brought home a gentle-faced hind, likewise cruelly slain. And Kathchen's
mother has whisked inside, and here are the tall schoppen on the table;
and speedily the long, low room is filled with the tobacco-smoke. What!
another song, you thirsty old Keinitz, with the quavering voice? But
there is a lusty chorus to that too; and a great clinking of glasses;
and the Englishman laughs and does his part too, and he has called for
six more schoppen of red.... But hush, now! Have we come out from the
din and the smoke to the cool evening air? What is that one hears afar
in the garden? Surely it is the little Kathchen and her mother singing
together, in beautiful harmony, the old, familiar, tender _Lorelei_! The
zither is a strange instrument--it speaks. And when Natalie Lind, coming
to this air, sung in a low contralto voice an only half-suggested
second, it seemed to those in the room that two women were singing--the
one with a voice low and rich and penetrating, the other voice clear and
sweet like the singing of a young girl. "_Die Luft ist kuhl und es
dunkelt, und ruhig fliesset der Rhein._" Was it, indeed, Kathchen and
her mother? Were they far away in the beautiful pine-land, with the
quiet evening shining red over the green woods, and darkness coming over
the pale streams in the hollows? When Natalie Lind ceased, the elder of
the two guests murmured to himself, "Wonderful! wonderful!" The other
did not speak at all.

She rested her hands for a moment on the table.

"Natalushka," said her father, "is that all?"

"I will not be called Natalushka, papa," said she; but again she bent
her hands over the silver strings.

And these brighter and gayer airs now--surely they are from the laughing