out of this
stranger's sight, but out of their own.

"Perhaps you will stop with us a while, and maybe write your name on
my page before you go," said Loretz, afraid that his wife had gone a
little too far.

"Without a single test?" Leonhard answered. "Haven't we just agreed
that we wise men don't take each other on trust, as they did in our
grandfathers' day?"

"A man living in Herrnhut in 1770 would not have for a descendant a--a
man I could not trust," said Loretz, closing the book and placing it
in its chamois covering again. "Breakfast, mother, did you say?"

"Have you wanted ink?" asked Sister Benigna, entering at that instant.