“You have wanted ink, and are too kind to let me know,” she said.  “I emptied the bottle copying music for the children yesterday.”

“The ink was put to a better use then than I could have found for it this morning,” said Leonhard.

And Mrs. Loretz, who looked into the room just then, said to herself, as her eyes fell on him, “Poor soul! he is in trouble.”

In fact, this thought was in Leonhard’s mind as he went into breakfast with the family:  “A deuced good friend I have proved—­to Wilberforce!  Isn’t there anybody here clear-eyed enough to see that it would be like forgery to write my name down in a book of friendship?”

The morning meal was enlivened by much more than the usual amount of talk.  Leonhard was curious to know about Herrnhut, that old home of Moravianism, and the interest which he manifested in the history Loretz was so eager to communicate made him in turn an object of almost affectionate attention.  That he had no facts of private biography to communicate in turn did net attract notice, because, however many such facts he might have ready to produce, by the time Loretz had done talking it was necessary that the day’s work should begin.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONFERENCE MEETING.

The school-room was a large apartment in the basement of the factory which had been used as a drying-room until it became necessary to find for the increasing numbers of the little flock more spacious accommodations.  The basement was entered by a door at the end of the building opposite that by which the operatives entered the factory, and the hours were so timed that the children went and came without disturbance to themselves or others.  The path that led to the basement door was neatly bordered with flowering plants and bushes, and sunlight was always to be found there, if anywhere in the valley, from eight o’clock till two.

Leonhard walked to the factory with Sister Benigna, to whose conduct Loretz had consigned him when called away by the tower bell.

At the door of the basement Mr. Wenck was standing with a printed copy of Handel’s sacred oratorio of The Messiah in his hand.  Evidently he was waiting for Sister Benigna.

But when she had said to Leonhard, “Pass on to the other end of the building and you will find the entrance, and Mr. Spener’s office in the corner as you enter,” and Leonhard had thanked her, and bowed and passed on, and she turned to Mr. Wenck, it was very little indeed that he said or had to say about the music which he held in his hand.

“I have no doubt that all the preparation necessary for to-morrow evening is being made,” he said.  “You may need this book.  But I did not come to talk about it.  Sister Benigna,” he continued in a different tone, and a voice not quite under his control, “is it not unreasonable to have passed a sleepless night thinking of Albert and Elise?”