told me. But come now, we have forgotten our little Bettina. She must at once go to bed. It is late enough, goodness knows."

Then she unpinned Bettina's shawl and shook out the damp.

"Good-night, dear father," she kissed the old man tenderly, "sleep well, and I'll call you in time in the morning. Oh, the sausage is from Gretchen? Many thanks and good-night. Come, come, Bettina," and she started towards her own room.

Her father proceeded in the opposite direction. On the threshold of a second door he paused.

"Annchen," he called, for his daughter had departed.

"Ja, father," she came back to her door holding Bettina by the hand.

"He called our generals 'old wigs,' 'old wigs,' did you understand, daughter? The generals of the Great Frederick's army, and he, an upstart villain of a Corsican. Old wigs, indeed! Let him wait, the monster, we'll show him, we'll show him."

With a last good-night the old soldier of Frederick the Great departed to snore away under his feather bed quite the same as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER II

THE ANGEL OF PRUSSIA

Next morning Frau Weyland called Bettina early.

"Good-morning, dear child," she said, kissing her round little cheek. "Grandfather must go far into the forest. Would you like to go with him? You may have a little basket like a wood gatherer and bring mother back some faggots."

Bettina was glad, indeed, to get up. She had had a dreadful time. All night long it had seemed to her that the awful Emperor was always trying to catch her, and then she would wake with a start. Sometimes he had a long, red beard, sometimes he was draped in grey mist and wore a golden crown; and always he was riding the white horse.

Her mother looked at her kindly.

"If you are tired, dear," she began, but Bettina was eager to go.

"Nein, nein, dear mother," she cried, "I love to go with grandfather."

So she hurried on her clothes and drank her milk and ate her bread and said "Auf wiedersehen" to her mother. Then she started off with her grandfather. Frau Weyland stood in the door and watched them, waving her hand and smiling.

She was very pretty. When she was sixteen, and only just betrothed to Kaspar Weyland, people said she was like the "Lorelei," the maiden who sits on a rock in the Rhine and sings songs to enchant the boatmen, all the time combing her golden hair and gazing in a jewelled mirror.

And she was so good to old Hans, and never cross with Bettina, and always the meals were hot and ready, and the house clean and quiet. About the doorway grew a vine and October had brought the frost and turned it crimson. It fell all about her like a frame as she stood there, so gentle and smiling. It was foggy still, but there was a light in the sky before which the mist must soon vanish. When they reached the gate Hans turned for a last "Auf wiedersehen" to his Annchen.

"Till we meet again" it means, and little did old

Hans think as he waved his hand to his daughter that never in all the world was he ever to hear his golden-haired Anna again. How could he? What could happen? She was never so well in all her life, and he and Bettina would return to dinner. So gaily he and the little girl entered the forest and presently, through the fog, they saw a great red ball of a sun which grew brighter and brighter.

As for Frau Weyland, she returned to her work. There was much to do with two children to wash and dress, a house to clean, chickens to feed, cream cheese to make, and dinner to prepare for the family.

The daylight showed Hans to be tall and strong with broad shoulders and the walk of a soldier. His grey hair was drawn back and tied in a queue, and on one ruddy cheek was a scar from a sabre cut. Hans was very proud of this, because he had won it in one of the battles of the Great Frederick. His eyes were like his daughter's and like Bettina's, very blue, and very big, and gleaming with gentleness. But in Hans' eyes there was something different. At once were they merry and full of dreams as if he could joke and yet be, also, very melancholy.

As for Bettina, she was a little fairy of a girl who tripped along and seemed barely to touch the ground. Her hair was golden and hung in two tight little braids to her waist. Her dress was of red and made very high under her arms and clinging about her little ankles. Her head was quite bare, and a deep little wicker basket was strapped on her back in which to bring home some pine cones or scrub oak leaves for the goat.

"I'm a wood gatherer, grandfather," she pretended, and tripped along behind him.

She loved her grandfather. He told such nice stories and never was cross like her grandfather Weyland, who always said children should be seen, not heard, and in an entirely different tone from the pleasant one he used with grown people.

"I love the forest, grandfather." Bettina's eyes sparkled.

"Ja, ja, little one," said Hans, "it is German to love all Nature, and, truly, our forest is beautiful."

Bettina nodded and gazed about at the tall giant-like pines and her little nose drew in the deep fragrance of the firs. She was glad that she did not live in Jena, but deep in this lovely Thuringian wood, where the trunks of the trees looked like armies of soldiers. There were lovely things in the forest.

In its thick, pine-needle carpet grew lovely toadstools, red and yellow and brown, and sometimes all queerly shaped and striped and just like umbrellas and parasols. And the moss was thick and grew like a velvet carpet and raised up the dearest little red cups, and the ferns waved like feathers, and, in spring, there were the lilies of the valley which rang tiny white bells for the fairies to come and dance round the gay little toadstools. And, later, there were the Canterbury bells, so lovely and purple. And, in and out the trees, ran great, bushy-tailed red squirrels who peeped at her with eyes bright and sparkling, and sometimes she saw little companies of deer and tiny fawns with their mothers, and their eyes were like "Little Brother" in the fairy tale, for it was in these very forests that some of the witches once lived, and the fairies in "Grimm," and many of the people of the German stories.

Bettina knew that the fairies slept on the moss and danced under the toadstools, only it was strange that she never had seen them, nor had her mother, nor her father, nor her grandfather, nor Willy.

But they were there. All the stories said so.

"Do you think, grandfather," she asked, "that 'Little Brother' really was turned into a fawn?"

"Who can tell, Kindlein?" answered old Hans, but his mind was on other things than Bettina and her fairy tales.

"Hard times! hard times!" he muttered. "Always war somewhere, and what then for poor people? Work! Work! Work!"

Bettina was too small to understand, but, certainly, affairs were gloomy.

The King of Prussia had declared war upon the Emperor of the French; the Duke of Weimar, ruler of the forest they were walking through and friend of the great poet, Goethe, had joined the king as his ally. And now soldiers were round about and everywhere.

Soldiers were nothing new to Bettina. She had seen them all her life. But the Emperor of the French! That was another thing, and an awful one. She shuddered as her grandfather muttered his name.

He was a dreadful man. Her mother always said so. At the mention of his name every child in Germany behaved itself. And to think that she, Bettina Weyland, had seen this monster on the white horse everybody talked so about.

Remembering the night before, Bettina trembled. Then, too, it seemed to her that she kept hearing a queer sound of roaring—not loud, but far away towards Jena, a rumble which frightened her.

But old Hans seemed to hear nothing. His mind, as old minds will, had travelled into the past and he had forgotten the Thuringian Wood, the bright-eyed red squirrels, the deer,