"No, you must not scold him, for Lippo did right in putting his things in order before taking a walk," said his mother, who had herself given him that injunction.

"Bravo, my G.o.d-son! I taught you that, but now we must start," said the uncle, extending his hand to the little boy. "Where shall we go?"

"Up to the castle," Kurt quickly suggested. Everybody was satisfied with the plan and the mother a.s.sented eagerly, as she had intended the same thing.

"We shall go up towards the castle hill," the uncle remarked as he set out after taking the two little ones by the hand. "We shall have to go around the castle, won't we? If cross Mr. Trius is keeping watch, we won't get very close to it, because the property is fenced in for a long way around."

"Oh, we can go up on the road to the entrance," said Kurt with animation.

"We can look into the garden from there, but everything is overgrown. On the right is a wooden fence which we can easily climb. From there we can run all the way up through the meadows to a thick hawthorn hedge; on the other side of that begin the bushes and behind that the woods with the old fir and pine trees, but we can't climb over it. We could easily enough get to the castle from the woods."

"You seem to have a very minute knowledge of the place," said the uncle.

"What does Mr. Trius say to the climbing of hedges? In the meadows there are beautiful apple-trees as far as I remember."

"He beats everybody he can catch," was Kurt's information, "even if they have no intention of taking the apples. Whenever he sees anyone in the neighborhood of the hedge, he begins to strike out at them."

"His intention is probably to show everybody who tries to nose around that the fences are not to be climbed. Let us wait for your mother, who knows all the little ways. She will tell us where to go."

Uncle Philip glanced back for his sister, who had remained behind with Mea and Bruno. While the uncle was amusing the younger ones, the two others were eagerly talking over their special problems with her, so that they got ahead very slowly.

"To which side shall we go now? As you know the way so well, please tell us where to go," said the uncle when the three had approached.

The mother replied that Uncle Philip knew the paths as well as she, if not even better. As long as the decision lay with her, however, she chose the height to the left from which there was a clear view of the castle.

"Then we'll pa.s.s by Apollonie's cottage," said Kurt. "I am glad! Then we can see what Loneli is doing after yesterday's trouble. She is the nicest child in school."

"Let us go there," the uncle a.s.sented. "I shall be glad to see my old friend Apollonie again! March ahead now!"

They had soon reached the cottage at the foot of the hill, which lay bathed in brilliant sunshine. Only the old apple-tree in the corner threw a shadow over the wooden bench beneath it and over a part of the little garden. Grandmother and grandchild were sitting on the bench dressed in their Sunday-best and with a book on their knees. A delicious perfume of rosemary and mignonette filled the air from the little flower-beds. Uncle Philip looked over the top of the hedge into the garden.

"Real Sunday peace is resting on everything here. Just look, Maxa!" he called out to his sister. "Look at the rose-hushes and the mignonette!

How pleasant and charming Apollonie looks in her spotless cap and shining ap.r.o.n with the apple-cheeked child beside her in her pretty dress!"

Loneli had just noticed her best friends and, jumping up from the bench, she ran to them.

Apollonie, glancing up, now recognized the company, too. Radiant, she approached and invited them to step into her garden for a rest. She was already opening the door in order to fetch out enough chairs and benches to seat them all when Mrs. Maxa stopped her. She told Apollonie that their time was already very short, as they intended to climb the hill, but they had wished to greet her on their way up and to see her well-ordered garden.

"How attractively it is laid out, Mrs. Apollonie!" Uncle Philip exclaimed. "This small s.p.a.ce is as lovely as the large castle-garden used to be. Your roses and mignonette, the cabbage, beans and beets, the little fountain in the corner are so charming! Your bench under the apple-tree looks most inviting."

"Oh, Mr. Falcon, you are still as fond of joking as ever," Apollonie returned. "So you think that my rose-beds are as fine as those up there used to be? Indeed, who has ever seen the like of them or of my wonderful vegetable garden in the castle-grounds? There has never been such an abundance of cauliflower and peas, such rows of bean-poles, such salad-beds. What a delight their care was to me. Such a garden will never be seen again. I have to sigh every time when I think that anything so beautiful should be forever lost."

"But that can't be helped," Uncle Philip answered. "There is one great advantage you have here. n.o.body can possibly disturb your Sunday peace.

You need not throw up your hands and exclaim: 'Falcon is the worst of all.'"

"Oh, Mr. Falcon, so you still remember," Apollonie exclaimed. "Yes, I must admit that the three young gentlemen have trampled down many a young plant of mine. Still I should not mind such a thing if I only had the care of the garden back again, but it doesn't even exist any more. Mr.

Trius's only harvest is hay and apples, and that is all he wants apparently, because he has thrown everything else out. Please do not think that I am swimming in pure peace here because no boys are stamping down my garden. Oh, no! It is very difficult to read my Sunday psalm in peace when I am given such a bitter soup of grief to swallow as I got yesterday. It keeps on burning me, and still I have to swallow it."

"You probably mean the Knippel-soup from yesterday?" Kurt interrupted, full of lively interest. Loneli had only just told him that things had gone very badly the day before when she had returned home all soiled from her fall and with the empty milk-bottle. So he felt more indignant than before and had immediately interpreted Apollonie's hint. "I want to tell you, Apollonie, that it was not Loneli's fault in the least. Those rascals enjoy 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 ma.s.ses 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. Mazli, 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.

Mazli 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."