Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/613

 sublime. He advised them to remain at Wiener-Neustadt, where he would procure them work, and a salary sufficient to supply their wants. He promised to do still more for them in the future; and he kept his word.

To-day, where the black rails wind beside the gleaming River Mour, in the midst of green pastures and forests of sweet-scented pine trees, where the castle of Ehrenhauser rears its lofty towers upon the hill which overlooks the village, there stands a pretty little cottage. Behind the house extends a field of vegetables and maize. Roses and great golden-petaled sunflowers bloom before the door. A hedge surrounds the whole, over which the sweet pea twines its delicate tendrils.

In this pretty cottage, whose gay exterior attracts the admiration of the passers-by, George and Tertschka dwell. Their work allows them ample leisure to cultivate their ground, to keep a goat and a brood of cackling fowls, and to bring up two chubby-cheeked, flaxen-haired children, who thrive amazingly behind the high hedge of sweet peas. In the evening they sit together before their cottage door, while the sunset dyes the sky with crimson flame; and their thoughts return to that well-remembered evening when first they saw each other upon the high summits of the Semmering, and to their past with all its suffering and its joys.

If these memories cast too sad a shadow on their minds they draw their laughing cherubs to their knees, and with the little, clinging arms around their necks, the silky hair against their cheeks, and the sweet innocent eyes regarding theirs, they forget, as if it were a dream, their past experience of the tears and sorrows which are the destined lot of every child of man.