Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/19

Rh into his hand. Now that he was better, he kept it carefully in the inner compartment of his pocket-book, and rarely took it out. It was enough to look in and see that it was safe.

Karl's only relatives in this country were a brother and sister who lived in Chicago. The brother was a manufacturer of fringes, buttons, and small trimmings, and the sister had married an engraver, also a German. They were industrious working-people, preserving in their new homes all the simple-hearted ways of their life in the old world. When Karl was drafted for the war, they had tried in vain to induce him to let them put their little savings together to buy a substitute for him. "No, no, I will not have it," he said; "my life is no more than another man's life that it should be saved. There are brothers and sisters to all. I have no wife; it is the men without wives that must go to fight." On these two simple house holds the news from Gettysburg fell with crushing weight.

"Karl Reutner, killed;" only three words, and there were long columns of names with the same bitter word following them. But into few houses was carried greater sorrow than into these. Wilheim Reutner and Karl were twins. From their babyhood they had never been separated, had never disagreed. Together they had come to the new world to seek their fortunes; together they had slowly built up the business which their father had