The youth had seen at once that if he should deal with the land as his predecessors had done, he would be able to draw no more from the stingy acres than they.  He had shown the bent of his mind and the nature of his talent by the promptness with which he put things remote together, and by the directness with which he reached his conclusions.

He had left his town-lodgings, having obtained of his employer leave of absence for one week, and within twenty-four hours had come to his conclusion and returned to his post.  Of that estate which he had inherited but a portion, and a very small portion, offered to the cultivator the least encouragement.  The land had long ago been stripped of its forest trees, and, thus defrauded of its natural fertilizers, lay now, after successive seasons of drain and waste, as barren as a desert, with the exception of that narrow strip between the hills which apparently bent low that inland might look upon river.

Along the banks of the stream, which flowed, a current of considerable depth and swiftness, toward its outlet, the river, willows were growing.  Albert’s employer was an importer to a small extent, and fancy willow-ware formed a very considerable share of his importations.  The conclusion he had reached while surveying his land was an answer to the question he had asked himself:  Why should not this land be made to bring forth the kind of willow used by basket-weavers, and why should not basket-weavers be induced to gather into a community of some sort, and so importers be beaten in the market by domestic productions?  The aim thus clearly defined Spener had accomplished.  His Moravians furnished him with a willow-ware which was always quoted at a high figure, and the patriotic pride the manufacturer felt in the enterprise was abundantly rewarded:  no foreign mark was ever found on his home-made goods.

But his Moravians:  where did these people come from, and how came they to be known as his?

The question brings us to Frederick Loretz.  In those days he was a porter in the establishment where Spener was a clerk.  He had filled this situation only one month, however, when he was attacked with a fever which was scourging the neighborhood, and taken to the hospital.  Albert followed him thither with kindly words and care, for the poor fellow was a stranger in the town, and he had already told Spener his dismal story.  Afar from wife and child, among strangers and a pauper, his doom, he believed, was to die.  How he bemoaned his wasted life then, and the husks which he had eaten!

In his delirium Loretz would have put an end to his life.  Spener talked him out of this horror of himself, and showed him that there was always opportunity, while life lasted, for wanderers to seek again the fold they had strayed from; for when the delirium passed the man’s conscience remained, and he confessed that he had lived away from the brethren of his faith, and was an outcast.  Oh, if he could but be transported to Herrnhut and set down there a well man in that sanctuary of Moravianism, how devoutly would he return to the faith and practice of his fathers!