Willy was still his mother’s only child.  He was nearly six years old, not very tall for his age, but a fine, handsome, thoroughly healthy child, with firm legs, a blooming complexion, the dark eyes of his grandmother, and long fair curls.  He was charmingly dressed in a sailor suit with a broad turned-back collar over a blue-and-white striped jersey, long black stockings, and pretty little patent leather shoes with silk ties.  Wilhelm lifted up this young prince, kissing him, and asked, “Well, Willy, do you remember me?” He had not seen, him for eighteen months.

“Of course, I do, uncle, we talk about you every day,” cried the child in his clear voice.  “Are you going to stay with us now?”

“Yes, that he is!” his father answered for the friend.

“How jolly! how jolly!” cried Willy, clapping his hands with glee.  “And you will teach me to ride, won’t you, uncle?  Papa has no time.”

“But I don’t know how to ride myself,” returned Wilhelm with a smile.

Willy looked up disappointed.  “What can you do then?”

“Be a good boy now,” Malvine broke in, “and leave uncle in peace and go back to the nursery.  You shall have him again later on.”

After more kisses and caresses Willy ran off, and Paul led his guest to the room prepared for him, where at last he left him to himself.

Wilhelm had visited Paul on his estate during the preceeding summer, but since then had only seen him in Berlin.  The house on the Uhlenhorst was new to him, and he marveled at the solid sumptuousness that met the eye at every turn.  The visitor’s room was not less splendidly furnished than the smoking and breakfast rooms he had already seen, and when he looked about him at the great carved bedstead with its ample draperies, the silk damask-covered chairs, the thick rugs, the marble washstand, and the toilet table with its array of bottles and dishes of china, cut glass, and silver, he could not help feeling almost abashed.  His friend Paul had become a very great gentleman apparently!

And so in point of fact he had.  The Friesenmoor had proved itself a very gold mine, and in the district round about they calculated that it yielded a clear return of a hundred or a hundred and twenty thousand marks a year.  Paul had long ago been in a position to make use of his right of purchase on the estate, and had acquired about two thousand acres of adjoining marsh lands beside, though at a considerably higher price, and was now the owner of a well-rounded estate of twelve thousand acres, the admiration and pride of the whole neighborhood.  He had converted the cultivation of the marshland, which six years ago had been but a bold theory, into an established scientific fact, and his methods, the excellence of which was amply proved by his almost tropically luxuriant harvests and uninterruptedly increasing wealth, were assiduously imitated on all sides.  Paul Haber was acknowledged far and wide to be the first authority on the management