Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/34

24 when he was shot. Wilhelm read the letter aloud, without a tear or a sob, and said, turning to Margaret, "You see the brother's knowledge was more sure than the stranger's. I knew in that first second that my Karl was gone."

A black ribbon was twined in the evergreen wreath on Karl's violin, a wreath of white immortelles put around Karl's picture on the wall, and the little, grief-stricken household went on with its daily life, brave and resigned. But Wilhelm Reutner's face was altered from that day; night after night the little children gazed wistfully into his eyes, missing the joyous look from his smile and the merry ring from his voice. Night after night poor Annette had cried as she had cried on the night when the sad news came, "Liebling, thou hast the little ones and thou hast me: do not die for the love of Karl." And Wilhelm answered, "Be patient, I had not thought it could be so hard. The good God will make it easier, in time. It must be that the twin bond is strong after death as it is before birth. I feel my Karl all the while more near than when he was alive."

On the wall of Karl's room, now Margaret's, there hung an oval picture of the beautiful Königsee Lake in Bavaria. On the margin of the print was drawn, in rough crayon, a girl's head. It was a spirited drawing, and the head had great beauty. Around the picture was a wreath of edelweiss. Annette had told Margaret that this head was the