Kester closed his eyes to intensify the
expression of resignation he had thrown into his
countenance, and repeated, nodding his head
gently up and down, "Mad with the spirit of
contradiction. I can't call it anything else but
madness. Look at the case. Here's a girl
carrying on all manner of moonshine with a
young fellow who's not worth a kreuzer in the
world. I say nothing against him, but he's as
poor as Job. Her father objects to the moonshine,
and exerts himself to find her a husband
worth having in every respect. The man is
found, comes forward in a thoroughly satisfactory
way, and offers to the girl. The girl tells
her anxious father, of her own free will, that
she will accept the offer—an offer, mind you,
which any other lass in Gossau, or for twenty
leagues about, would go down on her knees
and thank Heaven for—and then, in the
next breath, turns round and declares she
can never, never consent to marry him. Her
father is naturally angry and disappointed, but,
being a fond parent, is beginning to forgive her,
and even to be reconciled to the idea of letting
her choose for herself, when—piff, paff!—one
fine day she informs him that she has quarrelled
desperately with lover number one, that she can
on no account be induced to think of him any
more, and has sent him packing in the footsteps
of lover number two. This is another trial to
a father's feelings, but it isn't the worst yet.
No sooner does lover number one, who has
hitherto borne a high character, get into a
scrape—no sooner, in short, does he lie under
suspicion of theft and breach of trust—than my
fräulein, who professed before not to care a
snap of the finger for him, coolly cuts off her
beautiful hair, that there isn't the like of in the
district, and sends him the price of it to help
pay his forfeit! I tell you what, my wench,
you've only made one mistake after all.
Instead of shearing your head, you ought to have
shaved it!" Kester had talked himself almost
into a good humour by this time, and repeated,
complacently, with his eyes still shut and his
head thrown back, "Shaved it. Yes, that's
what you ought to have done."

Kätchen took all this with unwonted meekness,
and busied herself silently in attending to
the household duties, which fell heavily on her
shoulders in the absence of Liese. But what
helped her to be patient, and even cheerful, was
the hope, almost amounting to certainty, that
now Fritz's character would come out spotless
from the investigations which were being made.
"Not," said Kätchen to herself "not that any
one who knows him could ever suspect him of
a dishonest action, but I want all the world to
be convinced that his conscience is as clear in
this matter as the sun at noonday."

The course of justice is proverbially tardy,
and she puts on no special shoes of swiftness
in the Austrian empire. It was therefore a
long time before the legal proceedings necessitated
by Laurier's accusation against Liese and
the Amsels resulted in the disclosure of any
important facts. The strongest circumstance
against Heinrich Amsel was the discovery of
some fragments of a box, with a broken lock
adhering to them, hidden under a heap of pine-
chips in the saw-mills. The lock had evidently
resisted the clumsy attempts made to pick it,
and the box had been smashed to pieces with
some blunt instrument. A broken woodman's
axe was found near the fragments, but could
not be proved to have belonged to Heinrich
Amsel. As regards this man, it may as well be
stated at once that he was traced as far as Hamburg,
where it was supposed he got on board an
emigrant ship bound for the United States, the
sum of ready money contained in the dressing-
case having doubtless facilitated his escape. The
two women, Lotte and Liese, though more than
suspected of complicity in the robbery, were
finally released, it having been found impossible
to elicit any evidence which should amount to
legal proof of their guilt. Liese persisted, with
dogged obstinacy, in denying all knowledge of
the loosened cord, which she was strongly
suspected to have purposely untied when packing
the boxes on the cart. She also aroused much
popular indignation by throwing out stupidly
malevolent hints that Fritz Rosenheim, and he
alone, was the culprit. As soon as she was set
at liberty, she went away, no one knew whither,
with old Lotte Amsel. Some conjectured that
they had gone to join Heinrich in America;
others supposed them to have made their way
to Vienna, where Liese had relatives, not of the
most reputable character. However that may
have been, it is certain that they disappeared
from Gossau, and were heard of there no more.

Fritz Rosenheim's conduct in the affair had
won the warm approbation of the owners of the
lost dressing-case. And as soon as the
circumstances brought to light on the trial were made
known to them, they not only restored to Fritz
the sum he had insisted on paying to them as
the first instalment of the full value of their
property, but made him a handsome present
into the bargain. But all this, even the
preservation of his good name, which was dear to
Fritz's honest pride, gave him not one half
the joy that filled his heart on learning, as he
did from Laurier, the name of the anonymous
friend who had forwarded him two hundred
francs in Austrian notes.

"I couldn't for the life of me puzzle out who
it could be," said he, "but at last I guessed it
might possibly be Herr Ebner. He was always
very kind to me, and I knew him to be a good
charitable man. Still, of course, I thought it
strange. And I resolved to ask him point
blank. Because, of course, I meant to scrape
and strive to pay it all back, some day. But to
think of it's being my Kätchen! The darling!
And her pretty precious golden hair that was
worth more than all the money that ever was
coined—just to think of the little angel cutting
it all off for my sake! There never was anybody
in the world like her, and I feel as if I
wasn't worthy to fasten her shoe-tie."

However, for as modest as he was, Fritz in
course of time screwed up his courage to the