They raised a sort of cheer when he and his comrades belonging to the neighbourhood alighted from the railway carriages; but, although the cheering was hearty, and Fritz and the others joined in the popular Volkslieder that the townspeople started, the young sub-lieutenant missed his mother's dear face and Lorischen's friendly, wrinkled old countenance, both of whom, somehow or other without any reason to warrant the assumption, he had thought would have been there.
It was in a melancholy manner, therefore, that he took his way towards the Gulden Strasse and the little house he had not seen for so long-- could it only have been barely nine months ago?
How small everything looked now, after his travels and experiences of the busy towns and handsome cities of France which he had but so lately passed through! All here seemed quiet, quaint, diminutive, old- fashioned, like the resemblance to some antique picture, or the dream city of a dream! Presently, he is in the old familiar street of his youth.

It seemed so long and wide then; now, he can traverse its length in two strides, and it is so narrow that the buildings on either side almost meet in the middle.
But, the home-coming charm is on him; love draws him forward quickly like a magnet! He sees his mother's house at the end of the street.

He is up the outside stairway with an agile bound.
With full heart, he bursts open the door, and, in a second, is within the parlour.

He hears his mother's cry of joy.
"My son, my son!" and she throws herself on his neck, as he clasps her in a fond embrace, recollecting that once he never expected to have lived to see her again.
And Lorischen, too, she comes forward with a handshake and a hug for the boy she has nursed on her knee many a time in the years agone.
But, who is this besides?
"What! Madaleine ?" exclaims Fritz.
"Yes, it is I," she replies demurely, a merry smile dancing on her face, and a glad light in the bright blue eyes.
This was the surprise Madame Dort had prepared for Fritz--a pleasant one, wasn't it, with which to welcome him home?
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