Littau. He lived in a miserable hovel not far from Helenenthal, the
walls of which were surrounded by piles of turf, so that the storms
should not blow it down. He had a slatternly wife who had already been
in prison twice, and who sent her children out to beg.

He was a silent, surly fellow, who did his work faultlessly and went off
without grumbling when he was not wanted any more, but appeared again
punctually as soon as there was fresh work. Paul did not like him at
first, he was so laconic and reserved, and his sullen behavior had made
an uncomfortable impression upon him; but then it suddenly occurred to
him that he behaved in much the same way himself, and from that hour he
had begun to like him heartily.

Even his father seemed to have a certain amount of respect for him, for
though, when drunk, he used to beat the servants, he had never attempted
to touch him. It seemed as if the look which the man cast at him from
underneath his bushy brows kept him at bay.

This servant was Paul's most faithful helper. He could even trust him to
sell the grain in the market, for he always knew how to get the highest
prices.

Imperceptibly a great change had come over the silent Howdahs in these
five years. The traces of poverty became more and more rare, and want
was less often their guest at table. In the garden, where were pretty
flower-beds, the pease and asparagus stood in long rows, and the
defective fence had long since been replaced by a new one. The cattle
were augmented every year by two or three valuable milking cows, and the
milk-cart which drove into the town every morning brought home many a
groschen on the first of the month.

That there was no sign of any comfort yet in spite of all this was
entirely the fault of his father, who speculated with the greater part
of their earnings when he did not spend it in drink.

Paul had secretly contrived that a few thalers at least were saved for
his brothers and sisters every month.

His brothers needed money more than ever. Max had passed his last
examination, and was now beginning his first year's tutorship at college
without salary; and Gottfried, the clerk, was out of situation for
several months every year. The two wrote begging letters in every
possible key, from the jovial "Fork me out thirty thalers immediately,"
to the heartrending supplication, "If you don't want me to be ruined,
have mercy," etc.

Paul passed many a sleepless night thinking how to help them, and it
frequently happened that he deprived himself of something necessary so
as to be able to send them the money.

Once Gottfried had written that he had no decent clothes and urgently
needed a summer suit. Paul just wanted a summer suit himself, for he had
outgrown his old one; sighing, he put the money which he had saved up
for himself into an envelope and sent it to his brother; but in the
letter accompanying it he mentioned that he was not less reduced in his
wardrobe than himself. His brother showed himself magnanimous, and a
fortnight later sent him a parcel of clothes and a letter, in which he
said: "I enclose an old suit of mine. You, in your humble position, will
probably be able to use it still."

Paul had also enabled the twins to have a better education than was
to be expected from the very reduced circumstances of his home. He had
urged the vicar's wife, who had formerly been a governess, to take them
into the private school which she had established for the daughters of
well-to-do landowners from the neighboring villages.

The money for the schooling was not the worst of it, and he could manage
also to procure their books and copy-books; but it was difficult, very
difficult, to keep them nicely dressed, for his pride would not allow
his sisters to be behind their friends, and perhaps to be considered as
beggar children.

He himself knew too well the feeling of being looked down upon to let
his sisters experience the same.

His mother did not offer him any help even in these little feminine
cares. She was so much cowed by her husband's abuse that she lacked the
courage to buy the smallest trifle on her own responsibility.

"What you do, my son, is sure to be right," she said, and Paul drove to
town and was cheated, both by the draper and the dress-maker.

The twins grew up blooming, careless, and saucily merry, without the
faintest idea what a tragedy was being enacted in their immediate
neighborhood. At ten years old they romped and fought with the village
boys, at twelve they went with them to steal pears, and at fifteen
graciously accepted bunches of violets from them.

They were known far and wide as the most beautiful girls of the
neighborhood. Paul knew this well, and was not a little proud of it;
but what he did not know was that they had rendezvous behind the garden
fence, and that half the boys who were to be confirmed with them could
boast of having kissed their sweet red lips.

CHAPTER X.

It was in the month of June on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Trumpet music sounded softly out of the wood. A great festival was to be
held there to-day. A wandering band had consented to be hired to give
a concert. The country people had come from far and wide, and even the
squires had not refused to participate in it, for such a thing did not
often happen in this quiet part of the world.

Since the middle of the day a long row of carriages had passed the
Haidehof, and old Meyerhofer, who did not like staying at home when
anything was going on, had suddenly been overcome by a fit of kindness,
and called out to his womenfolk to get ready as quickly as possible; he
would sacrifice himself and take them to the festivity.

The twins, who had already for a long time been standing at the
window, looking out with eager sparkling eyes, broke out into a loud
demonstration of joy. Frau Elsbeth gave them a quiet smile and turned to
Paul, who sat silently in his corner and went on cutting little sticks
to tie up the flowers, as if all this did not concern him at all. "Will
you not come, too?" she asked.

"Paul can drive," cried Meyerhofer, carelessly.

He thanked them and said that his coat was too shabby, and also he
wanted to look after the workmen, who were to come at sunset. The next
morning haymaking was to begin.

The twins looked at him, laid their heads together, and giggled; then,
when he went towards the door, they hung round him, and Katie whispered,

"Listen; we know something."

"Well, what is it?"

"Something nice," said Greta, mysteriously.

"Out with it."

"Elsbeth Douglas has come home again."

And breaking out into merry laughter they ran away.

Paul at first felt very angry that they dared to mock him; then he
sighed and smiled, and wondered why his heart had suddenly begun to beat
so loudly.

Half an hour later his family drove away.

"Do join us soon," his mother called down to him from the carriage, and
Katie getting into it whispered into his ear,

"I believe they will be there, too."

Now he stood quite alone in the deserted courtyard. The servants had
gone to the fields to milk--no human being was to be seen far and wide.
The ducks in their pool had put their heads under their wings, and the
kennel-dog snapped sleepily at the flies.

Paul seated himself on the garden fence and gazed towards the wood, at
the edge of which gay light dresses flitted to and fro, while now and
then there was a bright glitter, when the sunbeams were reflected in the
harness of the waiting carriage-horses.

The evening came; he was still undecided whether he should venture to
follow his family.

A thousand reasons occurred to him which made his staying at home
absolutely necessary, and when it was quite clear to him that he ought
to remain at home and not go anywhere else he put on his Sunday coat and
went to the festival.

It began already to grow dusk as he walked across the sweet-scented
heather. His heart was weighed down with secret fear. He did not dare
to think out the cause, but as he walked past the juniper-bush, beneath
which he once had whistled his most beautiful song to Elsbeth, a pain
shot through his breast as if he had been stabbed.

He stopped and reconsidered whether it would not be better to turn back.
"My coat is much too shabby," he said to himself; "I can't show myself
in any decent society." He took it off and looked at it on all sides.
The back was getting shiny at the seams; at the elbows there was a dull
silver gloss, and the border on the flaps of the breast even showed a
little fringe.

"It won't do with the best will in the world," he said, and then he sat
down beneath the juniper-bush and dreamed how smart and elegant he
would look if only he could afford a new coat. "But that won't be yet
a while," he continued; "first Max and Gottfried must have permanent
places, and Greta and Katie must have the ball-dresses they wish for,
and mother's arm-chair must be newly done up--" and the more he thought
the more other things came to his mind which had a prior claim.

Then again he saw himself in a brand-new black suit, patent-leather
shoes on his feet, a fashionable tie round his neck, entering the
dancing-room with a careless, distinguished air, while Elsbeth smiled at
him very respectfully.

Suddenly he started from his dreams. "Oh, fie! what a fop I am growing!"
he scolded himself. "What have I to do with patent-leather shoes and
fashionable ties? And now I will just go in my old coat to the wood.
Besides, it has almost grown dark," he added, prudently.

Louder sounded the trumpets, and through the branches of the fir-trees
joyful laughter met his ears.

A turfy spot in the wood had been selected for the principal scene of
the festival. In the middle of it stood the platform for the musicians,
on the right the tent of the village innkeeper, who sold sour beer and
sweet cake, and on the left a place for dancing was fenced off, the
entrance to which cost a groschen more, as one might read on a white
board.

Round about in a big circle tables and benches had been placed where the
different families enjoyed the supper they had brought with them, and
through it all a jubilant, giggling, staring crowd was pressing, eager
for either love or a good hand-to-hand fight.

The concert was already finished, the dancing had begun; on the firm,
trodden-down moss the couples circled round breathless and stumbling.

The glow of the sunset lay on the open space, while the wood bordering
it was already buried in darkness. Here were the farm-servants and
maids from the neighboring hamlets; even the coachmen had left their
carriages, because it would have broken their hearts to have looked on
at these love-makings from the distance. Every bush, every small tree
seemed alive, and out of the darkness came low, amorous tittering.

Shyly, like a criminal, Paul slunk round the festive scene. A fear of
strangers had always been his peculiarity, but never yet had his heart
fluttered so anxiously as at this moment.

"Is Elsbeth there?" Nowhere in all the crowd were there any traces of
the inmates of the White House, but then his family also seemed to
have disappeared without leaving any trace. Once he thought the cooing
laughter of the twins caught his ear, but the next moment the noise had
drowned it.

Twice he had already made the round; then suddenly--his heart threatened
to stop from surprise and rapture--he saw, quite close before him, his
mother and father sitting in peaceful intercourse at the same table with
the Douglas family.

His father rested his elbows on the table, and, red with excitement,
talked eagerly to Mr. Douglas. The broad-shouldered giant with the bushy
gray beard listened to him silently, at times nodding and smiling to
himself. The slender, delicate figure with the sunken cheeks and the
blue rings round her eyes, who leaned wearily against the trunk of a
tree and clasped his mother's hand with her thin white fingers, that was
his godmother, who had always seemed to him like an angel from the other
world. But next to her--next to her, the lady in the modest gray dress,
her fair hair simply combed back--

"Elsbeth! Elsbeth!" cried a voice within him; and then suddenly a wall
of clouds sank down between him and her, and froze his innermost soul,
and veiled his eyes with a damp mist.

Opposite to her sat a gentleman with a saucy-looking fair mustache, and
still more saucy blue eyes, who bent towards her familiarly, while a
smile flitted over her quiet face.

"She will marry that man," he said to himself, with a conviction which
seemed to be more than a jealous foreboding. With the clear-sightedness
of love he had understood that these two natures harmonized and must
seek each other. And perhaps they had already found one another while he
himself wasted his days in idle dreams.

He stood there as if stunned, and scrutinized the man who suddenly had
rendered it clear to him what he had lost--lost, indeed, without ever
having possessed it.

How could he ever have dared to compare himself to this man that, to a
hair, was the ideal man of whom he had always dreamed?

Bold and energetic and triumphant (that's what he had meant to be one
day), exactly like the strange young man who looked at Elsbeth with his
frivolous smile. He also wore patent-leather boots and a fashionable
colored necktie, and his suit was made of the finest shining black
cloth.

Almost for an hour Paul stood there without daring to move from his
position, devouring Elsbeth and her vis-à-vis with his eyes.

The night came. He scarcely perceived it. Long rows of lanterns were
lighted, and shed forth an uncertain light on the gay crowd.

"How well I am hidden," thought Paul, and was glad of the darkness into
which he had crept. He did not see that two men came walking towards him
and were occupying themselves close to him with something on the ground.
Then suddenly, not ten steps away from him, a purple red flame flared up
and flooded all around in a sea of dazzling light.

He wanted to take refuge quickly in the shade of a tree, but it was too
late.

"Isn't that Paul standing there?" called out his mother.

"Where?" asked Elsbeth, turning with curiosity.

"Boy, why are you hanging about in the dark?" shouted his father.

Then he had to come out, in spite of all; and burning with shame, his
cap in his hand, he stood before Elsbeth, who leaned her head on her
hand and looked up at him smilingly.

"Yes, that's what he always is: a real sneaker," said his father, giving
him a clap on the shoulder, and the unknown young gentleman pushed his
hair from his forehead and smiled half good-naturedly, half ironically.

Then old Douglas rose, went up to him, and seized both his hands. "Hold
up your head, young friend," he called out, with his lion's voice. "You
have no reason to lower your eyes--you, least of all the world. He who
can at the age of twenty do what you do is a capital fellow and need not
hide himself. I won't make you conceited, but just ask who could bear
comparison with you. You, perhaps, Leo?" He turned to the young fop, who
answered, with a merry laugh,

"You must make the best of me as I am, dear uncle."

"If only there was anything in you to make the best of, you
good-for-nothing!" replied Douglas. "This, you must know, is my nephew,
Leo Heller, a new edition of 'Fritz Triddlefitz.'"

"Uncle, I'll have my revenge."

"Be quiet, you scoundrel."

"Uncle, I'll wager twenty glasses which of us lies under the table
first."

"That's what he calls respect."

"Uncle, you are pinching me."

"Be quiet; just look at this young farmer, twenty years old, who keeps
the whole farm going."

"Well, Mr. Douglas, _I_ count for something, too," cried Meyerhofer,
with a somewhat lengthened face.

"No offence to you," the former answered; "but you have so much to do
with your company you naturally cannot bother about such trifles."

Meyerhofer bowed, flattered, and Paul felt ashamed for him, for he well
understood the irony of these words.

Mrs. Douglas, smiling, beckoned him to come to her. She seized his hand
and stroked it. "You have grown tall and good-looking," she said, in her
weak, kind voice, "and you have a beautiful beard."

"But do call him '_Du_,'" interrupted his mother, who seemed to be much
easier in her mind than usual. "Paul, ask your godmother."

"Yes--I entreat you," said Paul, stammering and blushing anew.

"God bless you, my son," said Mrs. Douglas; "you have deserved it," and
then her head again sank against the trunk of the tree.

Paul stood behind the bench and did not know what to do. For the first
time since he was grown up he happened to find himself in strange
society.

His glance met Elsbeth's, who, resting her head on her hand, looked
round at him.

"I suppose you won't say 'How do you do' to me at all?" she added,
mischievously.

The familiar "_Du_" gave him courage. He stretched his hand out to her,
and asked how she had fared during all this long time.

A shade of sadness flitted across her face. "Not well," she said,
softly; "but more of that later on when we are alone."

She made room at her side, and said, "Come." And as he sat down near her
his elbow touched her neck. Then a thrill went through his body, such as
he had never felt in all his life.

Leo Heller shook hands with him across the table, and said, laughing,
"To our good friendship, you pattern boy, you!"

"I am, unfortunately, not worthy to be taken for a pattern boy," he
answered, innocently.

"Then be glad; I am not one, either. Nothing is more disgusting to me
than such a pattern boy."

"Why, then, did you call me so?"

Leo looked at him quite surprised. "Oh, you seem to take everything
literally," he said.

"Pardon me, I am so little accustomed to joking," he replied, and a
blush of shame rose to his face. In turning towards Elsbeth he saw that
she was gazing at him with a strangely earnest, searching look. Then a
sudden feeling of bliss rose in his soul. He felt here was one who did
not think him stupid or ridiculous, who understood his nature and the
laws according to which it manifested itself.

While the three were silent his father, at the other end of the table,
continued to expound the plans of his company to Mr. Douglas.

"And if you trust me, sir--but no, you need not even do that--I mean to
say, if you will not frivolously forfeit your own chance--one must never
stand in the way of one's chance, sir--if you have only just a little
spirit of enterprise--oh, then, yes, then, you know, there are hundreds
and thousands to be earned; the moor is inexhaustible--why let others
grow rich in your stead, sir? On through darkness to light; that's my
device. I will strive and fight to the last breath; it is not my own
interest which is at stake. It seems to me to be a question for the
welfare of humanity. The aim is to win this barren soil for cultivation,
to give new life-blood to this whole district, to change the poverty of
this country into prosperity--to be a benefactor to humanity, sir."

And in this tone he swaggered on.

Then suddenly he came quite close to Douglas, as if he wanted to put a
pistol to his head, crying,

"Then will you take shares in it sir?"

Douglas caught a glance from his wife, who quietly pointed towards Frau
Elsbeth, and made him a beseeching sign; then he said, half amused, half
angry, "I don't mind."

Paul was again ashamed, for he read in Douglas's face that for him it
was only a question of the fun of throwing a few hundred thalers out of
the window. He himself knew, too well, that no sensible man could take
his father's plans in earnest.

"Have you not seen our girls, Paul?" asked his mother, who now seemed no
less constrained than he.

No; he had not seen them anywhere.

"Do go and look about for them; they have gone to the dancing-ground.
Tell them not to be too wild, or else they will catch cold."

Paul rose.

"I will go with you," said Elsbeth.

"May I not come too, little cousin?" asked cousin Leo.

"You had better remain here," she answered, lightly, whereupon he
declared he should be obliged to kill himself for grief.

"A merry bird," said Paul, with a sigh of envy, as he walked at her side
through the crowd.

"Yes; but nothing more," she replied.

"Do you like him?"

"Certainly; very much.

"She will marry him, after all," Paul meditated.

All around people screamed and shouted. A lantern had caught fire, and
a troop of young fellows endeavored to tear it from the cord. Flaming
pieces of paper were flying through the air, and the liquid was spirted
in all directions.

Elsbeth put her arm in his and bent her head on his shoulder. Again that
blissful thrill which he could not explain ran through him.

"There, now I am safe," she said, in a whisper. "Come to the wood
afterwards, Paul, I have so much to tell you; there we shall be
undisturbed."

And as she said this he felt quite anxious, out of pure joy.

They had come to the dancing-place. The trumpets resounded, and the
dancers were spinning round and round.

"Shall we dance, too?" she asked, smiling.

"I cannot," he answered.

"That does not matter," she said; "for those sort of things Leo does
well enough."

His foolish dreams which he had had under the juniper-bush to-day
occurred to him.

"So it is with everything that I fancy to myself," he thought. "I have
still one of your books, Elsbeth," he said then.

"I know, I know," she answered, looking up at him with a smile.

"Pardon me that I--"

"Oh, what a fidget you are," she jested. "Leo meanwhile has ruined my
whole library for me, and wants me now to replenish it for him, because
he has nothing more to read."

Leo, and still Leo over again.

"Have you read much that is beautiful in it?" she asked him.

"Once I knew everything by heart."

"And now?"

"Now? Oh, good heavens, I have so much to think of in every-day
life--they won't fit into my head any longer."

"Nor into mine, either, Paul. It is because we have seen too much of
life; poetry is lost to us."

"To you, too?"

She sighed. "My poor mother," she said.

"What is it?"

"You see, for five years I have been sick-nurse; there are many sad
hours, and when the night-light burns, and one's eyes hurt with watching
so much, and outside the storm rattles the shutters, many thoughts come
to one about life and death, about love and loneliness--well, in short,
one makes a book of poetry in one's own head and does not read other
people's any more. But come away from this noise; I should like to ask
you so much, and here one can hardly hear one's own voice."

"Directly," he said; "I only wanted--"

His eyes wandered searchingly over the dancing-ground, then he heard a
man's voice behind him, saying:

"Just look at those two little minxes, mad after men."

Instinctively he turned round, and saw the brothers Erdmann, whom he had
not met for years. They had meanwhile been at an agricultural college
and become grand gentlemen.

"We'll have fun with them," said the other.

Thereupon they laughingly mixed among the dancers.

Immediately after, Paul, too, saw his sisters. Their mass of brown curls
hung loose about their faces, their cheeks were aflame, their bosoms
heaved, and their eyes looked wild and eager for love.

"How happy they look--the sweet creatures," said Elsbeth.

Paul gave them a little sermon. They scarcely heeded him, but looked
over his shoulders, giggling. And when he turned round he saw the two
Erdmanns, who had hidden behind the musicians' platform and were making
clandestine signs to them.

The twins by this time had escaped him, and the Erdmanns disappeared as
well.

"Come away from here," said Elsbeth.

He consented, but remained as if rooted to the ground.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

He passed his hand across his brow; he could not get those contemptuous
words which he had overheard out of his head. The sisters were young,
merry, inexperienced, nobody looked after them; if they should lower
themselves in any way, if they--an icy shudder passed through him.

And he, who had vowed to be their faithful guardian, he was going after
his own pleasure, he--

"Come to the wood," Elsbeth pleaded again.

"I can't," he gasped.

She looked at him wonderingly.

"I must--my sisters--nobody is with them. Do not be angry."

"Take me back to the table," she said.

He did so. Neither spoke a word.

Five minutes later he came upon his sisters, who, arm in arm with the
Erdmanns, were trying to slip off to the wood.

"Where are you going?" he asked, stepping between them.

They lowered their eyes in embarrassment, and Katie stammered,
"We--wanted to go for a little walk."

The brothers Erdmann took the tone of good-fellowship, shook hands with
him heartily, and wished most ardently to renew the friendship of their
youthful days. Behind his back they shook their fists at him.

"You will go at once to your mother," he said to the twins, and as they
began to sulk he took their arms and drew them away. The table was half
deserted. The Douglas family had left the festival.

Then he went into the wood and reflected on what Elsbeth might have
wished to tell him.

But it was not to be--something always came between them.

CHAPTER XI.

It was a midsummer night. The alder-tree sent forth its perfume. The
moonlight lay in silver veils upon the earth. There was great rejoicing
in the village. Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and
maids were dancing on the green. The flames sent their glare far over
the heath, and the shrill sounds of the fiddle came sadly through the
night.

Paul stood at the garden fence and looked out into the distance. The
servants had gone to the midsummer-night's fire, and his sisters had not
come home yet, either.

They had asked permission to visit the vicar's daughter Hedwig, their
playmate, who was an unpretending, quiet girl, in whose company he
gladly trusted them.

Now he thought he would wait till they had all come home.

The moonlight drew him out onto the heath. It lay there in midnight
silence; only in the heather a linnet chirped from time to time, as if
in its sleep. The wild-pinks bent their red heads, and the golden-rod
shone as if it wanted to compete with the moonbeams. Slowly, with
hesitating steps, he walked on, sometimes stumbling over a mole-hill
or entangling himself in the tendrils of the plants. The dew sparkled
before him in shining drops. Thus he came to the region of the
juniper-bushes, which looked more elf-like than usual.

The wood stood silent like a black wall, and the moonbeams rested on it
like freshly-fallen snow. He found the place where years ago the hammock
had hung; in the weird twilight the open space showed through the dark
branches. It drew him on and on. Like a palace of dazzling marble the
White House, with its balconies and gables, rose before his eyes. Deep
silence enshrouded the manor-house; only here and there a dog barked and
relapsed into silence directly.

He stood before the trellised gate, not knowing how he had come there.
He grasped the bars with both hands and looked in. The wide yard lay
yonder before him, bathed in the light of the moon; the big farm-wagons,
which were ranged in a row before the stables, stood there in black
outline; a white cat crept along the garden fence; everything else lay
in deep sleep.

He walked on along the fence. On the ash-heap behind the forge lay some
fragments of glimmering coals, which looked in the darkness like burning
eyes. Here the garden began. High elm-trees bent their branches over
him, and an overpowering perfume of laburnums and early roses floated
through the trellis-work towards him. The gravel-strewn paths shone like
silver threads through the branches, and the sundial, which had been the
dream of his childhood, stood out darkly behind them.

The White House came nearer and nearer. Now he could almost look into
the windows. Here, too, all seemed asleep.

He had read here and there in the Liederbuch, too, that the lover used
to sing serenades to the queen of his heart on moonlight nights, to
the accompaniment of either the guitar or mandolin if this was at all
feasible. It had been thus in the beautiful days of chivalry, and in
Spain or Italy might still be so. That occurred to him now, and he
pictured to himself how it would look if he, Paul the simpleton, were to
play the lute here as a knight-errant, crowing longing love-songs at the
same time.

At this thought he laughed out loud, and then he remembered that he
carried his instrument about with him everywhere. He seated himself on
the grass, his back leaning against a post of the fence, and began to
whistle--shyly and softly at first, then ever bolder and louder, and as
usual when he was entirely given up to his feelings, he at last forgot
everything around him.

He awoke as out of a dream when he heard a rustling and creaking of
branches at the other side of the fence. He looked round amazed. Yonder
stood Elsbeth in her white dressing-gown with a dark ulster hastily
thrown over it.

At the first moment he felt as if he must run away, but all his limbs
seemed to be lamed.

"Elsbeth--what are you doing here?" he stammered.

"Ah! what are _you_ doing here?" she retorted, smiling.

"I--I was whistling a little."

"And you came here for that?"

"Why should I not?"

"You are right--I am not going to forbid you."

She had pressed her forehead against the trellis-work and looked at him.
Both were silent.

"Will you come in?" she asked then--probably not knowing what she said.

"Shall I climb the fence?" he retorted, quite innocently.

She smiled. "No," she said, shaking her head; "they could see you from
the window, and that would not do. But I must speak to you. Wait; I will
come out and walk a little way with you."

She pushed a loose bar aside and slipped out; then she gave him her
hand, and said, "You were right to have come; I have often longed to
speak to you, but you were never there." And she sighed deeply, as if
the remembrance of sad hours overpowered her.

His whole body trembled. The sight of the maidenly figure, who in her
night-garb stood before him so chaste and unconscious, almost took away
his breath. His temples hammered, he bent his eyes to the ground.

"Why do you not speak to me?" she asked.

A confused smile passed over his face.

"Do not be angry," he gasped.

"Why should I be angry?" she asked. "I am so glad to have you for
once quite to myself. But it is strange--quite like a fairy tale. I
am standing at the window, looking at the moon. Mamma has just gone to
sleep, and I consider whether I, too, might venture to go to bed, but my
thoughts are so restless and my forehead burns--I feel so uneasy. Then
suddenly I hear somebody whistling in the garden, so beautifully, so
plaintively, as I have only once heard it in my life, and that a long
time ago. 'That can only be Paul,' I say to myself, and the more I
listen the clearer it is to me. 'But how does he come here?' I ask
myself, and as I want above all things to make certain, I put on my
cloak and creep down--so--here I am now, and now come, let us go into
the wood; there no one can see us."

She laid her arm in his. Silently they walked across the moonlit meadow.
And then suddenly she put both her hands up to her face and began to cry
bitterly.

"Elsbeth, what is the matter?" he asked, terrified.

She trembled; her soft figure shook with noiseless sobs.

"Elsbeth, can't I help you?" he pleaded.

She shook her head hastily. "It's all right," she gasped; "it will soon
be over." She tried to walk on, but her strength failed her. Sighing,
she sank down into the damp grass.

He remained standing before her, looking down at her. "Let tears have
their course;" that was the rule which he had already often experienced
in life. All his timidity had left him. Here was somebody to be
consoled, and he was a master at consoling.

When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently,
"Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?"

"Yes, I will," she cried; "I have waited to do so these three long
years. So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the
burden, and have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder
in Italy and at beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices,
I have often crept down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried
out in my agony, and in the morning I have come back and laughed, even
more than the others, for my mother--oh, mother, mother!" she cried,
sobbing afresh.

"Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it," he whispered to
her.

"Yes, I have you, I have you," she gasped, and leaned her face on his
shoulder. "You see I have always known that; but what good did that do
me? You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared
you might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And
since we are back I have only one thought: 'I must confide in him, he is
the only one who has known grief, he will understand me.'"

"Tell me what it is, Elsbeth," he urged.

"She will die," she cried out aloud.

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"Who told you so?"

"The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face
before her, and said, 'If you are careful, you can live to a hundred
years old,' but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, 'Are you
strong, young lady? Can you bear the truth?' 'I beg you to tell me all,'
I answered, 'I must confide it to you,' he said, 'for you are the
only one who nurses her.' And then he told me that she might die any
day--unless--and then he gave me a number of rules which she must
observe about eating and drinking and climate and excitement, and much
more. Since that day I tremble from morning to night, and tend her and
watch and find no rest. Sometimes the feeling comes over me, and I say
to myself, 'You are young and want to enjoy life,' and then I try to
be merry and sing, but every note chokes me and I collapse again. Of
course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and to father as well."
"But why do you not confide in him?" he interrupted her.

"Shall his life be poisoned as well?" she replied. "No, I had rather
bear it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves
her with all his soul--otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable,
but to her he has never said an angry word--let him hope as long as he
can--I will not undeceive him."

She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.

He remembered his mother's fairy tale.

"Dame Care--Dame Care," he murmured to himself.

"What do you say?" she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes,
hungry for consolation.

"Oh, nothing," he replied, with a sad smile, "I wish I could help you."

"Who could do that?"

"And yet perhaps I can," he said, "you have only wanted somebody to
confide in, you are not so badly off as you think--indeed, Dame Care has
blessed you, too."

"What does that mean?" she asked

And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept
in his memory so well.

"And how can one be freed from her blessings?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied, "mother never would tell me the end of
the fairy tale. I don't think, either, there is any deliverance. Such
creatures as we are must renounce happiness of our own free will, and
however near it may be to us we may not see it--something sad always
comes between us and happiness. The only thing we can do is to watch
over the happiness of others and to make them as happy as possible."

"But I should like to be a little happy myself," she said, raising her
eyes to him trustfully.

"I wish I were as happy as you are," he answered.

"If only this anxiety were not always with me," she complained.

"Anxiety! you must let her be your friend, I have known her all my life,
and when I did not know why I quickly found some reason. It is not
so bad, either--if there were no anxiety, one would not know for what
purpose one lives. But only think how contented you might be. You see
nothing but merry faces surrounding you. Your mother feels happy in
spite of all her sufferings, does she not?"

"Yes, thank God," she replied, "she has no idea how ill she is."

"There you see! and your father has no idea of it, either. No care
weighs on them, they love each other, and love you as well. No angry
word is spoken among you, and when your mother at last closes her eyes
she will perhaps do so with a smile on her lips, and be able to say, 'I
have always been very happy.' Do tell me--what more can you wish for?"

"But she shall not die,' cried Elsbeth.

"Why not? he asked, 'is death so terrible?"

"Not for her but for myself.

"There must not be any question of one's self," he replied, pressing his
lips firmly together, "one must just try to bear it the best one can.
Death is only terrible when one has waited for happiness all through
life and it has not come. Then one must feel as if one had to get up
hungry from a richly spread table, and I should like to save any one
I love from that. You see I have a mother, too, she also wished to be
happy once, and even yet would like far too much to be so. I am the only
one who could take care from her shoulders, and I am not able to do so.
What do you think I must feel in this case? I see how she grows old in
sorrow and need, I can count the wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks.
Her mouth falls in and her chin grows long. It is a long time since
she spoke any loud word, from day to day she becomes quieter, and so,
quietly, she will die one day, and I shall be standing by and shall
say, 'It is my fault, I have not been able to give her one single day of
happiness."

"Poor fellow," she whispered, "can't I help you at all?"

"No one can help me as long as my father--" he stopped, terrified at the
course of his own thoughts.

Both were silent They sat there for a long time without moving, their
twenty year old heads leaning on their hands bowed with care. The
moonbeams lay like silver on their hair, which the soft wind of the
heath ruffled gently.

Then the shadow of a cloud passed over them They both trembled. They
felt as if the sad fairy whom they called Dame Care were spreading her
sombre wings over them.

"I will go home," Elsbeth said, rising.

"Go, with God's blessing," he answered, solemnly.

She seized both his hands "Thank you," she said, softly, "you have done
me much, much good."

"And if you need me again--"

"Then I shall come and whistle for you," she answered, smiling.

And then they parted.

As in a dream Paul walked through the dark wood. The fir trees rustled
softly, the moonbeams were dancing on the moss.

"It is strange," he thought, "that they all tell me their woes," and
he concluded from that that he was the happiest of them all. "Or the
unhappiest," he added, meditatively, but then he laughed mysteriously
and threw his cap high in the air.

When he stepped out into the light on the heath he saw two shadows
flitting before him which disappeared in the misty distance.

Immediately after he heard something rustle in the juniper bushes.

He turned quickly round and saw another shadowy couple, who seemed to
sink into the ground behind a bush.

"The whole heath seems alive to-day," he murmured, and added, smiling,
"of course, it is mid summer night."

Soon after him the twins came home with wild hair and flushed faces.
They declared the vicar had told them their fortunes by cards till
midnight. They would soon get husbands.

Giggling, they slipped away into their bedroom.

CHAPTER XII

Old Meyerhofer revelled in happiness. The promise of the rich Douglas
to participate in his undertakings had raised his chances suddenly to a
giddy height. The ears which for him heretofore had been closed began
to listen to his explanations with eagerness, and in the public houses,
where until now he had been received with a half ironical, half pitying
smile, he was now considered a great man.

"He will join me with half his fortune," he related, "we are already in
communication with Borsig, in Berlin, who is going to furnish us with
the necessary machines, we have written to Oldenburg for a technical
director, and every day we have inquiries at what price we are able to
sell the peat blocks per million."

The consequence was that they pressed him to begin issuing his shares
and when they gathered round him and asked him to reserve so and so many
shares for each, he drew himself up proudly and said they would probably
remain in private hands.

At home he was busy designing the new headings for the note paper of the
future firm, and the borrowed money jingled in all his pockets.

Four weeks had passed since that midsummer night, when there came from
Helenenthal two cards of invitation one for Meyerhofer junior and the
other for the young ladies.

"For a garden party," they said.

"Aha! they court our favor already," the old man cried, "the rats smell
the bacon."

Paul went with his card--which bore Elsbeth's hand-writing--behind a
haystack, and there studied each letter of it in solitude for wellnigh
an hour.

Then he went up to his garret and stood before the looking glass.

He found that his whiskers had grown in fulness and only at the cheeks
still showed thin places.

"It will do very well," he said, in an attack of vanity, but when he saw
himself smile he wondered at the deep sad lines which ran from his eyes,
past his nose, down to the corners of his mouth.

"Wrinkles make one interesting," he consoled himself by thinking.

From this hour he exclusively thought about what role he was to play at
the party.

He practised before the looking glass making stylish bows, and every
morning looked at his Sunday suit, and tried to hide the shabbiness of
his coat by brushing some black color over it.

The invitation had caused a great revolution in his mind It was for
him a greeting from the promised land of joy, which he, like Moses,
had never seen but from afar. It was not for nothing that he was twenty
years old.

The day of the party arrived. His sisters had put on their white muslin
dresses and fastened dark roses in their hair. They skipped up and down
before the looking glass and asked each other, "Am I beautiful?' And
though each willingly replied" Yes,' to this question, they hardly knew
how beautiful they were.

His mother sat in a corner, looked at them and smiled.

Paul ran hither and thither in confusion. He inwardly wondered how such
a joyful event could cause one such great anxiety. He had prepared all
sorts of beautiful speeches which he intended to hold at the party
about the welfare of humanity, about peat-culture, and Heine's "Buch
der Lieder". They should see that he was able to converse amiably with
ladies.

The open carriage, a remainder of past splendor, took the brother and
sisters to the party. They were to return on foot.

As they approached, Paul saw behind the fence bright colored dresses
flitting through the shrubs and heard the giggling of merry girls'
voices. His uncomfortable feeling was considerably augmented by this.

In the veranda Mr Douglas received them with a merry laugh. He pinched
the sisters' cheeks, slapped him on the shoulder, and said,

"Well, young knight, to day we are going to win our spurs."

Paul turned his cap in his hand and broke into a silly laugh, at which
he felt angry with himself.

"Now _allons_ to the ladies!" cried Mr Douglas, taking the sisters one
on each arm, while he himself had to trot behind them.

The giggling came nearer and nearer. Gay men's voices were intermingled
with it--he felt as if he were going to be beheaded. And then a sort of
veil came over his eyes, indistinctly he saw the crowd of strange faces,
which seemed to stare at him from the clouds. His speeches about the
turf-culture came to his mind, but there was nothing to be done with
them at this moment.

Then he saw Elsbeth's face rise in the mist. She wore a brooch of blue
stones and smiled at him kindly. In spite of this smile she never had
appeared so strange to him as at that moment.

"Mr Paul Meyerhofer, the companion of my childhood,' she said, taking
his hand, and leading him round. He bowed to all sides, and had a vague
feeling that he was making himself ridiculous.

"Eh, there is my pattern boy," the cousin's merry voice called out, and
all the ladies giggled.

Then he was asked to sit down and was offered a cup of coffee.

"Mamma has gone to lie down a little," Elsbeth whispered to him, "she is
not quite well to day."

"Isn't she?" he said, and smiled in a silly manner Cousin Leo had
gathered a circle of young ladies round himself, and told them a story
about a young lawyer who had been so fond of sweets that, seeing a bag
_pralines_ which he was not allowed to have, he had been crystallized
into a sugar loaf. They almost died with laughter over this.

"Oh, if only I could tell such stories," thought Paul to himself and,
as nothing better occurred to him, he ate one piece of cake after the
other.

Ihe sisters had immediately been laid hold of by several strange
gentlemen, they laughed boldly in their faces while the quickest
repartees flowed from their mouths.

The sisters suddenly appeared to him like beings from a higher world.

"Now we are going to play a nice game, ladies," said Cousin Leo putting
one knee across the other, and leaning back negligently in his arm
chair. "The game is called 'Proposing.' The ladies walk about singly and
the gentlemen, too. The gentleman asks the lady he meets, '_Est ce que
vous m'armez?_' and the lady either answers '_Je vous adore_'--then
she is his wife--or she silently refuses him. He who receives the most
refusals receives a nightcap, which he has to wear during the rest of
the whole evening."

The ladies thought this game very amusing, and all rose to set to work
directly Paul rose, too, though he would have liked best to remain in
his dark corner.

"What can those foreign words be?" he asked himself, he would have liked
to inquire of one of the gentlemen, but he was ashamed to betray his
ignorance and so to disgrace his sisters. Elsbeth had gone away with the
other girls, he would have liked best to confide in her.

He went after the others, quite depressed, but when he saw the first
lady coming towards him his anxiety was so great that he quickly left
the path and hid in the thickest shrubs.

There was a little wilderness there, as if it might have been in the
deepest part of the wood Nettles and ferns raised their slender stalks,
and the uncanny wolf's milk was competing for supremacy with the
burdock. In the midst of this tangled undergrowth he crouched down, put
his elbows on his knees, and meditated.

"So that was what people called amusing themselves? It was a good thing
that he should learn it for once, but like it he could not. Anyhow, it
was nicer at home, and, besides, who could know whether the servants
had finished weeding in time--whether the peat had not been piled up too
damp? There was much to do at home, while he was lingering about
here, entering into silly games like a fool. If it had not been for
Elsbeth--but, indeed, what good was she to him? As she smiled at him so
she smiled at them all, and if Cousin Leo began with his jokes how bold
he was, how he flattered them all. Oh the world is bad, and they are all
false--all, all!"

He heard his name being called from the path, but he pressed himself
the closer into his hiding place. Here at least he was sheltered from
mockery. An oppressive sultriness was in the air, sleepy buzzing drones
were creeping about on the ground. A thunder storm seemed at hand.

"It's all the same to me," thought Paul, "I have nothing to lose
and--the winter rye is in."

It had grown quiet outside--from the distance the clatter of glasses,
glass plates, and teaspoons could be heard, and from time to time it was
intermingled with a suppressed laugh.

Paul drew in his breath. The longer he remained in his hiding place the
more dejected he felt, at last he appeared to himself like a school
boy who hides to escape his master's punishment. The smell of the weeds
became more intense and more unbearable, an unpleasant moisture came up
from the damp ground, like a pale fog it rose before his eyes Steel blue
clouds rolled up in the sky, the thunder began to resound afar.

"That's what they call pleasure," thought Paul.

There was a rustling in the branches. Heavy drops came splashing down on
the leaves, then Paul crept out of his hiding place like a criminal.

Shouts of laughter--welcomed him from the veranda.

"There comes August" one of the gentlemen called out, softly. He had
been in Berlin and had seen the circus there, and the others joined him.

"My honored guests,' cried Leo, climbing on a chair," this pattern boy,
called Paul Meyerhofer, has in the most inconsiderate manner withdrawn
from the verdict of the assembly. As he foresaw, in his feeling of
unworthiness, that most of the refusals would be gathered upon his
undignified head, he has in most reprehensible cowardice--"

"I don't know why you speak so badly of me," said Paul, hurt, for he
took everything seriously.

A fresh peal of laughter answered him

"I make the proposition to confer the nightcap on him as a punishment
for his crime, and to form a jury for this purpose."

"If you please, I'll take the cap without that," Paul answered,
irritated. By this time he had only to open his mouth to call forth
fresh mirth.

Solemnly he was crowned with the nightcap.

"I must look very funny, after all,' he thought, for they were all dying
with laughter. Only his sisters did not laugh, blushing deeply, they
looked down in their laps, and Elsbeth looked it him with embarrassment,
as if she wanted to ask his pardon.

"August," was again softly whispered from the circle of gentlemen.

Immediately after, the thunder storm broke forth

In troops they all took refuge in the house. The young ladies turned
pale, most of them were afraid of the thunder, one even fainted.

Leo proposed they should form a circle, and that each of them should
tell a story, he who did not know any had to give a forfeit.

They agreed to this. The order of precedence was appointed by lot, and
one of the gentlemen made the beginning with a merry student's anecdote,
which he declared he had experienced himself. Then it was the turn of
some young girls, who preferred to pay forfeits, and then he himself was
called out.

The gentlemen cleared their throats mockingly, and the girls nudged each
other and giggled. Then anger overpowered him, and, knitting his brow,
he began at random,

"Once upon a time there was some one who was so ridiculous that people
had only to look at him when they wanted to laugh to their hearts
content. He himself did not know how this was, for he had never laughed
in his life."

There was a deep silence all round. The smiles froze on their faces,
first one and then the other looked down upon the ground.

"Go on," cried Elsbeth, nodding to him gently. But a feeling of shame
came over him that he thus dared to show his innermost self to these
strange people.

"I can't go on," he said, and rose.

This time no one laughed, and for a while there was only a deep,
oppressive silence, and then the girl who had been chosen to collect the
forfeits came up to him and said, with a polite courtesy,

"Then you must pay a forfeit."

"Willingly," he answered, and detached his watch from the chain.

"An uncomfortable fellow," he heard one of the young gentlemen say low
to his neighbor. It was he who had first called up that nickname.

Then it was Leo's turn, who treated them to one of his most racy
anecdotes, but the gayety would not come back again.

The rain splashed against the window panes with a hollow sound, the
shadow of black clouds filled the room. It was as if the gray Dame was
gliding through the air and touching the laughing young faces with her
wings, so that they looked serious and old.

Only when Elsbeth opened the piano and began a merry dance the frozen
gayety recommenced.

Paul stood in a corner and gazed at the merrymaking. They left him quite
to himself, only now and then a shy glance met him.

The twins were flying round the room, their curls were loose, and a wild
light sparkled in their eyes.

"Let them romp about," thought Paul, "they must return to misery soon
enough." But that there was no misery for them never occurred to him.

When Elsbeth was replaced at the piano by somebody else, she came
towards him and said, "You are very much bored, are you not?"

"Oh no," he said. "Everything is still so new to me."

"Be merry," she pleaded; "we only live once."

And at that moment Leo came rushing up to her, seized her round the
waist, and danced away with her.

"Nevertheless, she is still a stranger to you," thought Paul.

As she passed him again she whispered to him, "Go into the next room; I
have something to tell you."

"What can she mean to tell me?" he thought; but he did as he was told.

Half hidden by the curtain, he waited, but as she did not come, every
minute the bitterness of his soul increased. He remembered his beautiful
speeches about the peat-culture and Heine's "Buch der Lieder," and
shrugged his shoulders contemptuously over his own stupidity. He felt
as if he had grown years older and maturer in the course of this one
afternoon.

And then the questions suddenly arose within him, "What business have
you here? What are all those merry people, who laugh and want to please
each other, and live thoughtlessly from one day to another--what are all
those to you? You were a fool, a miserable fool, when you thought that
you had a right to be merry; that you, too, could be what they are."

The ground burned under his feet. He felt as if he were committing a sin
by remaining a minute longer in this place.

He slipped out into the hall, where his cap hung.

"Tell my sisters," he said to the servant who was waiting there, "that I
am going home to order a carriage for them."

And he breathed as if relieved when the door closed behind him.

The storm had abated: a soft rain came drizzling from the sky, the wind
blew refreshingly over the heath, and at the verge of the horizon, where
the evening glow paled away, the sheet-lightning of the far-distant
thunder-storm shot from fiery, glowing clouds.

As if the wild hunters were behind him, he ran across the rain-soaked
road to the wood, whose branches closed above his head with a peaceful
murmur. The damp moss sent out its perfume, and sparkling drops fell
from the needles of the fir-trees.

When he stepped out onto the heath, and saw the dark outline of his
home before his eyes, he stretched out his arms, and cried out into the
storm:

"Here is my place--here I belong, and I shall be a rogue if ever again
I try to find my happiness among strangers. I swear here that I will
reject all vanities and foolish hankerings. I know now what I am, and
what is unfit for me shall be lost to me. Amen."

So he took leave of his youth and of his youthful dreams.

CHAPTER XIII.

When he awoke next morning he found his mother sitting near his bed.

"You up already?" he asked, wonderingly.

"I have not been able to sleep," she said, in her low voice, which
always sounded as if she were asking pardon for what she said.

"Why not?" he asked.

She did not answer, but stroked his hair and smiled at him sadly. Then
he knew that the twins had been telling tales, and that it was grief for
him which did not let her rest.

"It was not so bad, mother," he said, consolingly; "they made fun of me
a little, nothing more."

"Elsbeth, too?" she asked, with big, anxious eyes.

"No, not she," he replied, "but--" he was silent and turned to the wall.

"But what?" asked his mother.

"I don't know," he answered, "but there is a 'but' in it--"

"You wrong her, perhaps," said his mother, "and look, she sent you
this by the girls." She drew from her pocket a long object which was
carefully wrapped in tissue-paper.

In it was a flute, made of black ebony, with sparkling silver keys.

Paul blushed with shame and joy; but his joy soon vanished, and after he
had looked at the instrument for a while he said, softly, "What must I
do with it now?"

"You must learn to play it," answered his mother, with a touch of pride.

"It is too late," he replied, shaking his head sadly; "there are other
things for me to do." He felt as if he had been made to drag something
dead out of its grave.

"Well, it seems that you cut a nice figure yesterday," said his father,
when they met at the breakfast-table.

He quietly smiled to himself, and his father muttered something about
lack of feeling of honor.

The twins had big dreamy eyes, and when they looked at each other a
blissful smile crossed their faces. They, at least, were happy.

Weeks passed. The harvest was got in unharmed, thanks to Paul's untiring
care. It was a better year than it had been for a long time. But his
father was already calculating how he could use the profits for his peat
speculation.

He bragged on in his usual manner, and the less Mr. Douglas seemed to
pay attention to the proceedings, the more he boasted at the inns about
the advantage of his partnership.

Having once consented to swindle, he had to outvie every lie by a new
and bigger one. Mr. Douglas might be as patient as he liked; the abuse
which was made of his name at last became too much for him.

It was one morning towards the end of August that Paul, who was working
in the yard with Michel Raudszus, saw the tall figure of their neighbor
walking across the fields straight to the Haidehof.

He was startled--that could not bode any good.

Mr. Douglas shook hands with him kindly, but from under his iron-gray,
bushy brows shot an ill-boding look.

"Is your father at home?" he asked, and his voice sounded angry and
threatening.

"He is in the parlor," Paul said, depressed; "if you will allow me, I
will take you to him."

At the sight of the unexpected guest, his father jumped up embarrassed
from his chair; but he recovered himself immediately, and began, in his
boasting tone, "Oh, it is a good thing that you are here, sir; I have
something urgent to say to you."

"And I not less to you," retorted Mr. Douglas, planting his massive
figure close before him. "How is it, my dear friend, that you abuse my
name in this manner?"

"I--your name--sir? What do you mean? Paul, go out."

"He may stay here," retorted Mr. Douglas, turning to Paul.

"He shall go out, sir!" cried the old man. "I suppose I am still master
in my own house, sir?"

Paul left the room.

In the dark passage he found his mother, who had folded her hands and
was gazing towards the door with a fixed look. At the sight of him she
broke into tears and wrung her hands.

"He will lose us the only friend we have still on earth," she sobbed;
then she sank down in his arms, starting convulsively when the
threatening voices of the two men fell louder on her ear.

"Come away, mother," he urged; "it excites you too much, and we can't
help matters, anyhow."

She let him drag her to her bedroom without resistance.

"Give me a little vinegar," she entreated, "or I shall drop."

He did as she asked, and while he rubbed her temples with it, spoke to
her in a loud tone, so that she should not hear the raised voices of the
two men.

Suddenly the doors banged; for a while all was quiet--uncomfortably
quiet; then the clattering of a chain and the cry of his father, hoarse
with fury,

"Sultan--at him!"

"For God's sake, he is setting the dog at him!" shrieked Paul, and
rushed into the yard.

He came just in time to see how Sultan, a big fierce mastiff, sprang at
Douglas's neck, while his father, brandishing his whip, ran after him.

Michel Raudszus had thrust his hands into his pockets and was looking
on.

"Father, what are you doing?" he shouted, tore the whip from his hand,
and wanted to go after the dog, but before he could reach the struggling
group the beast, strangled by the powerful hand of the giant, lay on the
ground stretching out its four paws.

The blood ran down from Douglas's arm and neck. His anger seemed
over. He remained standing still, wiping his hands with his
pocket-handkerchief, and said, with a good-natured smile,

"The poor beast has had to pay for it."

"You are wounded, Mr. Douglas!" Paul cried, clasping his hands.

"He has taken my neck for a joint of veal," he said. "Come with me for
a few steps, and help me to wash myself, so that my womenkind may not be
too much frightened."

"Forgive him," Paul entreated; "he did not know what he was doing."

"Will you come back, you wretch?" shrieked his father's voice from
the yard. "I suppose you want to make common cause with that forsworn
scoundrel!"

There was a convulsive twitch in his neighbor's clinched fists; but he
mastered himself, and said with a forced smile,

"Go back; the son ought to stay with the father."

"But I want to make amends," Paul stammered.

"The swindler, the rogue," was heard from the background.

"Go back," said Douglas, with set teeth; "make him keep quiet, or he
will do for himself."

Then he began to whistle a march with all his might, in order not to
hear the abuse, and walked off with a measured tread.

The old man was raging in the yard like a madman; he threw the stones
about, swung the cart-pole in the air, and kicked with his feet right
and left.

When he met Paul he wanted to seize him by the throat, but at that
moment his mother rushed out of doors with a piercing cry and threw
herself between them. She clung to Paul with both arms; she wanted to
speak, but the fear of her husband lamed her tongue. She could only look
at him.

"Pack of women!" he cried, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, and
turned away; but feeling obliged to vent his rage on somebody, he walked
up to Michel Raudszus, who was slowly returning to his work.

"You dog, what are you gaping here for?" he shouted at him.

"I am working, sir," he answered, and gave him a cutting glance from
under his black brows.

"What should prevent me, you dog, from grinding you to powder?" the old
man shrieked, shaking his fists under his nose.

The servant shrank back, and at that moment both his master's fists
struck him in the face. He staggered back--every drop of blood left his
dark face; without uttering a sound, he seized upon an axe.

But at this moment, Paul, who had been watching the scene with growing
anxiety, grasped his arm from behind, wrested the weapon from his hand,
and threw it into the well.

His father tried to clutch the servant by the throat again, but with
quick resolution Paul seized him round the body, and although the old
man kicked and struggled, gathering up all strength, carried him in his
arms into the parlor, the door of which he locked from the outside.

"What have you done to your father?" his mother whimpered. She had
beheld this deed of violence petrified with horror, for that her son
could attack his father was to her perfectly incomprehensible. She
looked shyly up at him, and repeated, wofully, "What have you done to
your father?"

Paul bent down to her, kissed her hand, and said, "Be calm, mother, I
had to save his life."

"And now you have locked him up? Paul, Paul!"

"He must remain there till Michel has gone," he replied. "Don't open the
door for him, or there will be an accident."

Then he walked out into the yard. The servant was leaning against the
stable door, chewing his black beard, and leering at him viciously.

"Michel Raudszus!" he called out to him.

The man approached. The veins on his forehead had swollen like blue
cords. He did not dare look at him.

"Your surplus wages are five marks and fifty pfennigs. Here they are. In
five minutes you must be gone."

The servant gave him such a terribly sinister glance that Paul was
alarmed at the thought that he had suffered this man near him so long
without any foreboding; he kept his eyes fixed upon him, for he feared
every moment to be attacked by him.

But the servant turned away in silence, went to the stables, where he
tied up his bundle, and two minutes later walked out at the gate. During
the whole terrible scene he had not uttered a single word.

"That's done! now to father," said Paul, firmly resolved to bear all
blows and abuse calmly.

He unlocked the door, and expected that his father would rush upon him.

The old man was sitting huddled up in the corner of the sofa, staring
before him. He did not move, either, when Paul came up to him and said,
beseechingly,

"I did not like doing it, father, but it had to be done."

He only gave him a shy look askance; then said, bitterly,

"You can do what you like; I am an old man, and you are the strongest."

Then he sank back again.

From that day forward Paul was master in the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

Three weeks had passed since then. Paul worked like a galley-slave. In
spite of that a strange unrest was upon him. When he allowed himself a
few moments' repose he could not bear to stay at home. He felt as if the
walls were falling in upon him. Then he rambled about on the heath or in
the wood, or he lingered near Helenenthal.

"If I should meet Elsbeth I think I should sink into the ground with
shame," he said to himself, and yet he looked about for her everywhere,
and trembled with fear and joy when he saw a female figure coming
towards him in the distance.

He also began to neglect his night's rest. As soon as all in the house
were asleep he crept away, and often returned only in the bright morning
to go to work again with swimming head and weary limbs.

"I will make amends--amends," he murmured often to himself; and when
his scythe hissed through the corn, he said, keeping time with it, "make
amends--make amends." But how to do so was totally vague to him; he did
not even know if Douglas had been seriously hurt by the dog's bite.

Once when he was roving about at twilight on the other side of the wood
he saw Michel Raudszus coming from Helenenthal. He carried a spade over
his shoulder, on which hung a bundle. Paul looked at him fixedly; he
expected to be attacked by him, but the servant only gave him a shy
side-glance and a wide berth.

"That fellow looks as if he were brooding over some evil," he thought,
looking after him.

Douglas had taken the expelled workman into his service, so one of the
laborers said, and when his father heard this he laughed, and said,
"That's just like the hypocrite--he will brew something nice for me."

He was firmly convinced that Douglas had given his case into the hands
of the law; indeed, he found a certain satisfaction in the thought that
he would be judged "unjustly," of course, and as from one day to the
other the summons never came, he explained, scornfully,

"The noble lord is fond of respites."

But Douglas seemed willing totally to ignore the ignominy he had
suffered; he did not even demand the capital lent on mortgage.

Paul's soul was overflowing with gratitude, and the less he found means
to show it the deeper he felt the shame--the more his unrest haunted
him.

So one night he again stood motionless at the garden fence of
Helenenthal.

Early autumn mists lay on the ground, and the withering grass quivered
lightly.

The White House disappeared in the shadows of the night, and only from
one of the windows there shone a dull, dark-red light.

"There she is, watching near her sick mother," Paul thought. And as
he found no other means to call her he began to whistle. Twice, three
times, he stopped to listen. Nobody came, and anxiety rose within him.

With groping hand he searched for the gap in the fence which Elsbeth
had shown him once, and when he had found it he penetrated to the inner
garden. The branches tore his clothes as, in a sort of wilderness, he
crept along the ground to find a path. At last he came to an open place.
The white gravel threw out a dim light which shone brighter than the
little lamp in the sick-room.

He seated himself on a bench and looked thither. He thought he saw a
shadow moving behind the curtains.

Then suddenly all around grew light; the rose-trees were visible in the
night; the gravel sparkled, and the gables of the dwelling-house, which
had just before stood out in a dark mass, now showed in dark reddish
tints, as if the light of dawn had fallen upon it.

Wonderingly he turned round; the blood froze in his veins; a purple
flash of fire shot up in the dark sky. The black clouds were outlined
with edges of fire, white flames whirled upward, and high above shot the
glowing beams, as if there was an _aurora borealis_ in the sky.

"Father's house is burning!"

His head fell heavily against the back of the bench; the next moment he
raised himself up, his knees shook, the blood hammered in his temples.
"On, on! save what is to be saved!" cried a voice within him; and with
a wild rush he broke through the bushes, climbed the garden fence, and
sank down into the ditch on the other side.

The burning farm glared over the heath like the rising sun. The stubble
shone, and the black wood was dipped in a red glow.

The dwelling-house was as yet unhurt; its walls shone like marble, its
windows sparkled like carbuncles. The yard was as bright as in daylight.
It was the barn that was burning--the barn, filled to the roof with the
harvest. His work, his happiness, his hope, lost like this in smoke and
flames.

He gathered himself up again; in wild haste he rushed across the heath.
When he passed the wood he thought he saw a shadow flitting away which,
at his approach, sank flat on the ground. He scarcely heeded it.

"On, on! save what is to be saved!"

Tumultuous screams greeted him from the yard. The farm-servants were
rushing about wildly, the maids were wringing their hands, his sisters
ran about calling his name.

The village had just awakened.... The high-road filled with people....
Water-buckets were dragged forth, and a rotten fire--engine came also
rattling along.

"Where is your master?" he shouted to the servants.

"Just being carried in; he has broken his leg," was the reply.
Misfortune upon misfortune.

"Let the barn burn," he called out to others who, losing their heads
entirely, were pouring tiny buckets of water into the flames.

"Save the cattle--take care that they do not run into the flames."

Three or four men hurried to the stables.

"You others to the house; don't carry anything out of it."

"Don't carry anything out," he repeated, tearing the objects out of the
hands of some strangers who were just dragging them out of the house.

"But we want to save the things."

"Save the house!"

He hurried up the staircase. In passing he saw his mother sitting mute
and tearless near his father, who lay on the sofa, whimpering.

Through a trap-door he jumped onto the roof.

"Give me the hose."

On a pitchfork they handed him the metal point of the hose. The column
of water fell hissing upon the hot bricks.

He sat astride on the ridge of the roof. His clothes became hot;
glimmering sparks, which came flying from the barn, settled on his hair.
Burning wounds covered his face and hands.

He felt nothing that happened to his person, but he saw and heard
everything around him--his senses seemed doubled.

He saw how the sheaves flew up to the sky in fiery flames, and saw them
sink down in a magnificent circle; he saw the horses and cows run out
into the meadows, where they were safe between the fences; he saw the
dog, half-singed, tearing at his chain.

"Unchain the dog," he called down.

He saw little graceful flames, in bluish flickering light, dancing from
the roof of the barn to the neighboring shed.

"The shed is burning!" he shouted below. "Save what is in it!"

A few people hurried away to pull out the carts.

And meanwhile the column of water hissed over the roof, made its way
to the rafters and splashed over the bricks. Little white clouds rose
before him and disappeared, to reappear again in other places.

Then suddenly "Black Susy" came to his mind. She was standing in the
farthest corner of the shed, buried among old rubbish.

A pang shot through his breast. Shall she perish now as well--she, on
whom his heart had ever placed its hopes?

"Save the locomobile!" he shouted down.

But no one understood him.

The longing to bring help to "Black Susy" seized upon him so powerfully
that for a moment he felt he must even sacrifice the house.

"Send somebody to replace me," he called down to the crowd of people,
who for the greater part stood idly gaping.

A stalwart mason from the village came climbing up, took off the slates,
and so made himself a path up to the ridge of the roof. Paul gave the
hose to him and glided down, wondering inwardly that he broke neither
arms nor legs.

Then he penetrated into the shed, from which suffocating smoke was
already whirling towards him.

"Who is coming with me?" he shouted.

Two laborers from the village presented themselves.

"Forward!"

Into the smoke and flames they went.

"Here is the shaft--seize it--out quickly!"

Creaking and rattling, the locomobile came staggering out into the yard.
Behind her and those who had saved her the roof of the shed fell in.

The morning dawned. The gray twilight intermingled with the smoke of
the ruins, from which here and there flames sprang up to sink down again
immediately exhausted.

The crowd had dispersed. Leaden silence weighed upon the farm; only from
the scene of the fire there came a soft creaking and hissing, as if the
flames, before subsiding, were holding once more murmuring intercourse.

"So," said Paul, "that is done."

Dwelling-house and stables with all the livestock were saved. Barns and
sheds lay in ashes.

"Now we are just as poor as we were twenty years ago," he meditated,
feeling his wounds, "and if I had not been roving about perhaps this
would never have happened."

When he entered the porch overgrown with creepers he found his mother,
with folded hands, crouching in a corner. Deep lines furrowed her
cheeks, and her eyes were staring into vacancy, as if she still saw the
flames playing before her.

"Mother," he cried, anxiously, for he feared that she was not far from
madness.

Then she nodded a few times, and said,

"Yes, yes; such is life."

"It will be better again, mother," he cried.

She looked at him and smiled. It cut him to the heart, this smile.

"Your father has just turned me out," she said; "I entreat you not to
turn me out, too."

"Mother, for Christ's sake, don't speak like that!"

"You see, Paul, it has really not been my fault," she said, looking up
at him with a pleading expression, "I never go with a light into the
stables."

"But who says so?"

"Your father says that it is all my fault and told me to go to the
devil. But don't harm him, Paul," she entreated, anxiously, as she saw
him flying into a passion; "don't interfere with him again, he suffers
such great pain."

"The doctor is coming in an hour; I have sent for him already."

"Go to your father, Paul, and comfort him; you see, I should like to
go myself, but he has turned me out," and, crouching down again, she
muttered to herself,

"He has turned me out--out."

CHAPTER XV.

Unspeakable misery had descended on the Haidehof. The father lay in the
parlor, on his sickbed, and groaned and complained and cursed the hour
of his birth. In milder moments he seized his wife's hand with tearful
eyes, and asked her forgiveness for having united her fate to his ruined
life, and promised to make her rich and happy in future. Rich--above all
things, rich.

It was too late. Mild words from him now made no impression on her. In
her tormented heart she already heard the abuse which would inevitably
follow them. With withered cheeks and lustreless eyes she walked about,
never uttering a sound of complaint, doubly pitiful in her silence.

But no one had pity on her--not even God and eternal fate. She grew more
tired from day to day; on her pale, blue-veined forehead the stamp
of death seemed already to burn, and the happiness she had longed for
through all her life was farther away than ever.

The only one who would have been able to give her some relief was Paul,
and he avoided her like a criminal. He scarcely dared to shake hands
with her in the morning, and when she looked at him he looked down. If
she had been less torpid and less grief-laden she might have had
some suspicion, but all she felt in her misery was that she lacked
consolation.

Once at twilight, when he was rummaging about as usual after work in the
ruins of the spot where the fire had been, she went after him, sat
down near him on the crumbling foundation, and tried to enter into
conversation, but he avoided her, as he had done before.

"Paul, don't be so hard to me," she pleaded, and her eyes filled with
tears.

"I am not doing anything to you, mother," he said, setting his teeth.

"Paul, you have something against me?"

"No, mother."

"Do you think that the fire was caused by my fault?"

Then he cried out loud, clasped her knees, and wept like a child; but
when she wanted to stroke his hair--the only caress which had been usual
between them--he sprang up, pushed her back, and cried,

"Do not touch me, mother; I am not worthy of it."

Then he turned his back on her, and walked out onto the heath.

Since the moment of his first waking after the fire a fixed idea
possessed him which would not leave go of him; the fixed idea that he
alone had been guilty of it all.

"If I had not been roaming about," he said to himself--"if I had watched
the house, as was my duty, this misfortune could never have happened."
All his secret yearnings appeared to him now like a crime committed
against his father's house.

Like Jesus in Gethsemane, he struggled with his own heart, seeking
expiation and forgiveness. But his self-torment did not let him rest
anywhere. At all hours the flames were dancing before his eyes, and when
he went to bed at night and stared into the darkness, it seemed as if
from every chink fiery tongues were jutting forth, as if clouds of black
smoke surrounded him instead of the shadows of the night.

He had not been able yet to think about the cause of the fire; the cares
which were overwhelming him again were too great to leave any room for
thoughts of revenge. The very necessities of life failed them; money
for the chemist could scarcely be scraped together. He meditated and
calculated day and night, and formed great plans of campaign to collect
the most absolutely necessary cash. He also wrote to his brothers, to
know whether they could not procure him by their influence a few hundred
thalers at moderate interest. They answered, deeply grieved, that they
themselves were so overrun with debts that it was impossible for them
to reckon on any further credit. Gottfried, the teacher had, indeed,
engaged himself a short time ago to a wealthy young lady, and Paul was
convinced that it could not have been difficult for him to induce her
family to lend him a small sum, but he was of opinion that the dignity
of his position would suffer by such a request; he said he should be
afraid of compromising himself with his father-in-law if he disclosed
his real circumstances too early.

With all this it was a blessing that the ripe harvest had already been
sold and delivered, and that the potatoes, for the greater part, were
still in the ground; so he could get some ready money, which would be
sufficient to cover the most necessary expenses; but how, indeed, was
the rebuilding of the barn ever to be contemplated?

In the middle of the ruins--melancholy ruins of charred beams and
charred walls--"Black Susy" stood erect with her sooty body and slender
neck, the only thing which, except for a few miserable carts, had been
saved from destruction.

The twins, who during this sad time had lost much of their merriment,
and only in quiet corners still prattled and giggled, went about
timidly; and his father, when he for the first time sat upright in his
bed and saw the black monster glaring through the window, clinched his
fist, and cried,

"Why did they not let that beast be burned?"

But Paul loved her in his heart only the more tenderly. "Now would be
the time for you to come to life again," he said, and pulled out the
wheel and looked into the boiler. He began to cut little models of
lime-wood in the evenings, and one day he wrote to Gottfried:

"Send me a few books out of the school-library on the working of
steam-engines. I feel as if much depended on them for our home."

Gottfried was solicited in vain. In the first place, it went against his
principles to take books from the library which he did not use himself;
and, secondly, they would not be of any good to Paul, as he was not up
in the theory of physics. Then he wrote to Max. The latter immediately
sent him a packet, weighing ten pounds, of brand-new volumes, enclosing
a bill for fifty marks. He decided to keep the books and slowly to save
up the fifty marks. "Nothing is too dear for 'Black Susy,'" he said.

But fresh cause for uneasiness was to befall him.

One morning a carriage came driving up to the farm, in which two
unknown gentlemen were sitting with a gendarme, one of whom, a
comfortable-looking man, of about forty years old, wearing golden
spectacles on his nose, introduced himself as a police-magistrate.

Paul was terrified, for he felt very well that he had been concealing
many things.

The magistrate first examined the scene of the fire, took a sketch of
the foundations, and asked where the doors and windows had been; then he
had all the servants called out, whom he questioned most closely as to
what they had done on the day before, and up to the moment when the fire
had broken out.

Paul stood near him, pale and trembling, and when the magistrate
dismissed the servants to examine Paul himself, he felt as if the end of
the world had come.

"Were you in the barn the day before the fire?" the magistrate asked.

"Yes."

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Do you remember whether in any way you had anything to do with fire,
matches, or such things?"

"Oh no, I am much too careful for that."

"When were you last in the barn?"

"At eight o'clock in the evening."

"What were you doing there?"

"I made my usual evening round before I locked the gates."

"Do you always lock the gates yourself?"

"Yes, always."

"Did you notice anything on that particular evening?"

"No."

"Did you see any one lurking in the neighborhood?"

It flashed like lightning upon him. He only remembered at this moment
the shadow which he had seen disappearing into the wood at the beginning
of the fire. But that was not in the neighborhood, and, drawing a long
breath, he answered,

"No."

"Well, now it will come out," he thought; the very next question would
bring his night wanderings to the light of day--would betray the secret
that hitherto he had kept in his inmost heart.

But no. The magistrate broke off suddenly, and said, after a little
pause,

"Was not a servant called Raudszus in your service till a short time
ago?"

"Yes." he answered, and stared at the magistrate with astonished eyes.
So it was on Raudszus, then, that suspicion fell.

"Why did you dismiss him?"

He related the dreadful occurrence minutely, but took great care that
the scene with Douglas, which had preceded, should remain as much as
possible in the dark. Now, as the first danger was averted, he had found
his tranquillity again.

The clerk took notes eagerly, and the magistrate raised his eyebrows, as
if all were already clear to him. When Paul had ended, he made a sign
to the gendarme, who turned round silently, and walked off on the way to
Helenenthal.

"Now for your father," said the magistrate; "is he in a state to be
examined?"

"Let me see," answered Paul, and he went into the sick-room.

He found his father sitting erect in his bed; his eyes sparkled, and on
his features there were signs of ill-suppressed fury.

"Let them come," he called out to Paul; "it is all nothing but
fiddlesticks--they do not dare to accuse the real one--but let them come
in."

He, too, related the scene of the struggle; but just what Paul had
concealed, from shame--the quarrel with Douglas, and the setting-on of
the dog--he dwelt on before the strangers with boastful loquacity.

The magistrate scratched his head, thoughtfully, and his clerk noted
everything down eagerly.

When Meyerhofer came to the moment in which he ought to have spoken of
his son's interference, he was silent. He shot a glance at him, in which
a world of defiance and anger flamed.

"And what more?" asked the magistrate.

"I am an old man," he muttered between his teeth; "do not force me to
confess my own ignominy."

The magistrate was satisfied. When he asked the old man whether his
suspicion had not already fallen on Michel Raudszus, he chuckled
mysteriously to himself and murmured,

"He may have furnished the hand, the miserable hand, but--" he stopped.

"But?"

"It is a pity, sir, that justice wears a bandage over her eyes," he
answered, with a sneering laugh. "I have nothing more to add."

Magistrate and clerk looked at each other, shaking their heads; then the
examination was closed.

"Will Michel Raudszus be arrested?" Paul asked the gentlemen before they
got into their carriage.

"Let us hope that has been done already," the magistrate answered. "He
has made all sorts of suspicious allusions when drunk, and what we have
learned from you is more than enough evidence to begin a trial against
him. Of course many things will still have to be cleared up."

Then they drove away.

Paul stared after the carriage for a long time.

The last words of the magistrate had awakened his anxiety anew, and
while weeks were passing and the first steps towards the trial were
taken, he sat trembling nervously at home, just as if the verdict would
crush him and him only.

Paul, with his mother and sisters, received a summons to the assizes;
it was only to his father that the choice was left whether he would be
examined on oath at home for the last time, but he declared he would
prefer to fall down dead in the court than to sit at home while the
destroyer of his property was allowed to escaped scot-free. Whom he
meant by this phrase he left unexplained--only that it was not the
accused servant, he gave one plainly enough to understand.

The day of the trial came. Paul had made a portable chair for his
father, which saved him walking a step. In this he was lifted into the
cart and softly put down on a layer of hay.

It was a miserable rickety cart which brought the Meyerhofer family to
the town, for the better vehicles had all been burned. Paul had made it
as comfortable as he could. Over the truss of straw, which served for a
seat, he had spread an old horse-cloth, which in the course of years had
become torn and discolored.

With poverty all around him, the master of the house lay in the cart,
groaning and scolding; his wife was enthroned above him, pale and
wretched and harassed, as if she were the genius of this ruin. The
ever-blooming youth, which even thrives on rubbish, laughed from two
roguish pairs of eyes in between, and in front, as driver of this
wretched vehicle, sat Paul, and looked sadly before him, for he was
ashamed that he could offer no better conveyance to his dear ones, whom
for the first time he took out for a long drive all together.

The faint beams of the November sun were lying on the yellow heath; the
heather extended among thin yellow grass; here and there glistened pools
of rain-water; and single leaves were hanging down from the crippled
willows at the road-side like dead summer birds.

"Do you remember how, twenty-one years ago, we were driving along this
same road?" Frau Elsbeth asked her husband, and threw a glance at Paul,
whom she had at that time clasped to her breast.

Meyerhofer muttered something to himself, for he was no friend to
memories--to such memories. But Frau Elsbeth folded her hands and
thought of many things: it could be of nothing sad, for she smiled.

The nearer the cart approached the end of the journey, the more
depressed Paul felt. He stretched himself on his seat and a shiver kept
passing through his frame.

That wild night of the fire stood before his eyes with awful clearness,
and in the midst of his fear at having to stand and speak before strange
people he was overcome with a feeling of happiness when he remembered
how he had stood high on the steep roof, surrounded by smoke and flames,
acting and ruling as the leading spirit whom all obeyed--the only one
who in all the tumult had kept his head clear. "Perhaps I could still be
as courageous as any man if it should be necessary," he said to himself,
consolingly; but he afterwards sank into still deeper despondency as he
contemplated his sad, oppressed, worthless existence. "It will never be
otherwise; it can only become worse from year to year," he said. Then he
heard his mother sighing behind him, and what he had just been thinking
appeared to him as base, heartless selfishness.

"It is no question of myself," he murmured, and the cart passed through
the gate of the town.

Before the red brick law-courts with the high stone staircase and
arched windows the vehicle stopped. Not far from it stood a well-known
carriage, and the coachman on the box still wore the same tassel which
had made such an impression on Paul at the time when he was to be
confirmed.

When his father was raised up it caught his eye also.

"Ah, so the vagabond is there, too!" he cried. "I'll just see if he can
stand a look from me."

Then Paul, with the help of a policeman, carried him up the steps to the
room for the witnesses. His mother and sisters came after them, and the
people stopped and looked at the melancholy procession.

The waiting-room for the witnesses was full of people, mostly inmates
from Helenenthal. In one corner stood a small party of beggars, a woman
with a bloated face, a gay red shawl tied round her waist, in which a
little baby slept. A little troop of ragged children were clinging to
the folds of her dress. They scratched their heads or secretly pinched
each other. This was the family of the accused, who wished to state that
their father had been at home that night.

Meyerhofer stretched himself out in his chair and threw defiant glances
all around. He thought himself a greater man than ever to-day--a hero
and a martyr at the same time.

The door opened, and Douglas appeared with Elsbeth on the threshold.
Meyerhofer cast a poisonous glance at him and laughed scornfully to
himself. Douglas did not heed him, but sat down in the opposite corner,
drawing Elsbeth to him. She looked pale and worn, and had a shy, timid
manner, that might arise from her strange, unaccustomed surroundings.

She nodded with a slight smile to Paul's mother and sisters, and looked
at him with a meditative glance, which seemed to ask something.

He lowered his eyes, for he could not bear her gaze. His mother made a
movement as if to cross over to her, but Meyerhofer seized her skirt,
and said, louder than necessary, "If you dare!"

Paul felt as if paralyzed. His knees shook under him; a dull weight
pressed upon his forehead which rendered him incapable of thought.

"You will bring shame on her," he murmured incessantly, but without
knowing what he was saying.

Inside the court the examination of witnesses began. One after the other
was called.

First the workmen; then the public-house keeper in whose house Michel
Raudszus had made the suspicious allusions; then the ragged little group
in the corner. The room began to empty. Then the name of Douglas was
called out. He whispered a few words in his daughter's ear, which
probably had reference to the Meyerhofers, and then walked off with long
strides.

Her hands folded in her lap, she now sat alone by the wall. A deep blush
of excitement burned on her cheeks. She looked very sweet and timid, and
her simple, truthful nature was impressed on all her features.

His mother did not take her eyes from her, and at times she looked
across at Paul and smiled as if in a dream.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; then Elsbeth's name also was called. She
threw one friendly glance at his mother and disappeared through the
door. Her examination was not long.

"Mr. Meyerhofer, senior!" the clerk called from the court, and sprang
towards them to help Paul in carrying the chair.

The old man panted and puffed out his cheeks; then again he leaned back,
moaning low--inwardly rejoicing greatly to be able to play a part so
full of effect.

The wide assize court swam before Paul's eyes in a red mist; he
indistinctly saw closely-packed faces gazing down on himself or on his
father; then he had to leave the court again.

The sisters, who up to now had looked around full of curiosity, began
to be afraid. To deaden their fear they ate the sandwiches they had
brought. Paul encouraged them, and refused the sausage which they
generously offered him.

His mother had retired to a corner, was trembling, and said, from time
to time, "What may they be wanting with me?"

"Mr. Meyerhofer, junior!" sounded from the door.

The next moment he stood in the lofty room filled with people before an
elevated table, at which sat several men with severe and serious faces;
only one, who sat a little on one side, smiled constantly; that was the
chief-justice, who was feared by all the world. On the right side of the
court, too, on raised seats, sat a little knot of dignified citizens,
who looked very much bored, and tried to pass the time with penknives,
bits of paper, etc. These were the jury. On the left side, locked up in
the dock, sat the accused. He was making eyes at the audience, and his
face looked as if the whole affair concerned anybody but him. Paul had
never seen the sinister fellow look so cheerful.

"Your name is Paul Meyerhofer, you were born at such and such a time,
Protestant, etc.?" asked the judge who sat in the middle, a man with a
closely-shorn head and a large, sharply-cut nose reading the dates from
a big book. He spoke in a pleasant murmuring tone, but suddenly his
voice grew harsh and cutting as a knife, and his eyes shot lightning at
Paul.

"Before your examination, Mr. Paul Meyerhofer, I call your attention to
the fact that you will have to confirm your statement by oath."

Paul shuddered. The word oath passed through his soul like a dagger. He
felt as if he must throw himself down and hide his face from all those
spying eyes which were staring at him.

And then he gradually felt a strange change come over him. The staring
eyes disappeared, the court vanished in mist, and the longer the clear,
sharp voice of the judge was speaking to him, the more impressively he
heard himself threatened with heavenly and earthly punishment, the more
he felt as if he were quite alone in the big room with that man, and all
his senses tended so to answer him that Elsbeth should be entirely left
out of the question.

"Now is the moment--now show yourself a man!" cried a voice within him.
It was a feeling very like the one he had had while sitting on the
roof: his wits were sharpened, and the dull weight which pressed on him
constantly sank away as if the chains with which he had been fettered
were taken off.

He related in quiet words what he knew about the accused, and described
his character; he also mentioned that he had felt a sort of inner
resemblance between them.

When he said that, a murmur went through the court, the jury let the
bits of paper fall, and two or three penknives were shut noisily.

"What happened when Mr. Douglas and your father fell out?" asked the
president.

"I cannot tell you that," he answered, in a firm voice.

"Why not?"

"I should have to speak ill of my father," he answered.

"What does ill mean?" asked the president. "Do you mean to imply that
you fear to expose your father to punishment by law?"

"Yes," he answered, softly.

Again the same murmur went through the court, and behind his back he
heard the voice of his father hissing, "The degenerate rascal!" But he
did not allow himself to be confused by that.

"The law permits you in such cases to refuse to make a statement,"
the president continued. "But what happened that made your father turn
against Raudszus?"

Without hesitation he related the scene; only when he had to confess how
he had carried his father into the house his voice shook, and he turned
around as if wishing to implore pardon from him.

The old man had clinched his fists and gnashed his teeth. He had to live
to see his own son tear the halo of glory from his head.

"And after you had dismissed the servant, did you see or hear nothing of
him any more?" asked the president.

"No."

"When you awoke in the night of the fire, what did you see first?" he
continued his questioning.

A long silence. Paul put his hands to his forehead and staggered back
two steps.

A thrill of pity ran through the hall. No one thought otherwise but that
the remembrance of that terrible sight overpowered him.

The silence continued.

"Please answer."

"I did--not--sleep."

"So you were awake.... Were you in your bedroom when you first perceived
the glow of the fire?"

"No."

"Where were you?"

A long pause. One could have heard a leaf falling to the ground it was
so still in the court.

"You were not at home?"

"No."

"Where then?"

"In--the garden--of--Helenenthal."

A surpressed murmur arose, which grew into a tumult when old Douglas,
who had sprung up from his chair, cried out in a voice that penetrated
through the court, "What were you doing there?" Old Meyerhofer uttered
a curse. Elsbeth turned pale, and her head sank heavily against the back
of the bench.

The president seized the bell.

"I must beg silence there," he said; "it is I who put the questions.
On a repeated interruption I shall have you taken out of court. So,
Mr. Paul Meyerhofer, what were you going to do in the garden of
Helenenthal?"

At the same moment there arose a fresh murmur in the background, and in
the witness-box a circle formed itself around Elsbeth.

"What is the matter over there?" asked the president.

The chief-justice, whose eyes no speck of dust in the court escaped,
bent forward and whispered to him, with a meaning smile,

"The witness has fainted."

Then the president, too, smiled, and the whole assembly of judges
smiled.

Elsbeth, leaning on her father's arm, left the court.

Now the little man with the sharply-cut features rose--he sat before
the accused, and had been playing during the whole time with a bunch of
keys--and said,

"I ask the president to adjourn the case for five minutes, as the
presence of the witness concerned in this matter is of importance."

Paul sent a shy glance at this man.

The court adjourned.

The five minutes were an eternity. Paul was allowed to sit down in the
witness-box. His father continued staring at him with fury in his eyes,
but he made no sign that he wished to speak to him.

Elsbeth was brought back into the court, pale as death, and Paul stepped
forward again.

"I warn you again," the president began, "to be in all things strictly
truthful, for you know that each word of your statement is uttered under
oath."

"I know it," said Paul.

"But you have the right, as you know, to refuse any statement if you
fear that the same would bring down any punishment upon yourself or your
family. Will and can you make use of this right now, as you did before?"

"No."

He spoke in a firm, clear voice, for he had the certainty that Elsbeth's
honor would be irremediably lost if he were silent now.

"But if my oath is perjury?" he heard his conscience whisper immediately
after; but it was too late.

"Oh! what did you want to do in the garden?" the president asked.

"I wanted--to make amends for the sin committed against Douglas in my
father's house."

A murmur of disappointment and unbelief went through the court.

"And for that reason you roamed about in the strange garden?"

"I had a longing to meet somebody, of whom I might have asked pardon."

"And for that you chose the night?"

"I could not sleep."

"And you were driven there by your restlessness?"

"Yes."

"Did you meet anybody in the garden?"

"No."

"Have you been there on any former occasion at the same hour?"

A long pause, then another "no" came from his mouth, this time softly
and hesitatingly, as if wrung from his conscience.

The constraint which weighed on every one began to lessen, the president
turned over his papers, and Elsbeth gazed across at him with big
lustreless eyes.

"Where were you when you first saw the glow of the flames?"

"About twenty steps away from the manor-house of Helenenthal."

"And what did you do then?"

"I was much frightened, and hastened back immediately to my father's
farm."

"In what manner did you leave the garden?"

"I climbed over the garden fence."

"So you did NOT open the door which leads from the garden to the yard?"

"No."

"And didn't you pass the front of the house?"

"No."

A new tumult arose in court. The little man with the bunch of keys rose
and said,

"I must ask the president to question Miss Douglas again--regarding what
she says she heard that night."

"If you please, Miss Douglas," said the president.

With a long look at Paul she rose. They now stood close together in the
wide, crowded court, as if they belonged to each other.

"Where did the steps vanish to which you heard when the glow of the fire
woke you?"

"Towards the yard," she replied, softly--hardly audible.

"And did you distinctly hear the handle of the garden gate rattle?"

"Yes."

"Consider well if you may not have been mistaken."

"I was not mistaken," she answered, softly but firmly.

"Thank you. You may sit down."

She went back to her seat with uncertain steps. Since that fatal "no"
her eye was riveted on Paul. She seemed to have forgotten by that time
all around her.

"When you got over the garden fence, which way did you take?" the
president continued, turning to Paul.

"Across the heath."

"Did you pass the wood?"

"No; I ran two or three hundred steps away from it."

"Did you meet any one on your way?"

"I saw a shadow which moved towards the wood, and at my approach
disappeared suddenly."

A prolonged stir went through the court; the accused man turned pale,
and his eyes assumed a fixed look. The chief-justice did not take his
eyes off him.

A few more unimportant questions, and then Paul was allowed to sit down.

His mother and sisters were called, but what they could tell was of no
importance. The sisters looked round inquisitively, almost boldly. His
mother wept when she had to speak about the moment of her waking.

Paul felt proud and happy that Elsbeth had not been compromised by
him. He looked down smiling, and rejoiced at his courage. But when the
witnesses were called for their oaths, and he had to lift up his hand,
he felt as if a load of a hundred pounds were hanging on it, and as if a
low, sad voice whispered in his ear, "Do not swear."

And he swore.

When he sat down, the voice said again, "Have you, perhaps, committed
perjury?" Instinctively he raised his head. Then he fancied that a gray
shadow flitted past him and touched his forehead lightly.

He knitted his brows defiantly. "And supposing I should have sworn
falsely, was it not for her?"

For a moment his soul was filled with wild joy at this thought, but in
the next already a dull weight lay on his breast, stifling his breath
and binding him hand and foot, so that he felt as if henceforth he would
never be able to move any more.

He heard the monotonous voice of the counsel, who began his speech. But
he did not heed it. Once he started, when the counsel for the defence
pointed towards him with his bunch of keys, and cried out in his shrill,
querulous voice: "And this witness, gentlemen of the jury, who roams
about mysteriously at night in strange gardens, and finds out all sorts
of psychological and artificial subterfuges to hide the tender motive of
his nightly excursions, can you put any reliance upon him when he says
he suddenly saw a shadow appear and disappear? Shadows which, to put it
mildly, can only originate in his overheated brain? What did he want in
the garden, gentlemen of the jury? I leave it to your penetration,
to your experience of life, to answer this question; and as for the
witness, it is his lookout to accommodate his oath to his conscience."

Then he collapsed completely.

The jury returned a verdict of "Guilty." Michel Raudszus was sentenced
to five years penal servitude.

At the same moment, when the president pronounced the sentence of the
law, a mocking laugh resounded through the court. It proceeded from
Meyerhofer. He had got up in his chair and stretched out his maimed hand
towards Douglas, as if he wanted to fly at his throat.

As he was carried out of court, he continually cried out,

"They hang the insignificant incendiaries, but the powerful ones are
allowed to go scot-free."

The uncanny laughter of the helpless man resounded through the wide
passages.

CHAPTER XVI.

Winter came and went.... The heath was covered with snow and became
green again.... The ranunculus lifted up their golden heads.... The
juniper sent forth its tender shoots, and the warble of the lark sounded
from out the blue sky.

Only to the dismal Howdahs spring would not come. Paul had, indeed, made
it possible to procure corn for sowing, and a wooden building already
stood erected on the place of ruin, but the hope for better times had
still not come. Dull and joylessly he did his duty, and deeper and
deeper the lines became traced upon his forehead. He brooded over things
by himself more than ever, and the fear that he had committed perjury
weighed heavily upon him.

Months elapsed before it was clear to him that his grievance was nothing
but idle trifling which originated in his over-anxious stickling at
words. He reflected thoroughly on the question which the president had
addressed to him, and came to the conclusion that he could not
have answered otherwise. It was, indeed, the first time that he had
penetrated into his neighbor's garden; what had once taken place on a
blissful moonlight night had happened on this side of the fence. What
was that to the gentlemen of the law-courts?

"No; I am not a perjurer," he said to himself; "I am only a coward,
a simpleton, who is afraid of the mere shadow of a deed. Ought I not
proudly and joyfully to have sworn a false oath for Elsbeth's sake? Then
I should be somebody; then I should have done something, while now I
live on, torpid and discouraged, a farm laborer-nothing more."

And in the brain of this "pattern boy" arose the fervent wish to be
a great criminal, just because he felt compelled to prove his own
individuality. The hours which he had passed on the roof and in the
witness-box now seemed to him the ideal of all earthly bliss, and the
harder he worked the idler and more useless he fancied himself.

His father was still kept to his chair, which to all appearances he
would never again be able to leave, for his broken leg had healed badly.
Idle and grumbling he sat in his corner, turning over an old almanac
without interest, and abusing every one who came near him.

Only for Paul he cherished a sort of involuntary respect; he grumbled
to himself as often as he saw him, but did not dare to contradict him
openly.

And his mother?

She had grown a little more weary, a little quieter, otherwise there
was hardly any change perceptible in her; but those who observed more
attentively could hear a rustle in the air, as though a vulture were
hovering over the Howdahs and drawing its circles ever closer and
closer, and preparing to pounce down one day on its prey.

She herself heard the rustle very well; she knew, too, what it
signified; but she remained silent, as she had been silent all her life.

And happiness had not come yet.

At the beginning of April she took to her bed. "General weakness," the
doctor said, and recommended a visit to a place where there were iron
baths. She smiled, and begged him not to speak of a watering-place to
any one, for she knew that Paul would work himself to death to make this
course of treatment possible for her.

Such a course would not really help her. She knew very well what she
needed; sunshine! Dame Care had shrouded her too closely with her sombre
veil to allow a single ray of sun to penetrate into her soul.

It was now left to the twins to take care of the household. And the work
was briskly done indeed; even Paul had to confess that. When they had
broken anything, they laughed; when a walk was refused them, they cried;
but the crying soon changed again to laughter, and the table was never
so promptly served, the milk-pails had never been so bright.

His mother often observed that from her window, and thought, "It is
a good thing that I should go away; I am no longer of any use in the
world."

About Whitsuntide her sleep began to fail; then fever set in.

"Oh, how expensive quinine is!" sighed Paul, when the servant rode off
to the chemist's; and he looked appealingly at "Black Susy," but she did
not move. Often the work in the fields had to come to a stand-still, in
order that they might earn a few groschen for the household by cutting
peat.

His mother began to suffer from palpitations, and desired most earnestly
that somebody would sit up with her at night. But the twins, tired out
with their day's work, would fall asleep in the evening by the bedside
of the invalid, and often sank down right across her bed, so that the
feeble woman often had to bear upon her own body the weight of the two
healthy girls.

Paul sent his sisters to rest, and took upon himself the office of
watching.

"Go to sleep, my son," said his mother; "you need rest more than any of
them."

But he remained; and in the May nights, when outside in the garden the
flowers were whispering and the perfume of the lilac penetrated through
every crack, the two would often sit hand in hand for hours looking
at each other, as though they had wondrous things to impart. So it had
always been between mother and son. The wealth of their love sought for
expression in words, but care had robbed them of speech.

In the morning, when the sun rose, he dipped his head into icy cold
water and went to work.

His presence brought peace to his mother, in so far that she could sleep
at times when he was by. Then he used to go on tip-toe to his room
and fetch down his books on physics, in which the construction of
steam-engines was so learnedly and unintelligibly set forth. His head,
tired with watching and unaccustomed to any mental work, with difficulty
grasped the sense of the mysterious words; but he had time, and
indefatigably he worked on, page by page, as a peasant ploughs a stony
field.

If his mother opened her eyes, she would ask,

"How are you getting on, my son?"

And then he had to explain it to her, and she pretended to understand
something about it.

But if she asked, "Why are you doing this?" he would put on a knowing
look, and reply, "I am learning to make gold."

"My poor boy," she would answer, stroking his hand.

One night, immediately after the Whitsuntide holidays, she again could
not sleep.

"Read me something from those learned books," she said; "they bore one
so nicely. Perhaps they will send me to sleep."

And he did as she asked him; but when he had been reading almost an
hour, he saw that she was gazing at him with big, feverish eyes, and was
further than ever from sleep.

"So with that you want to make gold?" she asked.

"Yes, mother," he answered, confusedly, for the return of fever made him
anxious.

"How will you do it?"

"You will see in good time," he answered, as usual.

But this time she would not be put off. "Tell me, my boy," she pleaded,
"tell me now.... Who knows what may happen?... I should like at least to
have that little bit of comfort before I fall asleep forever."

"Mother!" he cried, terrified.

"Be still, my boy," she said; "what does it matter? But tell me, tell
me!" she pleaded with growing anxiety, as if in the next moment it might
already be too late.

With bated breath and confused words he spoke of the plans which he had
in his head: how he wanted to reawaken "Black Susy" to life, so that the
moor could be utilized to its innermost depths; but in the middle of his
speech, anxiety overcame him; he fell sobbing on his knees before the
bed with his face on her breast.

She bade him look up, and said: "It was not right of me to make you
anxious. If God so wills it, all may turn out differently yet. What
you tell me has given me great joy. I know that if you take anything in
hand, you do not soon let it drop. I only wish I could live to see it."

So, gently, imperceptibly, she restored his courage; as to herself, she
had nothing left to hope for.

Another night when, overtired, he had fallen asleep in his chair, she
called his name.

"What do you want, mother?" he asked, starting up.

"Nothing," she said. "Forgive me, I ought to have let you sleep. But who
knows how long we shall still be able to talk together? I should like to
make the most of the time."

This time he was too much overcome with sleep to understand the meaning
of her words. He sat down closer to her and took her hand, but his eyes
closed again directly.

She thought he was awake and began to speak.

"I was once a very merry young creature, not very different from your
sisters.... My heart was nearly ready to burst with joy, and my eyes
always gazed into the distance, as if from there something unspeakably
beautiful would come--a prince, or something of that sort. Once, too,
I began to love--with that other kind of love, that great heavenly love
which comes upon one like fate. But he would not have me; he was fair
and slender and had a blemish on his chin. I always longed to kiss the
spot, but could never do it. He saw my love well enough, and, one day,
when he was especially daring, he took me in his arms and fondled me,
and then let me go again. But I was happy; it made me glad that he had
once held me in his arms."

She stopped, her eyes sparkled, a rosy, almost maidenly blush tinted her
cheeks; she had grown wonderfully young again. Then she saw that he had
fallen asleep, and sadly relapsed into silence.

When he awoke, Paul said, "It seems to me, mother, that you were telling
me something."

"You must have been dreaming," she said, smiling; but her thoughts
meanwhile had been wandering back through her whole life, seeking in
every corner of her memory for the remnants of joy which lay concealed
there.

"I don't really know," she said, "why I have been so sad all my life.
When I come to think of it, a great misfortune has never really happened
to ne. Of course it was not nice when we had to leave Helenenthal, and
when I saw the room lit up blood-red by the burning barn, it gave me
a bad enough fright, but, on the whole, life has treated me tolerably
well. I have reared all you children, I have not lost one by death-we
have always had food and drink, too. Father has sometimes grumbled, it
is true, but that is always the case in married life; you will find it
so yourself some day. You children have always loved me. You boys have
grown up able men, and the girls will be able women, if God wills it,
and you keep your eye upon them. What more do I want?"

And so this poor woman, who was gradually being harassed to death,
worried herself to discover _what_ was harassing her to death. Slowly
Dame Care lifted the veil from her head that Death might breathe in her
face.

And one evening she died.... Her eyes closed; she scarcely knew how
herself. The doctor who was called in spoke of weakness, anæmia. It is
only sentimental people who say in such cases, "She died of a broken
heart."

The twins knelt at her bedside, crying bitterly; their father, who had
been carried in in his chair, sobbed aloud, and tried to bring her back
forcibly to life.... Paul stood at the head of the bed biting his lips.

"I was right, after all," he thought; "she died before luck came. She
has had to get up hungry from the table of life, just as I said."

He wondered that the pain he felt was not so great as he had fancied it
would be. Only the confused thoughts about all sorts of stupid things
flitting through his head like bats at dusk showed him the state of his
mind.

It struck midnight; then his father said, "We will go to rest, children;
let him sleep who can!... Hard days lie before us."

He embraced the twins, shook hands with Paul, and had himself carried to
his room.

"How good father is to-day!" thought Paul; "he was never like that while
she was alive." His sisters clung to his neck, sobbing, and implored him
to watch near them, they were so afraid.

Paul spoke to them consolingly, took them to their room, and promised to
come and look after them within an hour.

When at the end of this time he stepped to their bedside with a candle
in his hand he found them fast asleep. They lay locked in a close
embrace, and on their rosy cheeks the tears were still wet.

Then he went to his father's door to listen, and when there, too, he
heard no sound, he crept on tiptoe to the room where the dead slept. For
the last time he would watch by her side.

His sisters, on going away, had spread a white handkerchief over her
face; he took it off, folded his hands, and watched how the flickering
light played on her waxen features. She was little changed; only the
blue veins in her temples were more prominent, and her eyelashes threw
deeper shadows on the haggard cheeks.

He lit the night-light, which during her illness had been burning at her
bedside every night, seated himself on the chair in which he always used
to sit, and thought he would say a quiet prayer for the dead.

But suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had forgotten to send
to the joiner to come early and take the measure.

It was to be a simple pine-wood coffin, painted black, and round it a
garland of heather, for she had loved the delicate, unpretending little
plant above all others.

"What will the coffin cost?" he went on thinking, and was suddenly
struck with terror, for he had nothing to bury the dead with. He began
to count and calculate, but could come to no conclusion.

"It is the first time that she wants anything for herself," he said,
softly, and thought of the faded dress which she had worn from year's
end to year's end.

He added up all that he could get together in a hurry from outstanding
debts, but the sum was not sufficient by half to cover the expenses of
the funeral.

The three cart-loads of peat, too, which he could send into town
to-morrow and the day after, would make but little difference.

Then he took a piece of paper and began to calculate the expenses:

  A coffin .......             15 thalers.
  The place in the church-yard 10 thalers.
  For the verger .....          5 thalers.
  Linen for the shroud ...      2 thalers.

Then the expenses of the funeral, which his father undoubtedly would
wish to have conducted as grandly as possible:

  10 bottles of port-wine   .. 10 thalers.
  1 box of cigars .....         2 thalers.
  2 small casks of beer ...     2 thalers.

Ingredients for the cake: the flour they had in the house, but sugar,
raisins, almonds, rose-water, etc., had to be purchased. How much would
these amount to? He calculated busily, but his additions would not
agree. "Mother will know very well," he thought, and was just about to
ask her advice when he saw that she was dead.

He was horrified. Only now, when his imagination had brought her back
to life again, he understood that he had lost her. He wanted to cry out,
but mastered himself, for he had to go on with his calculations.

"Forgive me, darling mother," he said, stroking her cold cheeks with his
right hand. "I cannot yet mourn for you; I must first lay you under the
earth."

The funeral was to take place three days later.

As Paul had foreseen, his father could not be prevented from arranging a
great festivity. He had sent invitations to all his friends in town, on
beautiful glazed paper with a black edge as wide as your finger. Therein
he had given expression to his grief in well-chosen, elegant phrases,
and had nowhere forgotten to provide his signature with an elaborate
flourish.

In the evening, just when the remains were being laid in the coffin, his
two brothers arrived. They had not been at home for many years, and Paul
almost failed to recognize them. Gottfried, the tutor, a dignified man
with a severe expression of countenance and somewhat portly appearance,
had on his arm a young lady veiled in black--his betrothed, who with a
wondering glance took stock of the low, miserable rooms, and endeavored
to show a face at once friendly and full of grief as the situation
demanded. Max, the merchant, came behind them. He looked rather
dissolute; his smart-looking mustache gave him an air ill-befitting the
feelings of a newly-orphaned son, and his mourning was more evident in
discomfort than in grief.

Both brothers solemnly embraced their father, and the young lady visitor
bent down and kissed first his hand and then his forehead. Then they
greeted the twins, who in their black dresses were looking fresher and
sweeter than ever. They had overlooked Paul, who stood at the door and
fingered his cap in confusion.

At last Gottfried asked, "Where is our brother?"

Then he stepped shyly forward and stretched out his hand.

Three pairs of eyes rested on him searchingly.

"If I were but once outside!" he thought, and as soon as he could get
away he went out to work in the stables.

Gottfried followed him thither. Paul was alarmed when he saw him come,
for he did not know what he should talk about to this aristocratic man.

"Dear brother," the latter said, "I have a favor to ask you. Could you
not provide a brighter room for my betrothed? She feels herself rather
crowded in the girls' room."

"I will give her my attic," said Paul.

"You would oblige me if you would do that."

Then he addressed a few more questions to him about their mother's
illness, about the cattle, and about the mortgage which lay on the
estate.

"You poor creatures," he said; "you have evidently had many a care. But
did you endeavor to make the last days of our sainted mother as easy as
possible?"

Paul assured him he had done all that was in his power.

"I am glad of that," his brother replied, in a severe tone; "it would
have been a sad neglect of your duty if you had not done so. And now
come, let us go together to visit the remains of our sainted mother,
that she, looking down from heaven, may see us all united."

He took Paul's hand and drew him into the room in which his mother
rested peacefully among flowers and burning candles, and where the
others were already assembled.

Paul remained standing at the door timidly. He would have given much to
be alone with his dead mother for one moment, but as that was impossible
he softly crept out and looked through the window from outside, as if he
were one of the lookers-on from the village who were standing there.

A little later Max came to him and led him confidentially aside. "I have
a favor to ask you, dear boy," he said; "my throat is quite parched with
the dust of the journey and with crying. Could you procure me a drop of
beer?"

Paul answered that there were two full casks, but that they were only to
be tapped next morning for the funeral.

"Just give me the tap," Max answered; "I am an expert. The beer in the
casks will be just as fresh to-morrow as it is to-day."

And when Paul had done his bidding, he turned his back on him and went
away.

At eleven o'clock the candles round the coffin were blown out--every one
retired to rest.

Paul found that there was no bed left for him, and climbed into the
hay-loft, where he sat upright all night buried in thought.

At ten o'clock in the morning the first guests arrived, and, indeed,
such guests as had neither accepted the invitation nor been expected at
all. When Paul saw them coming his first thought was, "Have I provided
enough food and drink?" and the more the carriages came rolling into the
yard, and entire strangers kept stretching out their black-gloved hands
to his family, the more a voice seemed to say to him, "There won't be
enough."

His father had again one of his days of grandeur. He sat in his portable
chair as if on a throne, his two eldest sons like vassals near him, and
allowed himself to be admired in his grief.

Whenever a new guest came up to him he pressed the proffered right
hand in both of his, as if _he_ were the one to console, bent his
grief-stricken head, and spoke broken words in a voice stifled with
sobs, such as: "Yes, she has gone! gone! she's gone! There is no balm
for the wounds of the heart! May heaven make amends to her for the grief
earth has caused her!" and so forth.

In between he called out to Paul, "My son, you do not provide any wine!
My son, remember to offer our guests some refreshment."

Paul ran from one to the other like a waiter, anxiously counting the
bottles, which diminished rapidly, and envying his sisters, who, in
their fine black dresses, could quietly sit in a corner and cry to their
hearts' content, while the strange sister-in-law consoled them. He had
not thought of the mourning-dresses in his calculation at all, and it
was great good-luck that the merchant sent them on credit, otherwise his
sisters could not have appeared at all.

He himself did not look like a mourner in his simple gray suit, and
most of the guests who did not know him went quietly past him, and only
noticed his existence when he offered them wine and cigars.

In the yard a number of women assembled who had loved his mother on
account of her quiet, simple manners, and who now wanted to follow the
cortege without really belonging to the mourners.

The sharp eye of his father soon discovered them.

"Paul, my son," he cried, "go out and urge the ladies to enter the house
of mourning."

Paul obeyed this order with hesitation, for he did not know how to word
the invitation. When he stepped out onto the threshold his first glance
fell on Elsbeth, who, in a mourning-dress, stood among the village
women and carried a wreath of white roses. And when she saw him her eyes
filled with tears.

For a moment he felt as if he would like to press his head against the
folds of her dress and cry there; but others stood near her, staring at
him. He made an awkward bow, and said, "My father begs you--would you
like to see the dead?"

The women slowly went into the house; only Elsbeth lingered.

"Won't you come in, too?" he asked.

"My poor dear Paul," she said, and seized his hand.

He shut his eyes and staggered back two steps.

"Do come," he said, mastering himself again; "look at her, she has
always loved you so much."

"Paul, my son, where are you?" sounded his father's voice from the
interior of the house.

"Paul," she said, hesitating, with rising tears, "you must not despair;
there are still others who--love you."

"Oh yes," he said, "I know--but come, I must pour out the wine."

She sighed deeply; then she timidly went in after him, and mixed again
with the other women.

"Paul, come here!" beckoned his father, who today seemed to fancy
himself the master again; and when Paul bent his head to him, he
whispered in his ear, "I hear the wine is finished. What does that mean?
Will you shame us all?"

"I think there are a few more bottles," Paul answered.

"Make them last till the vicar comes; but you must also offer a glass to
the women. Do you hear?"

"Oh, if only the vicar would come soon," sighed Paul, and tried hard to
fill the glasses only half.

And at last the vicar came. The whole assembly pressed into the
room where the dead woman lay in her coffin. The place was bathed in
sunshine, and checkered lights which had found their way through the
waving linden branches played merrily on the marble-white face.

Paul helped to carry his father's chair to the head of the coffin, then
he withdrew to a quiet corner behind the mourning assembly where he
could rest a little, for he was tired with much running about.

But they would not let him rest. "Where is the youngest son?" asked the
vicar, who wanted to gather the whole family round him.