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With his face black and blue, pale and haggard, Aloys left the village next day. His furlough had another day to run; but what should he do at home? He was glad enough to go soldiering again; and nothing would have pleased him better than a war. The squire had endorsed the story of the fracas on his passport, and a severe punishment awaited him on his return. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, but walked away almost without knowing it, and hoping never to return. At Horb, on seeing the signpost to Freudenstadt, which is on the way to Strasbourg, he stopped a long time and thought of deserting to France. Unexpectedly he found himself addressed by Mechtilde, who asked, “Why, Aloys, are you going back to Stuttgart already?”

“Yes,” he answered, and went on his way. Mechtilde had come like an angel from heaven. With a friendly good-bye, they parted.

As he walked, he found himself ever and anon humming the song he had heard George sing so long ago, and which now, indeed, suited poor Mary Ann’s case:–

“In a day, in a day,
Pride and beauty fade away.
Do thy checks with gladness tingle
Where the snows and roses mingle?
Oh, the roses all decay!”

At Stuttgart he never said a word to the sentry at the Tuebingen gate nor to the one at the barrack-gate. Like a criminal, he hardly raised his eyes. For eight days he did penance in a dark cell,–the “third degree” of punishment. At times he became so impatient that he could have dashed his head against the wall; and then again he would lie for days and nights half asleep.

When released from prison, he was attached for six weeks to the class of culprits who are never permitted to leave the barracks, but are bound to answer the call at every moment. He now cursed his resolution to become a soldier, which bound him for six years to the land of his birth. He would have gone away, far as could be.

One morning his mother Maria came with a letter from Matthew, in America. He had sent four hundred florins for Aloys to buy a field with, or, if he wished to join him, to buy himself clear of the army.

Aloys and Matthew of the Hill, with his wife and eight children,–Mechtilde among them,–left for America that same autumn.

While at sea he often hummed the curious but well-known old song, which he had never understood before:–

“Here, here, here, and here,
The ship is on her way;
There, there, there, and there,
The skipper goes to stay;
When the winds do rave and roar
As though the ship could swim no more,
My thoughts begin to ponder
And wander.”

In his last letter from Ohio Aloys writes to his mother:–

“… My heart seems to ache at the thought that I must enjoy all these good things alone. I often wish all Nordstetten was here,–old Zahn, blind Conrad, Shacker of the stone quarry, Soges, Bat of the sour well, and Maurice of the hungry spring: they ought to be here, all of them, to eat their fill until they couldn’t budge from their seats. What good does it do me while I am alone here? And then you might all see the gawk with his four horses in the stable and his ten colts in the field. If Mary Ann has any trouble, let me know about it, and I will send her something; but don’t let her know from whom it comes. Oh, how I pity her! Matthew of the Hill lives two miles away. His Mechtilde is a good worker; but she is no Mary Ann, after all. I do hope she is doing well. Has she any children? On the way across there was a learned man with us on the ship,–Dr. Staeberle, of Ulm: he had a globe with him, and he showed me that when it is day in America it is night in Nordstetten, and so on. I never thought much about it till now. But when I am in the field and think, ‘What are they doing now in Nordstetten?’ I remember all at once that you are all fast asleep, and Shackerle’s John, the watchman, is singing out, ‘Two o’clock, and a cloudy morning.’ On Sunday I can’t bear to think that it is Saturday night in Nordstetten. All ought to have one day at once. Last Sunday was harvest-home in Nordstetten: I should never forget that, if I were to live a hundred years. I should like to be in Nordstetten for one hour, just to let the squire see what a free citizen of America looks like.”