A WELL-SPRING OF PLEASURE

They walked what seemed to the boys a long distance through the forest. The rain had ceased, and the moon was trying to shed its rays through thin clouds, but in the dense shade the only light was the little circle upon the moist earth, given by the small lantern.

After a time a voice cried, “Who goes there?”

“Hans Hartman, my good friend,” replied the forest-keeper.

“All right!” and another forest-keeper stood before them, much surprised to see seven instead of one.

“Have you captured poachers?”

“No, the older ones are gypsies,” for in the dim light of the cabin he was quite sure that they belonged to that army of rovers.

“Are we then so dark?” asked the basket-maker, amused at the mistake.

“All animals look dark at night.”

“Except a white cow,” suggested the butcher.

“But, Hartman, you have three boys with you,” continued the forest-keeper. “So young and yet night-strollers!”

“No, these boys are all right. They have been passing their holiday in Frankfort, and are on their way home. They got lost in the forest, the rain came up and they took shelter in the abandoned cabin. One of them tells me that he is the son of Forest-keeper Krupp.”

The forester said good-night, and they walked on for some distance and at length came to a clearing in the forest. Looking up, they could see the unchangeable stars, the same that looked down upon Mother Earth when she was fresh from the hands of her Creator. A tinkling brook lay across their path, which the forester cleared at a bound, and the three apprentices followed. The triplets halted to view the situation, but Pixy sprang across, then looked back as if to say, “It is nothing. Just give a spring and you are on this side,” and they ran back, gave a long jump and were over.

A short distance beyond was the forest-keeper’s cottage, a comfortable place for weary travelers on a wet night.

“I cannot give you all a sleeping place in my house,” he said, “but can make room for the three smaller boys. You larger ones can go to the straw shed. You will find plenty of clean, dry straw, and there you can sleep until morning and shall have a good breakfast before you leave. But before we part for the night, you must turn your pockets inside out that I may see that you have no matches or anything else that will strike a spark.”

They agreed willingly, and he then led the way to the shed, took from a feed box a number of coarse sacks for covering and said good-night.

“We are thankful to you for giving us this comfortable place to sleep,” said the blacksmith. “We thought it harsh treatment to make us leave the cabin, but you have given us better quarters and we are truly obliged to you. You are certainly good to us.”

“Yes, I try to be good to everybody, especially to hard-working boys out on their holiday, when I find that they are not common tramps who do not wish to work.”

He left the shed and the boys followed him to his dwelling, and to a room adjoining the living-room.

“There are two straw-beds on this bedstead,” he said. “One can be taken off and put on the floor, and one of you can sleep upon it, while the other two can have the one on the bedstead.”

“I will take the one on the floor. Then Pixy can sleep with me,” said Fritz.

“Suit yourselves about that, only take off your wet clothes, shoes and stockings, and my wife will put them about the kitchen fire, and they will be dry by morning.”

The boys hurriedly disrobed, and the forest-keeper bade them good-night, and left the room.

Paul and Franz crept jubilantly under the coverings of the bed, and Fritz was equally glad for the piece of carpet which the forest-keeper had given him in lieu of a quilt, and with Pixy close to him, he was happier than many a king.

“Oh, it was good luck for us that Mr. Hartman came and took us away from that miserable place,” exclaimed Paul the moment the door closed.

“I never was gladder in my life,” affirmed Franz. “Now we feel safe, and are dry and warm and in good beds where we can sleep well.”

“And whom have we to thank for it but the young gentleman from Odenwald my Pixy,” reminded Fritz. “If he had not barked, the forest-keeper would not have known we were there. Oh, we are so comfortable here, aren’t we, Pixy? And we have you to thank for it.”

Early the next morning the forester’s wife went to the kitchen to make the wood fire on the hearth brighter, that the boys’ garments might be thoroughly dry; for she had planned that they should sleep as long as they wished, and she would give the three apprentices their breakfast first that they might continue their journey. She made coffee and warm bread, and was putting them upon the table when she saw them come up from the brook, where they had washed hands and faces and combed their hair. Refreshed by rest and sleep, they looked much better than when the triplets first saw them.

The forest-keeper, who had risen early to attend to matters about the place, came in just as they finished their breakfast.

“I hope you slept well and have enjoyed your coffee,” he said kindly.

“We enjoyed both heartily, Forest-master, and thank you for your goodness to us.”

“Forest-master, you say? I am not that but only one of the keepers.”

“We would do you honor, which is our reason for calling you by that name.”

“But you do not honor one by giving him a higher title than he is entitled to. Instead it humiliates him, or he thinks you are making sport of him.”

“We did not mean it in either way, Mr. Hartman.”

“I believe you, so we will not say anything more about it.”

“Then, good-bye, Mr. Forester, and we thank you and your wife for your goodness to us. We will long remember that coffee. Tell the boys good-bye for us. They were afraid of us, but we meant them no harm. Good-bye! Good-bye!”

The forester’s wife now prepared breakfast for her husband and herself. The blazing fire upon the hearth was doing its duty in bringing the boys’ clothing to the state desired while they were sleeping the sleep of tired boyhood. They did not waken until near noon, but this would allow them to reach home before night; and they enjoyed their first meal of the day, arrayed in their dry and neatly-brushed garments, and refreshed by bathing their hands, faces and feet in the brook.

The day was bright and delightfully cool after the rain, and in fine spirits they bade the forest-keeper’s wife good-bye as they set out for home.

“Their parents will be rejoiced to see them,” she said to herself as she watched them out of sight, “for no doubt they have felt somewhat anxious about them, for they are young to be allowed to take a journey. How helpless are our children! A young chicken will search for food while part of its shell is clinging to it, and the young of animals are upon their feet and helping themselves in a few weeks; but not so our children. They must be under the tender care of father and mother until past childhood, and it is best so, for it binds parents and children in the ties of family life and love. May the dear boys reach home safely and find all well.”

The triplets had in the meantime nearly reached the main road to which they had been carefully directed by Mrs. Hartman, her husband having gone to his duties in the forest hours before. They were singing one of their school songs, when it occurred to Paul that something had been omitted.

“Oh, boys,” he said, “we have forgotten to thank the lady for her goodness to us. She dried and brushed our clothes and gave us a good breakfast, and tried to restore our hats to good shape after they had been soaked with rain, and we came away and never thanked her!”

This was indeed an oversight which boys so well-bred felt must be rectified, and they turned their faces again toward the cottage. But they had not gone far when the forest-keeper, who had heard them singing, joined them; and they told him their trouble.

“Oh, I will make that all right!” he said. “You need not go back. I will tell her all that you wished to say.”

“Tell her that we are very much obliged to her for her kindness to us,” said Fritz, “and tell her our breakfast was first-class and we enjoyed it.”

“And tell her,” said Paul, “that she made our clothes dry and clean and it is not her fault that our hats could not be straightened to look like they did before it rained.”

“Nor,” added Franz, “was it her fault that they are stained by the color coming out of the bands and running into the straw. Please tell her we are obliged, just the same.”

“I will tell her all,” replied Hartman, making a laudable effort to keep from smiling, “and now good-bye, and a safe journey home.”

The boys touched their hats, and turned their faces again toward the road, when Paul halted and looked back. “There now!” he said, “we forgot to thank the forest-keeper for his goodness to us, and we would have had to sleep in our wet clothes and had no good beds or breakfast, had it not been for him. Let us run back and thank him.”

It seemed that Mr. Hartman had a presentiment that the triplets would have something more to say, for he had halted and was looking after them.

“We forgot to thank you for your goodness to us,” they exclaimed when within speaking distance; “and we ran back to tell you.”

“That is all right,” he answered heartily. “We were glad to entertain you, and hope that you will come to see us again.”

“Thank you; we will if we can,” replied Paul, then all said good-bye, touched their hats and set out again for the road.

Presently Mr. Hartman saw their heads together in earnest conversation, and waited, believing that they had something more to say, and he was not mistaken, for they ran back, and Franz this time was spokesman.

“We forgot to invite you to come to see us,” he said earnestly. “Fritz and Paul said that you would not care to visit boys not yet twelve years of age, but I said that my father is a forest-keeper like you, and I would invite you to visit him; so I do invite you and hope you will come.”

“I thank you heartily and would be glad to make his acquaintance.”

“And when you visit Franz’s father, you can visit mine,” suggested Fritz.

“And mine,” echoed Paul.

“If it should suit me at any time to visit Michelstadt, I would certainly be pleased to make the acquaintance of the fathers of such gentlemanly boys.”

The triplets smiled, touched their hats, started off again and were soon out of sight.

The journey that beautiful afternoon was truly charming, the sun shining brightly and all nature refreshed from its bath the evening before, and birds singing jubilantly in the trees by the roadside, but best of all, they were going home, would see all their loved ones before sunset, and would hear of the many, many things that had transpired during their absence.

“When we come in sight of the village, we will be as quiet as mice,” remarked Fritz. “I would not have the Trojans see us for anything.”

“Why?” asked Paul.

“Because we look so shabby with our battered hats and our rusty shoes.”

“I will tell you what we can do,” suggested Franz. “Our house comes first, and although it is only on the edge of the forest, it is easy for you two to go through the woods back of it, and come out at your own houses, and not a person in the village will know that we are at home until we choose to show ourselves.”

This stroke of policy was such a comfort that the spirits of the boys grew so jubilant that they laughed, chatted and sang, and even organized a parade in which Franz was drummer and Fritz and Paul fifers.

They were going along merrily, when they were startled by hearing “Hurrah!” shouted from behind a clump of bushes on the edge of the forest, and two of the Trojans came from behind it and stood grinning and pointing their fingers at the hats and shoes of the Grecian heroes. They were followed by a whole troop of their schoolmates, many of them Trojans, and accompanied by the Director, and Paul’s father. They had been to a tournament and had made a short cut through the forest on their way to the village. The two teachers shook their heads and smiled at the appearance of the triplets, and the Trojans indulged in shouts and laughter.

“Let us stick a spray of laurel in their hats in token that they came back victors,” and the Trojan who suggested it ran off to the bushes, followed by the others.

“I am glad that they have come back with whole shins,” said Professor Roth as he embraced his son tenderly, and shook hands with Fritz and Franz.

“But we might not, if Pixy had not been there to defend us,” said Fritz. “He saved us from an attack by street boys, and he earned five hundred marks, and found an English cousin of father’s and Aunt Steiner’s,” and then followed the whole story.

The Trojans had come back with the sprays of laurel, but were so interested in the narrative that they paused to listen, and the Director made a sign to them to throw the branches away, and they knew better than to disobey orders.

“I am going on home now,” said Franz. As Paul’s father intended halting at the school building, Paul and Fritz walked on with Franz to the forest-house.

“Oh, boys!” cried Fritz when they neared the garden belonging to the forest-house, “there are our spears sticking in the corn-rows, and on them are kitchen aprons and other old rags, and there are our helmets on the top of the poles. Who did it?”

“Katharine, our old cook, is the one who did it,” laughed the forest-keeper. “She was so angry at the birds for picking out her sweet corn that she made scare-crows to frighten them away, and she found nothing which served her purpose so well as did your spears and helmets.”

“Made scare-crows of our weapons!” said Fritz. “It is certainly a shame!”

“No,” said Paul, “it makes no difference. We found that they would be of no use to us on our travels or at Frankfort.”

Franz embraced his father, then ran in the house, where he was joyously welcomed, as were Paul and Fritz when they hurried on to their homes.

Two days after, Mr. Heil returned and brought with him the satchel and also the bird cage in which was a fine singer, for he had visited the bird store and paid the difference between its cost and that of the mute one which Fritz had bought. The grater and tin trumpet were also appreciated by the recipients and the next morning Fritz was awakened from a sound sleep by a blast from the trumpet in the hands of his little brother.

The three went cheerfully to school that day, and their visit to Frankfort long remained a well-spring of pleasure.