All agreed with him.  His wife, who had Caroline’s hand locked in her own during the whole narrative, now pressed it affectionately and with tears in her eyes.

“You, then,” said she, “were the good angel that averted such a terrible misfortune from our family?”

Her two daughters also gazed with pleasure at Caroline.

“Every time we ate cherries,” said the younger, “we spoke of you without knowing you.”

All had kind and grateful words for the young girl, but the colonel soon bade her farewell for the present, and said that he had some business to attend to with his brother-in-law.  This business was to urge the count to appoint Ehrenberg his steward in place of the one who had died a few months before.  A better man, he said, could not be found; for when he had visited Rebenheim to make inquiries for the family, although none could tell where they had gone, all were loud in their praise, and the mayor was pronounced a pattern of justice, honor and charity.

The count drew out the order, signed it, and gave it to his brother-in-law, who wished himself to take it to Mr. Ehrenberg; and he went at once to the house and saluted him as “master-steward of Buchenhaim.”

“Read that,” he said to the astonished man as he handed him the paper in which he was duly appointed steward of Buchenhaim, with a good salary of a thousand thalers and several valuable perquisites.

“And you,” said the colonel to Caroline and her mother, “must prepare to remove at once.  Your lodgings are so confined!  But you will find it very different in the house which you are to occupy in Buchenhaim.  The dwelling is large and commodious, with a fine garden attached, well stocked with cherry trees.  Next Monday you will be there, and this very day you must start.  What a happy feast we shall have there!—­not like the hasty meal you gave the hussar-officer amid the thunder of cannon and the blazing roofs of Rebenheim.  Do not forget to have cherries, dear Caroline, for dessert; I think they will be fully ripe by that time.”

With these words the colonel hurried away to escape the thanks of this good family, and, in truth, to conceal his own tears.  So rapidly did he disappear that Ehrenberg could scarcely accompany him down the steps.

“Oh, Caroline,” said the happy father when he returned, “who could have imagined that the little cherry tree I planted in the flower-garden the day you were born would ever produce such good fruit?”

“It was the providence of God,” exclaimed the mother, clasping her hands.  “I remember distinctly the first time the blossoms appeared on that tree, when you and I went out to look at it, and little Caroline, then an infant in my arms, was so much delighted with the white flowers.  We resolved then to educate our daughter piously, and prayed fervently to God that she, who was then as full of promise as the blossoms on the tree, might by his grace one day be the prop of our old age.  That prayer is now fulfilled beyond our fondest anticipations.  Praise for ever be to the name of God!”