Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/46

36 "Oh dear," thought Margaret, "he is certainly crazy. That was what he was talking about last night. Poor fellow!"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Reutner," she replied. "Four-leaved clovers are very common. I have often found whole handfuls of them."

"I thought you had. And have you ever one dream at night that you find the hands full of them, and give them to some one?"

Margaret looked puzzled, and was about to reply, when Wilhelm and the children entered the room. Karl laid a little folded paper, which he had held in his hand, back into the pocket-book, and opened his arms to the children, who sprang into them, and covered him with kisses until he was forced to cry out for mercy.

All day long Margaret was haunted by the words, and the voice in which they were spoken, "Have you ever found one four leaf of clover?" "What could he have meant?" she thought. "He does not seem in the least like a crazy man. I wonder what he had in that paper;" and more than once, the scholars received irrelevant answers to their questions, because their beautiful teacher's thoughts were full of this perplexing memory.

That night the mystery was cleared up. After the children had gone to bed, Karl told the story of the four-leaved clover, and took from his pocket book the little relic leaf. Wilhelm took it in his hands, and looked at it with stern eyes.