“It has gone against us,” said Mr. Loretz, picking up his red silk handkerchief and passing it from one hand to another, and finally hiding his face within its ample dimensions for a moment.

“Do you mean the lot?” Her voice wavered a little.  Though she asked or refrained from asking, something had taken place which must be made known speedily.  Wherefore, then, delay the evil knowledge?

He signified by a nod that it was so.

“And that is in store for our poor child!” said the mother.

Mr. Loretz was now quite broken down.  He passed his handkerchief across his face again, and this time made no answer.

Then the mother, with lips firmly compressed, and eyes bent steadily upon the floor, and forehead crumpled somewhat, sat and held her peace.

At last the father said, in a low tone that gave to his strong voice an awful pathos, “How can the child bear it, Anna? for she loves Spener well—­and to love him well!”

“Oh, father,” said the wife, who had by this time sounded the depth of this tribulation, and was already ascending, “how did we bear it when we had to give up Gabriel, and Jacob, and dear little Carl?”

“For me,” said the man, rising and looking over the piazza rail into the gay little flower-garden beneath—­“for me all that was nothing to this.”

“O my boys!” the mother cried.

“We know that they went home to a heavenly Parent, and to more delight and honor than all the earth could give them,” the father said.

“It rent the heart, Frederick, but into the gaping wound the balm of Gilead was poured.”

“There is no man alive to be compared with Albert Spener.”

“I know of one—­but one.”

“Not one,” he said with an emphasis which sternly rebuked the ill-timed, and, as he deemed, untruthful flattery.  “There is not his like, go where you will.”

“Ah, how you have exalted him above all that is to be worshiped!” sighed the good woman, putting her hands together, and really as troubled and sympathetic, and cool and calculating, as she seemed to be.

“I tell you I have never seen his equal!  Look at this place here—­hasn’t he called it up out of the dust?”

“Yes, yes, he did.  He made it all,” she said.  “It must be conceded that Albert Spener is a great man—­in Spenersberg.”

“How, then, can I keep back from him the best I have when he asks for it —­asks for it as if I were a king to refuse him what he wanted if I pleased?  I would give him my life!”

“Ah, Frederick, you have!  It isn’t you that denies now—­think of that!  Remind him of it. Who spoke by the lot?  Where are you going, husband?”

Mr. Loretz had turned away from the piazza rail and picked up his hat.  His wife’s question arrested him.  “I—­I thought I would speak with Brother Wenck,” said he, somewhat confused by the question, and looking almost as if his sole purpose had been to go beyond the sound of his wife’s remonstrating voice.