engaged. The respective mothers had looked on also-Frau Mässinger with her keen shrewd eyes, and Frau Dreuser with easy, complacent satisfaction; they had already settled the marriage treaty like two skilful diplomatists, and they were not sorry at this small revelation of what was to be. But Heinrich never cared for Marie, never loved her with his heart, and now and then, when he heard her talked of as is future bride, he rather ridiculed the notion, and if it did ever come into his mind that it might be, it was not because he loved her, but because Dreuser's Marie was known to have guldens, and cows and land, and had been brought up thriftily and well, and could cook and bake and churn, and do all that a girl ought to do; and this was all that many a man looked for.

But love that is out of the question in peasant life in Germany.

Then Rosa had come to work at the Mill. She was only a servant; truly, in its fullest sense a maid of all work. There was corn

to be threshed, and Rosa was sure to be found with the threshers in the barn. The grass in the meadow was to be mown, and Rosa was at work there with her short scythe and whetstone from morning till night. The waggon had to be loaded from the muck-heap, and Rosa stood with her bare feet on the inodoriferous heap, and hurled it with her pitchfork into the waggon. It was the work she was hired to do, and Frau Mässinger rated her in her harsh high voice when it was not done. But she did work also that she had not been hired to do; a silent secret work, that no one, not even herself, was conscious of-she took Heinrich's heart by storm.

She had used none of the arts that the rich peasant girls of the valley would have employed; she had no thought of winning Heinrich's affection; possibly it was just this that had made her all the more dangerous. In her lonely weary working life, she found one, and only one, who now and then gave her a pleasant smile, and instead of goading

her, helped her. Rosa was grateful for the help, but she was still more grateful for the smile. She had had a mother once, a mother just as poor as herself; but her mother had loved her, and this was all the love that Rosa had ever known. Since her mother had died, things had gone worse and worse with her. Her tender, clinging nature had found nothing to cling to; nothing round which it could twine its affections and rest. She grew angry and bitter against the world; the tenderest hearts, being those most easily wounded, are generally the bitterest in their disappointment; and Rosa, driven, and goaded, and scolded at Frau Mässinger's, felt herself, before long, at enmity with all the world.

He

With all the world but Heinrich. smiled at her, and she gave him stolen, faint smiles back again. No one knows how love grows, but it does grow; there was scarcely a word exchanged between them, and yet Rosa felt secretly glad when her work associated her with Heinrich, and Heinrich

sometimes felt his heart thrill with pleasure when he found her in the field.

There was a sense of protection to Rosa in being near Heinrich; Frau Mässinger was less exacting, and Rosa, perhaps, did her work the better.

Matters would probably have gone on in this way, and Heinrich, though he liked the girl, would have danced at the next Kirchweih with Marie Dreuser, and the two mothers would have carried their point, but that the germ of pity, which is akin to love, began to take root and to expand. Probably, if Frau Mässinger had bullied Rosa less, Heinrich would have let her pass unnoticed, as he had done dozens before her. Rosa was just the girl to be Frau Mässinger's victim. She could not endure her delicate appearance and slim figure; it seemed like a constant reproach to herself as she urged her to work, and Rosa was a little too refined and too pretty to suit Frau Mässinger's notions. So Frau Mässinger scolded, and Rosa cried, sulked, and rebelled by

But

turns. The rebellion would have had but little effect on Heinrich, and the sulking would probably have merely excited amusement, but Heinrich could not look on un moved and see a pretty girl crying.

What is the matter?' he said one night in a tone softer and kinder than Rosa seemed ever to have heard before. He had found her in the barn crying bitterly.

'The Frau is angry with me; it's no use trying. I have worked so hard, much harder than ever before, and she is always still unsatisfied. I am so miserable; I wish I had died when mother died.'

'Don't say that,' interposed Heinrich; 'mother gets cross; you see, she works so hard herself, and she thinks everyone else must do so too; but she has a good heart, and she wouldn't like you to cry.'

'I am so miserable,' repeated Rosa, 'I will go away; but I don't know where to go; I have no one to love me, and I don't care for anyone in the world.'

'Rosa!' said the same soft manly voice.

F