sticking out their feet and seeing people tumble over them."

"The child can't possibly have behaved properly, Kurt, or the district attorney's sons would not have teased her."

"I'll fetch Bruno right away and he'll prove to you that Loneli did nothing whatever. He saw it," Kurt cried eagerly with the intention of fetching his brother, who had already started up the hill. But his mother detained him. It was not her wish to fan Bruno's rage afresh by the discovery that Loneli had been considered guilty. She therefore narrated the incident to Apollonie just as Bruno had reported it.

Loneli's blue eyes glistened with joy when the story was told according to the truth. She knew that the words spoken by the rector's widow had great weight with her grandmother.

"Can you see now that it was not Loneli's fault?" Kurt cried out as soon as his mother had finished.

"Yes, I see it and I am happy that it is so," said Apollonie. "How could one have suspected that boys who had a good education should want to hurt others without cause? The young Falcon would never have done such a thing, I know that. He only ran into the vegetable garden because his two friends were chasing him from both sides."

Uncle Philip laughed: "I am glad you are so just to me, Mrs. Apollonie. Even when you scolded the Falcon properly for tramping down your plants, you knew that it was not in maliciousness he did it but in self-defence. I am afraid it is time to go now" and with these words he heartily shook his old acquaintance by the hand. The two little ones, who had never left his side, were ready immediately to strike out once more.

They soon reached the hill and the castle, which was bathed in the soft evening light, lay openly before them. A hushed silence reigned about the gray building and the old pine trees under the tower, whose branches lay trailing on the ground. For years no human hand had touched them. Where the blooming garden had been wild bushes and weeds covered the ground.

The mother and uncle, settling down on a tree-trunk, looked in silence towards the castle, while the children were hunting for strawberries on the sunny incline.

"How terribly deserted and lonely it all looks," Uncle Philip said after a while. "Let us go back. When the sun is gone, it will get more dreary still."

"Don't you notice anything, Philip?" asked his sister, taken up with her own thoughts. "Can you see that all the shutters are closed except those on the tower balcony? Don't you remember who used to live there?"

"Certainly I do. Mad Bruno used to live there," the brother answered. "As his rooms alone seem to be kept in order, he might come back?"

"Why, he'll never come back," Uncle Philip exclaimed. "You know that we heard ages ago that he is an entirely broken man and that he lay deadly sick in Malaga. Mr. Tillman, who went to Spain, must certainly know about it. Restless Baron Bruno has probably found his last resting-place long ago. Why should you look for him here?"

"I only think that in that case a new owner of the place would have turned up by now," was his sister's opinion. "Two young members of the family, the children of Salo and Eleanor, are still alive. I wonder where these children are. They would be the sole owners after their uncle's death."

"They have long ago been disinherited," the brother exclaimed. "I do not know where they are, but I have an idea on that subject. I shall tell you about it to-night when we are alone. Here you are so absent-minded. You throw worried looks in all directions as if you were afraid that this perfectly solid meadow were a dangerous pond into which your little brood might fall and lose their lives."

The children had scattered in all directions. Bruno had gone far to one side and was deeply immersed in a little book he had taken with him. Mea had discovered the most beautiful forget-me-nots she had ever seen in all her life, which grew in large masses beside the gurgling mountain stream. Beside herself with transport, she flew from place to place where the small blue flowers sparkled, for she wanted to pick them all.

Kurt had climbed a tree and from the highest branch he could reach was searchingly studying the castle, as if something special was to be discovered there. Mäzli, having discovered some strawberries, had pulled Lippo along with her. She wanted him to pick those she had found while she hunted for more in the meantime. The mother was very busy keeping an eye on them all. Kurt might become too daring in his climbing feats. Mäzli might run away too far and Lippo might put his strawberries into his trousers-pocket as he had done once already, and cause great harm to his little Sunday suit.

"You fuss and worry too much about the children," Uncle Philip said. "Just let the children simply grow, saying to them once in a while, 'If you don't behave, you'll be locked up.'"

"Yes, that certainly sounds simple," said his sister. "It is a pity you have no brood of your own to bring up, Philip, as lively as mine, and each child entirely different from the others, so that one has to be urged to a thing that another has to be kept from. I get the cares without looking for them. A new great worry has come to me to-day, which even you won't be able to just push aside."

Mrs. Maxa told her brother now about the morning's interview with the wife of the district attorney. She told him of the problem she had with Bruno's further education, because the lessons he had been having from the Rector would end in the fall, and of her firm intention of keeping him from living together with his two present comrades. The three had never yet come together without bringing as a result some mean deed on one side and an explosion of rage on the other.

"Don't you think, Philip, that it will be a great care for me to think that the three are living under one roof? Don't you think so yourself?" Mrs. Maxa concluded.

"Oh, Maxa, that is an old story. There have been boys at all times who fought together and then made peace again."

"Philip, that does not console me," the sister answered. "That has never been Bruno's way at all. He never fights that way. But it is hard to tell what he might do in a fit of anger at some injustice or meanness, and that is what frightens me so."

"His godfather of the same name has probably passed that on to him. Nobody more than you, Maxa, has always tried to wash him clean and excuse him for all his deeds of anger. In your indestructible admiration ..."

Uncle Philip got no further, as all the children now came running toward them. The two little ones both tried hard to put the biggest strawberries they had found into the mouths of their mother and uncle. Mea could not hold her magnificent bunch of forget-me-nots near enough to their eyes to be admired. The two older boys had approached, too, as they had an announcement to make. The sun had gone down behind the mountain, so they had remembered that it was time to go home.

Mother and uncle rose from their seats and the whole group started down the mountainside. The two little ones were gaily trotting beside the uncle, bursting into wild shouting now and then, for he made such leaps that they flew high into the air sometimes. He held them so firmly, however, that they always reached the ground safely.

At the entrance to the house Kurt had a brilliant idea. "Oh, mother," he called out excitedly over the prospect, "tonight we must have the story of the Wallerstätten family. It will fit so well because we were able to see the castle today, with all its gables, embrasures and battlements."

But the mother answered: "I am sorry to say we can't. Uncle is here today, and as he has to leave early tomorrow morning, I have to talk to him tonight. You have to go to bed early, otherwise you will be too tired to get up tomorrow after your long walk."

"Oh, what a shame, what a shame!" Kurt lamented. He was still hoping that he would find out something in the story about the ghost of Wildenstein, despite the fact