Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/11



ERGEANT KARL REUTNER had never found a four-leaved clover. He had often looked for them—at home in Bavaria, in the green meadows at the foot of the giant glacier Watzman, and in America, on the sunny prairies of Illinois. But he had never found one. "It is luck; I shall not have luck before I find the four leaf of clover," he had said, half jesting, many a time, to himself or to gay comrades. And in his secret heart he was not without a shadow of superstition about it. It had again and again happened that some one by his side had stooped and picked a four-leaved clover, upon which he was just on the point of treading, while his eyes were searching eagerly for it. It did seem as if Karl could never see the magic little leaf, and why should this not mean some thing? Whence came the world-wide belief in the spell, if it were merely an idle fancy?

But now Karl Reutner was to find his four