dark timber road and into the open.

t the sight of the gallant figure that had scarce been out of her mind all week,
she stopped, frightened at the
import of the moment, her hand at her throat as though she must stifle the call of
her heart to him. With no
word Matthias dismounted, threw. Trixie's bridle-reins ever a seruk eak and with
open arms walked toward the
girl. With no word Amalia, trembling, waited for him to come. It was not until his
arms closed around her and
he had kissed her--and even for a long moment afterward--that a word was spaken. "I
have thought of you
every moment." His Leice check with emetien. "And I of you." "You must break your
betrothal, Amalia." "At
this moment it is broken, Matthias." "This..." said Matthias after a time,"is what
love is." "Yes," said Amalia, "I
know now. Al week I have known." "And when the homesteaders ge you will stay with
me? My uncle is old. In
time I shall be able to buy the foundry from him. It is not my choice of
businesses. I have been restless in it,
but with you to be there with me, I shall settle down and like it better." "I will
stay, Matthias. I fear for the trouble
it will make, but I will stay." Ind you do not think it wicked, then, to marry
outside the church?" he teased her.
"De I seem non such a heathen... such a monster?" But when he saw how troubled it
made her, he drew her
to him again with comforting words, calling her his kleine Taube, -- "little dove"
in the English. The afternoon
slipped away as they talked of this new-old thing that had came to them. "Spring!
It seems that this spring
belongs just to us, and to na ather," Amalia said once. "But they will keep coming,
little dove. Think of it. They
will ALL be ours. All our lives we'll live them over and over together... this same
feel in the air ... the odors of
the woods... the wild geese hanking..."
"Even when we grew very old..." Matthias laughed at that. How could youth grow old?
"I shall hold you close
then, just as I do now, and say: 'It's spring again, Amalia! They keep caming."
"And I shall say: "They will go
on... forever... even though we grow old... and after." But there were other things
besides these
sentimental generalities to discuss, so that they must put an end to their first
rapturous moments, sit down on
the log and speak of the seriousness of the future. Matthias would have gone
immediately to the home but
Amalia would not hear of it. "Not to-day--" she begged him. "It is so beautiful.
For when that time comes, we
shall have anger and harsh warda. No, Matthias, give me my perfect day." And
because she would have it so
he did not go in to confront her father, but left her there in the clearing until
he should come again. On the
next Sunday there came a dash of warm rain as he rede into the clearing, and at
once he saw her in the
dearway of the sheep-shelter, a headed gossamer abaut her shoulders. He had brought
her a gift, - - a little
work-box covered with shells -- angel-wings and moon shells, Roman snails, and
other fragile fan- like shells
of a sea they had never seen. On the under side of the cover a mirror fitted into
the blue silk lining and in the
various compartments were a needle - ball and a pin-cushion and a tiny silver
thimble. Amalia, to whom gifts
were rare, was quite beside herself with joy at the daintiness of the treasure.
Almost were the strange queer
shells cymbalie to her of things to come, -- unknown journeys with Matthias to far-
off seas, hearing the sound
of wind in whipping sails and the call of the gulls on the sand. But when Matthias
would have gone in to see
her father, she put him off again. She had meant to break the news, she told him,
but always when she was
about to speak, her courage had failed her. If he would give her but another week,
she would prepare him for
the announcement which would so anger him.
Of one thing she was certain, it must come first from her own lips. But on the
following Sunday when he
arrived there was no question about Matthias interviewing the father this time, for
Wilhelm Stoltz was axlay: --
gene ta one of the church friend's home many miles up the river. It gave Amalia a
delicious sense of freedom
so that she was a gay as a child. She had a wonderful piece of news for him, --she
had wed the thimble and
ane of the needles. Already she had started a quilt. -- the Tree of Life pattern,
--Baum des Lebens. Even now
two finished blocks were in the shell box: "Ever since I was a tiny girl I have
sened," she said to him. "It comes
very easy to me. Many times I have made things for my hepe cheet" - -hoffnung
Kicte, she called it--"knewing
I must some day wed but not knowing who the man would be. When I knew it was but my
father's friend
Herman..." She sighed, so that Matthias' arms went around her again and he drew her
close. "But it will be
no Herman now..." (kleine Taube)... "little dove." "No... never. And this is so
different ... to think of you as I
send." But even while she clung to him she told him this: "I wake in the night and
think of this which I am doing
contrary to my father's wishes. I feel then that I am wicked... but when morning
comes I know that it is not
wicked at all... just happiness and right." And when Matthias said nothing could
come between them nond,
she confessed: "Of that I am sure ... and yet I am sad to part from my young
brother Fritz. That is my greatest
sorrow. As far leaving our good people ... they will all be angry and hurt..." But
Matthias turned that away with
lover-like speed. "When they know how much we love cach, other... they will see
that it could not be
otherwise." Of such are the simple rules of youth. "But my father has so often said
only vice comes to those