"Paul, my child, where are you?" called his father.

Then he had to come forward, and took his place close to the head of the
coffin, near his father's chair.

A low murmur passed through the assembly, and some looked embarrassed,
as if they would say, "So that is a son, too? Then we have made a
mistake there."

The dancing sunbeams caught the vicar's attention, and he took them as
the text for his sermon. The earthly sun was indeed shining brightly and
full of joy; but that was nothing--that was utter darkness compared with
the heavenly sunshine. Then he praised the dead, and praised also those
left behind, especially the faithful husband and the two eldest sons as
the proud pillars of the house; there was also a spare morsel for Paul,
the servant, whom his master had found faithful unto death.

It was only a pity that he understood nothing of this honeyed praise.
Lost in thought, he stared before him. His look rested on the silk bow
which stood out from his mother's cap, and which moved gently when the
draught, caused by the vicar's waving arms, glided over it. It resembled
a white butterfly that moves its wings to rise into the air.

Then a hymn was sung and the lid placed on the coffin. At this moment
there sounded from the background a heart-rending cry, "Mother, mother!"

Startled and astonished, every one turned round. It was Elsbeth Douglas
who had uttered it. Now she lay fainting in the arms of her neighbor.
Paul understood her well. She had thought of the moment when the lid
would be laid over her own mother's face. And he vowed to himself he
would then be at her side to comfort her. His father also looked up, and
on his features the question was clearly written: "Is she, too, here?"

Elsbeth was taken into the next room, and two women remained with her
until she recovered.

But the uplifted coffin was borne staggering out of the door till it
found rest on the hearse.

Paul seized his cap. Then Gottfried, pressing to his side, put something
soft and black into his hand.

"At least tie this crape round your arm," he whispered to him.

"Why?"

"People might think you did not want to wear mourning."

Paul started at this thought and did as he was told. Afterwards he was
grieved to have been thus shamed by his brother, and only much later it
became clear to him which of them had worn the deepest mourning.

The cemetery lay in the midst of the heath. Three solitary pine-trees
indicated it from afar, and along the edge of the wall surrounding it
thick thorn-hedges bloomed.

Thither the sad cortege went; the sons followed immediately behind the
coffin, the father, with the twins, behind them in a little carriage.

Paul stared straight before him; he thought of the sand through which he
was wading--of the wine--of Elsbeth--of his father's portable chair--and
of the heather wreath, which had been half detached from the coffin and
was dragging behind.

He resolved to take care that it should not be lowered into the grave
with the coffin.

By the grave he felt nothing but a violent burning pain in his temples,
and while the vicar was giving the benediction it suddenly occurred to
him that instead of the wine he might very well have given beer. Then he
had to look after the twins, who in their grief did foolish things, and
wanted to spring into the grave after the coffin. He took them in his
arms kissed them, and made them lay their heads on his shoulder. They
did so, closed their eyes, and breathed as if asleep.

When the first handful of earth was rolling down on the coffin he had
a feeling of disgust, as if skittles were being played in his head, and
when the bare hillock began to arise, he thought, "To-morrow already
there must be some green turf put round it."

The crowd dispersed, his father was carried back to his carriage, and
the three sons walked home. Max and Gottfried spoke in low, solemn tones
of their earliest recollections of the dead. But Paul was silent, and
thought, "Thank God, they have laid her under the sod!"

A feverish activity was still working in his brain--he had as yet
understood nothing, had not wanted to understand--but when he entered
the yard which, with its shingle-roofed stable, and with the recent
traces of the fire, lay gray and desolate before him, it suddenly came
upon him as with a lightning-flash, like a totally new idea, "Mother has
gone!"

He turned round, groped with his hands in the air, and, as if
thunder-struck, sank to the ground.

CHAPTER XVII.

The summer passed away, and autumn in its garb of mist came creeping
over the heath. Red sunbeams wandered wearily along the edge of the
wood, and the heather lowered its purple head. At this time in the
Howdahs, which till now had been quieter than usual, strange sounds
began to be heard. Like the knocking of hammers and the tone of bells
at the same time, they sounded far over the heath in strict rhythm, at
times louder, at times softer, but always with a harmonious echo, which
slowly died away into the air.

The villagers stopped, wondering, on the road. One of them asked, "What
is going on at Meyerhofer's?"

And another said, "It almost sounds as if he had built himself a forge."

"He will never forge luck," said a third, and they separated, laughing.

The father, who as usual had sat in his corner yawning and grumbling,
started up at the first sound, and called the twins to account for it.
But they knew nothing either, but that quite early that day a workman
had come from the town with files, hammers, and a solder-box, and had
had a long conference with Paul, who held in his hand all sorts of plans
and designs. They quickly ran to look, and this was what they found:

Behind the shed stood "Black Susy," surrounded with a wooden scaffolding
like a lady in her crinoline, and on the scaffolding Paul and the
foreman climbed busily about, hammering, examining, and screwing in
rivets.

Full of wonder, the twins looked at each other, for they guessed that
something grand was in preparation; but they did not deem it necessary
to bring these tidings to their father, for they remembered that two
little letters they had written had to be quickly and secretly taken to
the post by the servant-girl.

Paul, however, stood high up on "Black Susy's" round back, leaning
against the slender chimney, and looked longingly towards the moor, like
Columbus about to discover a new world.

The first steps on the hazardous road were taken.

In the long, sleepless nights which followed his mother's death, when
grief held his soul in iron claws, he had fled from the melancholy image
of the deceased to his books. Like a mole he burrowed his way through
the dark theories, and when his head buzzed and his body became
exhausted from the exciting brain-work, he would cry out to himself,
"Her last hope shall not be disappointed!" Then he stretched his limbs,
and a new impulse of energy flashed into his brain, and on and on
he went, working restlessly till the iron riddle solved itself
harmoniously, till each lever was transformed into a muscle, each tube
into an artery, contrived on the wisest plans, like a human body by the
spirit of the eternal Creator.

Weeks and months passed. Meantime his mind was so completely absorbed
by this thirst for knowledge, this desire to create, that all that which
had previously harassed him vanished like a distant shadow. His mother's
image became more and more peaceful, and seemed to smile upon him. The
harvest became multiplied in the barn as if carried thither by invisible
hands, and on the day when the last bundle of oats was unloaded before
the stack he clapped his hand to his forehead and exclaimed, "It seems
to me only yesterday since I saw the first car!"

The more his knowledge increased and ripened, so much the more the
anxiety to succeed arose in his soul. When he wrote to the blacksmith,
his heart beat like that of a student before his examination. He shunned
bringing his deeds to the light as though to mention them were a crime,
for he feared being laughed at. But the constant hammering proclaimed
the news to the world.

The new foreman had to sit at their own table, and the father marked his
disapprobation of him by refusing to greet his entrance, and muttering a
great deal into his plate about fools and parasites.

But nobody heeded him, and the work quietly proceeded. According to
Paul's directions, the machine was taken to pieces and sounded in every
one of its minutest parts. The faults which a professional engineer
would have discovered at the first glance, these two men had to search
out and explain to each other with the greatest trouble. A dispute
between them would often last for hours, like meetings of the senate.

Once the foreman asked, impatiently, "Why the devil do you not send the
thing to a workshop to be repaired?"

Paul started. That, indeed, was an idea! It seemed to him quite a new
one to--day, and yet it had often come into his mind before. But he had
never liked to yield to it, for it seemed to him too daring and absurd;
and, besides, he was too much afraid they might return "Susy" as "past
mending." He was like that peasant woman who preferred doctoring her
husband to death herself to being told by the doctor "he cannot be
saved."

When it had grown dark, and the workmen and servants had ceased working,
he used to poke about the work-room aimlessly for another hour or so,
simply because he could not tear himself away from "Susy." He would have
liked best to stand near her as watchman until the morning. He liked to
carry with him under his arm some of his plans or a book. This, also,
was aimless, for it was dark--he only wanted to have everything nicely
in order. All this happened in great secrecy, for no one had a firmer
conviction that Paul was a fool than Paul himself.

One evening, when he was searching in the dark for one of his books
to take there with him, he put his hand upon something long and round,
carefully wrapped up in tissue-paper in the farthest corner of a drawer.

He could feel in the darkness how he blushed. It was Elsbeth's flute.
How was it possible that he had so seldom bestowed a thought upon it or
upon the giver? The fair form that he had seen for the last time on
the darkest day of his life had gradually faded from his mind as his
existence passed into the shadowy realm of sorrow, and now at last, from
sheer trouble and care, she had become to him like a shadow herself.

For the first moment he could scarcely recall her features. It was only
little by little that her image presented itself to his mind.

He took the flute instead of the books under his arm, crept away to the
shed, and sat down on the boiler. He fingered the keys with curiosity;
he also put the mouth-piece to his lips, but did not dare to produce a
sound, for he did not want to disturb any one's sleep.

"It would be nice," he said to himself, "if I could play all sorts of
sweet melodies and think of Elsbeth all the while; I could then once
more pour out my heart to her, and feel that I, too, was something in
the world. But, then, _am_ I in the world for myself alone?" he asked
himself, absently laying hold of one of the crooked handles. "As this
crooked handle turns and turns without knowing why, and in itself is
nothing but a piece of dead iron, so I, too, must turn and turn, and not
ask 'Why!' There are said to be people in the world who have the right
to live for themselves, and to mould the world according to their own
wishes. But they are differently constituted from me; they are handsome
and proud and daring, and the sun always shines upon them. They may
even allow themselves the privilege of possessing a heart and acting
according to its dictates. But I! Oh, good God!" He paused, and sadly
contemplated the flute, the keys of which dimly shone in the dusk.

"If I were such a one," he continued, after a while, "I should have
become a celebrated musician. I know very well there are many melodies
in my brain which no one else has ever whistled; and when I had attained
my end I should have married Elsbeth--and father would have been
rich, and mother happy; but now mother is dead--father is a poor
cripple--Elsbeth will take another--and I stand here looking at the
flute and can't play on it."

He laughed out loud, and then slid to the front, so that he could reach
the chimney. He stroked it, and said, "But I will learn to play _this_
flute that it'll be a pleasure to hear."

As he sat there he fancied he heard subdued tittering and whispering in
the garden. He listened; there was no doubt of it. A pair of lovers
were cooing, or, perhaps, more than one pair, for divers voices were
intermingled, like the twittering of a number of sparrows.

"The maids keep sweethearts, it seems to me," he said; "I'll show them
the way out."

He fetched a whip, which was hanging on the stable door, and climbed
over the farthest part of the garden fence to waylay the intruders.

Then suddenly he stopped short as if turned to stone, his eyes
starting out of his head, and the whip trembling in his hand. He had
distinguished his sisters' voices.

He leaned against the trunk of a tree and listened.

"Does he leave you in peace now?" one of the lovers asked, in a whisper.

"He has too much to do with his machine just now," Greta's voice
replied; "even his unpalatable sermons he spares us."

"You have never heeded them, anyhow!"

Greta giggled. "In spite of all his dignity he is only a stupid boy, and
he understands nothing about love; as long as I can remember he has hung
about Elsbeth Douglas; but do you suppose he has ever once dared raise
his eyes to her? She, of course, would not dream of taking such a
languishing idiot. There is her cousin Leo--he is quite another fellow."

His heart threatened to stop beating, but he went on listening.

"I can't understand why you obey him at all," said the voice of her
lover; "we have always given him a thrashing first, and then let him
go, and in return he would beg our pardon. One has only to oppose him
firmly, he is such a coward!"

"Just wait a bit, you rogue!" thought Paul, who now knew whom he had
before him.

But Greta answered, eagerly: "Oh, fie! he has not deserved that from us.
He loves us so much that we really ought to be ashamed to deceive him;
whatever he sees that we want he gives us, and I could swear that it is
nothing but love that makes him so sad. So one mustn't mind now and then
taking a sermon into the bargain, especially if one pays no attention to
it afterwards!"

"It's a good thing I know that," thought Paul, and crept round in a
half-circle, till he came to the arbor where the other couple were
sitting.

There it was very much quieter; only from time to time a kiss or a
giggle sounded from the darkness among the trees. Then he heard Kate's
voice:

"And why did you dance so much with Matilda last Sunday?"

"That is a horrid calumny," answered the other brother. "What gossip
told you that?"

"The vicar's daughter Hedwig told me."

"I like that! She is jealous of you; that's the whole story. How she
looked at me last Sunday! I thought my hair would be singed."

"Oh, the false girl!"

"Well, don't grieve about that. You are all false! My sweet little
lark, my sunshine, my little madcap, lay your head on my knee, I want to
ruffle your hair."

"So?"

"No; you are lying on my watch-chain. That's right! Sing me something."

"What shall I sing about?"

"About love!"

"First earn it, you rogue!"

Then all was quiet for a while. Presently Katie began to warble, softly,

  "'The nightingale on the lilac-bush
  Sang night's soft hours away;
  I heard a crash, a gentle push,
  My window-pane gave way!

  "'I ran to see the cause in haste,
  At night's soft witching hour,
  And there I found a ladder placed--
  A man stood by my bower.
  La, la, la!'"

"Go on singing!"

"Oh no, it really is not proper."

"Why, then, did you begin it?"

She giggled and was silent.

"Sing me something else."

"Before I sing give me a kiss!" A short struggle; then his voice:

"What? first you want one, and then you struggle, you cat!"

"Here I am."

"Leave go! d----n it, you scratch!"

"If you take another girl I will scratch out your eyes!"

"Anything else?"

"No; I will lie down under a juniper-bush and starve myself to death.
You must come to my funeral. Oh, that will be beautiful! Now just pay
attention; I know a beautiful verse:

  "'What my love for you is, have you known?
  There is on the heath a grave all alone;
  In it a poor dead poet is sleeping,
  To whom his love has brought much weeping;
  He sleeps and sleeps in his sombre grave,
  But sleeps not away the grief love gave.
  At midnight go to the grave on the heath,
  And wait till he again shall breathe;
  He knows the singing and kissing well,
  And he can tell--'

"Isn't that pretty?"

"Very pretty! Who taught you that, Kitty?"

"I once found it in a book of songs which belonged to mother. I almost
think she made it herself."

During this conversation Paul had stood there stupefied with horror;
but when he heard his mother's name his anger overpowered him, and he
cracked his whip over the heads of the couple, so that the withered
leaves of the arbor flew rustling about.

With a loud cry they all sprang up. No sooner had the brothers
recognized him than they attempted to make off; but the girls clung to
them whimpering. They sought protection against their own brother.

"Come here!" he called out to them. Then they left their lovers and flew
to one another for mutual protection.

The two Erdmanns receded farther still.

"You stay here!" he cried.

"What do you want with us?" said the elder one, who was the first to
recover his impudence.

"You shall answer to me for your conduct."

"You know where we are to be found," said the younger one, and pulled
his brother by the coat-tail as a hint to escape with him. But at this
moment Paul seized him by the throat.

"Leave go!" he screamed.

"You come into the house with me."

"Oh no; _rather_ not," said the elder one.

"I don't know at all what you want with us," said the younger one, who,
under the iron grasp of Paul's fist, was not a little frightened. "We
love your sisters; we have nothing to do with you."

"And if you love them, don't you know where the door is, through which
you might have come to woo them? Robbers that you are!"

At this moment Ulrich had torn his brother from Paul's grasp; and before
he could collect his senses they both flew in hot haste through the
garden, leaped the fence, and disappeared in the darkness of the heath.

Completely stunned, he turned round and saw his sisters crouching behind
the trunk of a tree.

"Come!" he said, pointing towards the house, and, sobbing, they followed
him.

When they wanted to slip away to their own room, he said, opening
the door of the parlor, "In here." Trembling, they crouched down in
a corner, for they did not know what punishment he would inflict upon
them.

He lit the candle himself, took up the family album and took out a
picture.

"Now come to your room." Like two returning penitents they crept slowly
behind him.

"Who is that?" he asked, in his severest voice, pointing to the picture.
It was a portrait of their mother, taken in early youth, almost effaced
by the lapse of time. But they recognized it very well, and, wringing
their hands, fell on their knees before the bed and sobbed pitifully on
the pillow.

And then they confessed everything to him. It was worse than he had ever
imagined.

A dreadful silence ensued. Paul stepped to the window and looked out
into the night.

"Thank God you are dead, mother!" he said, folding his hands.

Then they wept aloud, crept up to him on their knees, and wanted to kiss
his hands. He stroked their hair. He loved them far too well.

"Children, children!" he said, sinking down in a chair, almost as
helpless as they were.

"Scold us, Paul," sobbed Kate.

"No, rather beat us," urged Greta; "we have deserved it."

He passed his hand across his brow. It all still seemed to him like a
bad dream.

"How could this have happened?" he murmured. "Have I watched over you so
badly?"

"They said they--wanted to--marry us!" Kate gasped out.

"When the year of mourning was over, the wedding was to be," added
Greta.

"And if they said that, they shall keep their word," he said,
endeavoring to console himself. "Do not kneel to me, children, kneel
down before God--you need it. This portrait henceforth shall stand
on your little table every night. Will you then still have courage to
pursue the path of shame? Good-night."

They rushed after him and entreated him to stay with them, "they were so
frightened!" but he disengaged himself gently from them and went up
to his garret, where he sat and brooded in the dark. He was so deeply
ashamed that he thought he should never more be able to bear the light
of day.

The next morning he sent for the foreman and paid him off.

The good man looked up into his face quite aghast. "But now, Mr.
Meyerhofer, when all is going on so well?" he said.

"Yes, going on so well," he murmured, thoughtfully. "Shame added to
misfortune!--the man is right."

"Something has upset me," he then said, "which has given me a disgust
for work. Let us leave it for the moment, and when the time comes I will
send for you again."

His father bitterly complained over the disturbance in the night. "What
were you storming about in the garden?" he asked. "I heard your voice!"

"Thieves were after the apples," replied Paul.

The twins had red, swollen eyes, and did not dare to raise them from the
ground.

"So that's how fallen girls look," thought Paul, and promised to be as
strict with them as a jailer. But when he spoke harshly to them for the
first time, and they looked up at him with a pained, humble glance, like
two penitent Magdalenes, he was so much overcome by pity that he folded
them weeping in his arms, and said, "Compose yourselves, children; all
will yet be well."

He was under the firm conviction that the two Erdmanns would not let the
day pass without coming to the Haidehof. "Their consciences will bring
them," he said to himself. He felt so sure of it that after dinner he
strongly urged his father, who in his laziness had become very slovenly,
to put on his new coat, as visitors of importance were expected. His
father yielded, grumbling, and was doubly angry afterwards when he found
that the immense exertion had been quite useless.

"They will come to-morrow," said Paul to himself when he went to bed;
"they have not had the courage to-day."

But the next day passed, too, without anybody appearing, and so the
whole week went by.

Paul ran about the house as if distracted. Every ten minutes he was to
be seen standing at the gate and looking out over the heath, so that the
servants nudged one another and began to whisper all sorts of nonsense.

"It is a pity," he said to himself, "that I am still so innocent, and
have not the least experience in love matters; otherwise I should know
what I ought to do."

An agonizing fear began to master him, and he tossed about in his bed
unable to sleep.

"I must make matters easy for them," he thought one morning, and ordered
the basket carriage, which a short time ago he had bought at an auction,
to be got ready, and drove to Lotkeim, the Erdmanns' estate, which they
kept up together since their parents' death.

His heart felt a pang of shame and wrath as now, like one soliciting
a favor, he entered the estate of those who had already injured him so
much through his life. Little was wanting to make him turn round again
at the gate, but his hands clasped the reins more firmly, and his lips
murmured, "It is no question of what you feel."

He drove across the grass-grown yard, on which high thorn-bushes
were blooming, and which was flanked by big, though much-neglected,
farm-buildings, and stopped before the house, the shutters of which were
painted in black and white circles, probably because they were sometimes
used for targets.

"It is no honor to marry one's sisters here; but they can no longer lay
claim to much honor," he thought, tying his horse to the entrance rail,
for no human soul was to be seen who could have taken the reins; only
from a distant shed came the measured sound of the flails.

At the moment that he entered the hall he fancied he heard a confusion
of voices and then the opening and shutting of the back doors. Then,
suddenly, all was still.

He entered the parlor, in which the remains of their breakfast was
standing, and which was still filled with cigar smoke. For some time he
stood there waiting. Then a scraggy woman slipped through the door of
the next room with an embarrassed grin.

"My masters are not at home," she said, without waiting for his
question; "they drove away early this morning and will not be back for
some time."

"It does not matter; I will wait."

The old woman began to chatter and explain that it would be quite
useless to wait; she never knew beforehand when they would come back;
often they stayed away all night, and so on. Meanwhile he fancied he
heard a dog-cart rattling out of the yard in the greatest haste. He
jumped up, alarmed, for he thought that his horse had broken loose, but
he saw it quietly standing in its place; then a suspicion arose within
him--a suspicion which a minute before he would have thrust back
indignantly.

The old house-keeper did not dare to turn him out; and, unmolested, but
also without food or drink, he sat there waiting till the evening. When
it was dark he set out on his way home, discouraged and humiliated.

Next morning he returned, this time also in vain. The third day he found
the gate firmly bolted. A brand-new padlock was hanging on the hasp. It
seemed to have been purchased especially for him.

Then he could no longer doubt that the brothers avoided him on purpose.
"They are ashamed to look me in the face," he said to himself; "I will
write to them."

But when he took up his pen to compel himself to write friendly words
of reconciliation, such disgust at his own undignified deed overcame
him that he crushed it to pieces on the table, and paced about the room,
moaning aloud.

"I must first go and collect my strength," he said, and crept
noiselessly to the girls' room. They sat at the window, spoke not a
word, and stared with white faces into the distance; then one let her
head sink against the other's shoulder, and said, gently and sadly,

"They will not come any more."

"They are afraid of him," sighed the sister.

And then they relapsed again into silence.

"Ah!" he said, breathing heavily, while he crept back to his room, "I
knew that would help me."

Then he took a clean sheet of paper and wrote a beautiful letter, in
which he expounded to the brothers that he was no longer angry with
them--that he would forgive them everything if they would restore the
lost honor to his sisters.

"To-morrow they will be here," he said, with a sigh of relief, when he
dropped the letter into the box. For the rest of the day he wandered
about on the heath, for he did not dare to look any one in the face, so
much was he ashamed-of himself.

But the Erdmanns did not come.

It was on Christmas Eve, shortly before twilight. The heath lay deep in
snow, and from the leaden sky fresh masses of flakes were descending.
Then Paul saw that his sisters secretly took their hats and cloaks, and
tried to make their escape by the back door.

He hastened after them. "Where do you want to go?"

Then they began to cry, and Kate said, "Please, please do not ask us."
But he felt a dreadful anxiety arise within him, and, grasping their
arms, he said, "I shall follow you if you won't confess."

Then Kate gasped out, sobbing, "We are going to mother's grave."

Horror overcame him that they should go to that holy place; but he took
care not to let them see it.

"No, children," he said, stroking their cheeks, "I can't allow that; it
would excite you too much; the snow is so deep, too, on the heath, and
it will soon be dark."

"But some one must go there," said Kate, timidly, "it is Christmas Eve
to-day."

"You are right, sister," he replied, "I will go myself. You stay with
father and light a few candles for him. Please God, I shall bring you
home some comfort."

They let themselves be persuaded, and went back into the house.

But he put on a warm coat, took his cap, and walked out into the dusk.

"You must lock the gates to-night," he said, before he left the yard,
for he had a dull presentiment that he would only come home late at
night, were it only for the sake of roaming about in the snow.

The white heath lay silent. Deep under the snow lay the withered
flowers, and where a juniper-bush had stood before there was now a
little white heap that looked like a mole-hill. Even the stems of the
pollard willows were white, but only on the side against which the wind
had blown.

Painfully he walked on across the snow-covered heath, at every step
sinking in over his ankles. From time to time a crow flew through the
air with heavy wings, fighting with difficulty against the snow-storm.

There was no path or road to be seen.... The three long fir-trees, which
in the distance stood out against the sky like black phantoms, were the
only sign by which he could direct his footsteps.

The golden streak, which for a few moments had flamed upon the horizon,
vanished; lower and lower the shadows were sinking, and when Paul had
reached the wall of the cemetery, which towered above him like a ghostly
rampart, it had become quite dark; but the freshly-fallen snow gave an
uncertain light, so that he hoped to find his mother's grave soon.

The gate was snowed up--the snow had been heaped up by the wind; nowhere
was an entrance to be discovered.

So he groped his way with difficulty along the hedge, from which, here
and there, a black twig stretched forth its sharp thorns out of the
white covering, till his arms sank deeper into the snow without meeting
any resistance.

From there he forced his way to the inner cemetery.

The firs greeted him with a hollow moan, and a raven which had been
sitting in the snow flew up noiselessly and circled round their tops
restlessly, like a poor soul that cannot find peace.

When he saw the snow-covered plain in its pale uniformity lying
before his eyes a terror overcame him, for he saw no sign by which to
distinguish his mother's grave. There was no cross on the mound, for he
had not had money to buy one, but the mound itself lay dead under the
levelling expanse of snow.

A torturing anxiety seized him; he felt as if he had now lost the very
last thing that he possessed in life.

And with a trembling hand he began to grope about in the snow, from
one mound to the other--a long row, from among which, here and there, a
wreath or a little cypress-tree stood out in the dusk.

"Here rests this one, here that one." He knew almost every grave and who
reposed beneath it.

And at last his groping hand hurt itself against a piece of glass
that stuck out from underneath.... He stopped and felt carefully all
round.... The fragment must be the one which Greta had carried out
in early spring to plant asters in; a piece of a green bottle with
sharp-pointed edges--yes, here it was. The faded stalks were still in
it. And near it the wreath, the heather wreath, which appeared to be
frozen stiff, like a stone ring; he had put it there himself the last
time he had been here.

When he saw the little heap of snow, which hid all that was dearest to
him, lying so white and still, he fell on his knees, and buried his face
in the cool, soft flakes.

"It is all my fault, mother," he lamented; "I have not watched over
them, I have let them run wild. Do not judge them, mother, they knew not
what they did!... But I implore you, mother, show me how to act! Send
me only one word from beyond the grave.... See, I kneel here and do not
know what to do."

And then he suddenly felt as if he had no right to lie in that place; he
felt as if the shame which his sisters had brought upon themselves
was resting on him, too. He called himself a coward, selfish and lazy,
because he had remained inactive for such a long time without daring the
worst.

"I will do it, mother, this very night," he cried, springing up. "There
shall be no question of myself. I will relinquish the last remnant of
pride, if only my sisters can be saved." He vowed it with uplifted arms,
and hurried out onto the heath.

For wellnigh three hours he struggled along the snowed-up roads. It
might have been eight o'clock when he stopped, tired and breathless,
before the gates of Lotkeim.

"To-day they shall not escape me," he said, and as he found the gate
locked again, he lay down and crept through underneath the fence, as he
had seen dogs do.

The windows of the manor-house were brightly lighted up, but as the
curtains had been let down, nothing could be seen of the room inside;
only snatches of song and laughter floated out into the open air. The
house door stood open. He stopped for a moment in the dark hall to
stifle the beating of his heart; then he knocked.

Ulrich's voice called out, "Come in!"

There lay the two brothers, stretched out on a long sofa, the feet of
the one near the head of the other, a picture of perfect peace of mind
and serenity of soul. Each of them balanced a big glass of grog on
the palm of his hand, and before them on the table stood a steaming
punch-bowl.

They were so startled at the sight of him that they forgot to get up.
They were petrified, and remained lying as they were and staring at him.

"I say!" cried Ulrich, who was the first to recover his speech, and
Fritz let his glass fall jingling to the ground.

Then the one stooped down and gathered up the fragments of glass with
great zeal.

"You can well imagine why I come," said Paul, slowly stepping to the
table in his snow-sprinkled garments.

"No!" said Ulrich, who slowly raised himself.

"No idea," chimed in Fritz, who wisely retired behind his brother's
back.

"You received my letter, though?" asked Paul.

"We know of no letter," answered the elder one, staring impudently in
his face.

"It probably has been lost in the post," the younger added, hastily.

"Only recollect. It was the 16th of November," said Paul.

Then they remembered vaguely that a letter had been delivered to them.

"But we could not make it out and threw it into the fire," said Ulrich.

"Don't use these evasions," Paul answered; "you know quite well what is
expected of you."

They shrugged their shoulders, and looked at each other as if he were
speaking Spanish to them.

"I have not come to play comedy with you," Paul continued; "you have
taken away my sisters' honor and you must restore it to them."

Ulrich scratched his head and said:

"My dear Myerhofer, that is a bad business and can't be so quickly
settled. Just sit down and drink a glass of punch with us; then we shall
much sooner come to an understanding."

"Yes, much sooner and more comfortably," added Fritz, getting up to
fetch two fresh glasses.

"Thank you," said Paul, "I am not thirsty."

The vague feeling was tormenting him that the brothers were laughing at
him even now, as they had done all his life. Iron fetters seemed to bind
his limbs; he now felt himself quite powerless and disabled.

"Well, if you come to us like that," Ulrich retorted, apparently
hurt, "then we will not speak to you at all. I have no mind to have my
Christmas Eve spoiled."

"And to let the punch get cold," Fritz added.

Paul gazed fixedly from one to the other.

How was it possible that those who had so covered themselves with shame
could stand before him so proud and impudent, while he, who only came to
ask for his rights, trembled and shook like a criminal!

"And if you go home without any consolation!" cried an anxious voice
within him. "Do not make them angry; remember what you have vowed to
your mother! There must be no question of yourself."

"Well, will you drink or won't you?" Ulrich called out, angrily.

"There must be no question of yourself," cried the voice again. Then he
bowed his head, and said, in a husky voice,

"Well, then, please."

The two brothers glanced at each other and smiled, and Fritz, raising
his glass, said,

"Merry Christmas!"

"A merry Christmas," he stammered, and swallowed the hot beverage,
almost choking, for he was overcome with disgust.

Now he sat in good-fellowship at the same table with the two brothers,
he who ought to have been there as an avenger.

"Well, now to end this affair, dear Meyerhofer," Ulrich began. "What is
done cannot be undone. We will not stop to inquire whether we ran most
after your sisters, or your sisters after us; anyhow, it is just as
much their fault as ours. We love them with all our hearts; they are
the prettiest girls in the neighborhood, and we are truly sorry when we
think that we have injured their reputation; but that we should marry
them now you can't possibly expect of us."

Paul cast a hesitating glance at him, and began, dejectedly, "That is
the least that--" he did not get any further; he felt as if the blood
was freezing in his veins.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Fritz; and Ulrich continued:

"Look here, we would be willing to do it because we think a lot of them,
although they have lowered themselves so much"--a spasm of fury darted
through Paul's brain, but he controlled himself; "we would fulfil your
wish directly, but first tell us what dowry will you give them?"

"I have nothing," stammered Paul.

"There it is," answered Fritz.

"And we want money, a great deal of money," Ulrich continued. "I am the
eldest, and if I take the estate for myself alone I must pay Fritz so
much to enable him to purchase for himself."

"I will work," Paul gasped out, and looked at the brothers in humble
entreaty.

"You have worked already for ten years and have not saved anything."

"The fire came and prevented me," stammered Paul, as if he were asking
pardon for the misfortune that had happened to him.

"And next year something else will come and prevent you. No, dear
friend, we cannot depend upon that."

The fear that he would have to return to his sisters without bringing
any consolation sank deeper and deeper into his heart. He was so
overpowered that it loosed his tongue, and he cried out, "But for God's
sake, listen to reason. I can't do more than work.... I will work like a
slave.... Will work day and night. I will pinch, save, and starve
even, and all I earn shall be yours.... Just see.... I have splendid
prospects.... The locomobile will soon be repaired ... and the moor is
very lucrative ... it is fifteen feet deep ... you can measure it....
The cart-load of peat fetches ten marks ... and the dowry shall be paid
to the last farthing in yearly instalments."

He gazed at them with expectant eyes, for he felt sure they would seize
this offer directly; and when they continued silent, he passed his hand
despairingly over his forehead, from which the cold perspiration was
streaming, and murmured,

"Well, what more can I do?... Yes, I _will_ do more; I will ask my
father to give up the farm to me, and will make it over to you, so that
... when my father dies one of you will be master there.... I will go
away and take nothing but the clothes I stand up in. Is not that enough
for you?"

But still they were silent.

Then he felt as if everything to which his belief had hitherto clung was
slipping from him, as if the ground were giving way under his feet, as
if he himself were dropped into space. He clasped his hands, his teeth
chattered, and he stared at them like a man bereft of reason. "Is it
possible, then, you are not willing? really not willing? Can't you
understand at all that it is your duty to make amends where you have
sinned?... Does not your sense of honor tell you that you may not rob
others of their honor?... Does your conscience let you sleep?"

"Stop!" cried Ulrich, who began to feel decidedly uncomfortable.

"No, I will not stop; I cannot go home like this ... really I cannot....
Have you no idea, then, of the mischief you have done ... of the misery
that reigns in my home?" and he shuddered at the remembrance of what
he had left there. "If you knew that you would not be so hard.... See,
Fritz and Ulrich ... I have known you both such a long time.... We have
sat together in school ... and together ... we have knelt before the
altar ... you always had an ill-will towards me; I have had to bear much
from you.... But I will forget everything if only you will make amends
for this one thing. You are light-minded, but you are not bad ... you
cannot be bad... you, too, have had a mother.... I have seen her... she
was standing at our confirmation by the third pillar on the left, and
crying just as my mother cried, and my mother--oh, fie!" He interrupted
himself, for he felt overwhelmed with shame at having mentioned the name
of his saint before these scoundrels; but the fear of having to return
home without any consolation made him crazy; but he gulped that down,
too, and began again, while his thoughts chased each other through his
head. "Only think if you went out now to the cemetery and had sisters
... who had been betrayed ... and you had not watched over those sisters
sufficiently ... and you dared not touch the snow that lies on the grave
... and I were the betrayer ... what ... what would you do?"

"We should kill you," said Ulrich, glancing at him contemptously.

He uttered a piercing cry, for he now realized how deeply he lowered
himself--how he had dragged his pride and honor in the dust. With
clinched fists he rushed upon Ulrich, but the latter barricaded himself
behind the table, and Fritz rushed to the next room to call the servant.

Then he staggered out.

The gate was locked as before. He did not dare go back to have it
opened, so, lying down flat, he crept under the fence like a dog.

CHAPTER XVIII

"The young master leads a very gay life all at once,"
said the servants; and as everything went as it pleased, they stole one
bushel of corn after the other.

Paul meanwhile visited all the festivities and dances in the
neighborhood. Any one who saw him appear in that merry crowd with his
sombre brow and his scared, searching look, asked himself indeed, "What
does he want here?" And many gave him a wide berth, as if a shadow had
fallen on their joy.

Paul was quite clear about what he was doing. He had heard that the
Erdmanns let no festivity pass without going thither to be merry as
wildly as possible.

"I shall know how to meet them," he said to himself; "the night is a
dark and the heath lonely. They will look into my face and the face of
death under God's open sky."

Two days after his last visit to Lotkeim he had driven to the town and
bought a revolver; a beautiful six-shooter, one with a long slender
barrel. Like a wild animal he lurked about at night in the bushes and
hidden paths of the heath when he thought they would pass.

But they did not come. They seemed to have become suspicious, and
therefore stayed at home; or, what was still more likely, their money
had come to an end.

"I can wait," he said, and continued this mode of life; and when he
occasionally spent the evening at home, and sat together with his
sisters at the supper-table--a sad, silent meal--he felt terrified each
time when he looked up and found his mother's features reflected in the
two pale, haggard young faces. It drove him out of the house again.

It was Shrove Tuesday, the last night of the carnival, that a grand ball
was to be given in the town-hall by the land-owners of the neighborhood.

"I shall catch them there," he said to himself, for he had heard that
both the brothers were to be stewards of the festivity.

When dusk approached he ordered his sledge, hid the revolver in the boot
of it, and set out on his way to the town.

The sun had been shining all day, and now the sky was all aglow with
the last rays of the setting sun. The heath lay shrouded in a blue-gray
mist, and sparkling ice-crystals were flying through the clear winter
air.

When he passed Helenenthal he saw two sledges moving towards the
manor-house laden with fir branches.

"It seems to me they are going to have a festivity there," he murmured,
looking after the sledges; and with a sombre smile he added, "I need not
be jealous, for to-day I, too, hold a festival."

At six o'clock he arrived in the town, procured himself an
entrance-ticket, and remained crouched in a corner of the inn till nine
o'clock, absorbed in his own dark thoughts.

When he entered the dancing-room, which was all stir and confusion,
he hid himself in the shadow of a pillar, for he felt as though the
murderous thoughts that filled his soul were written on his forehead,
clearly visible to everybody.

All of a sudden a painful thrill ran through his frame. He had found the
brothers; they stood in the middle of the room, proud and radiant, with
silken badges on their shoulders, and lilies-of-the-valley in their
button-holes, looking at the row of girls dressed in white, who
ornamented the walls, with a triumphant smile.

"There, now you are doomed," he muttered with a deep sigh. He felt that
there was no retreat for him now. And then he hid in a quiet corner,
from whence he could keep his victims in sight. The blazing lights lit
up the scene for him as clearly as daylight, but he did not see it; the
music fell in full chords upon his ear, but he did not hear it; all his
faculties were swallowed up in one wild, bloodthirsty longing.

As he was staring in this way at the crowd, he heard close behind him a
conversation between two portly elderly men.

"Are you going to the funeral also to-morrow?"

"Yes. They say it will be a great ceremony. One ought not to miss it."

"Had she been ill long?"

"Oh, very long. Our old doctor had already given her up years ago. Then
she was in the south with her daughter, and after her return lingered on
for I don't know how long."

He listened; a dim presentiment arose in his mind. The fir branches. The
fir branches.

And one of the voices continued:

"Tell me; the daughter must be quite at a marriageable age now. Is she
not engaged yet?'

"She is celebrated for the refusals she deals out," answered the other
voice. "Some say she did so in order not to leave her sick mother;
others because she has a secret love-affair with her cousin, Leo Heller;
you know him."

"Oh, the young good-for-nothing!" said the first voice again. "Last week
he lost eight hundred marks at baccarat; the money-lenders have got
him well into their clutches, and he keeps a mistress, too. But he is a
smart, gay fellow for all that, and quite made to catch goldfish."

And the two voices went away laughing.

Paul had a vague feeling as if he must throw himself down on the ground
and press his face in the dust; something rose in his throat; everything
began to swim before his eyes. So she had ceased to suffer: the pale,
kind woman who had watched over the Haidehof like a good angel, and whom
his heart had clung to all his life.

Now that she was dead the way was free to ruin and crime. And Elsbeth?
How she had trembled in anticipation of this dreadful moment, how he had
vowed to be near her then; and instead of that he was lurking here like
a wild beast, bloodthirsty thoughts in his soul--he, the only one in
whom her pure soul had once confided.

He shivered. "But what does it matter? She has plenty of people to
console her; there is merry Leo, with whom she is said to have a secret
love-affair; let him show all his wiles now!" He laughed aloud and
scornfully, and as soon as he had made sure that the Erdmanns could not
escape him if he waited for them at the road-side, he left the room.

As he drove on in the silence of the moon-lit winter night his soul grew
calmer and calmer, and when he saw across the silvery heath the White
House gradually rising before him like a monument of marble, he began to
weep bitterly.

"Hang it! I am blubbering on like an old woman," he murmured, and
whipped his horse till all the bells jingled loudly. They sounded in his
ear like the knell of all that was good.

In the wood, behind which a side path branched off to Lotkeim, he
halted, tied his horse to a distant trunk of a tree, and took off the
bells so that their jingling should not prematurely betray him. Then
he took the revolver out of the boot of the sledge and examined the
cartridges. Six shots--two for each--no harm in having an extra one.

It was bitterly cold, and his feet were benumbed. He crouched at the
bottom of the sledge, so that the fur rug should entirely cover him. It
was warm and comfortable underneath it, and gradually he felt a great
lassitude coming over him, as if he could have fallen asleep. But then
he roused himself again.

"You are not at all in earnest about killing them," he murmured, "or you
would feel very differently."

Then he sprang up and cried out in the night, "I _will_, I swear it to
you, mother.... I will!" And in assurance thereof he shot a ball into
the air, so that the echo rolled through the silence awfully and the
ravens flew croaking from their nests.

The nearer the hour approached at which the brothers must return home
the more nervous he grew; but his nervousness was not about the bloody
deed: he trembled lest at the last moment his hand should fail him, his
courage vanish, for they had always called him a coward.

It might have been about four o'clock in the morning, and the moon was
already waning, when the sound of bells was heard in the distance--at
first softly, then louder and louder. He sprang into the hollow which
the driving snow had nearly filled up, and threw himself flat upon the
ground. The sledge neared the edge of the wood; two persons wrapped in
furs sat in it--it was they. But how long they were coming!

The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled
faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse.
The brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.

He sprang forward quickly, seized the horse's rein, and unfastened the
harness. The sledge stopped, but its masters slept on.

He stood before them staring down upon them. The hand that held his
pistol trembled violently.

"What shall I do with them now?" he murmured. "I can't kill them in
their sleep. They must be drunk as well, otherwise they would have woke
up long ago. The best way would be to let them go and wait for the next
time."

He was just going to harness the horse again when it darted into his
mind that he had sworn to his mother he would kill them.

"I knew very well that I was a miserable coward," he thought to himself,
"and should never have the courage for it. I am not even good enough to
commit murder."

"But I will do it yet," he murmured, stepped back a few paces, and
aimed direct at Ulrich's breast; but he did not pull the trigger, for he
inwardly feared he might hurt the sleeping man.

"Shall I do it all the same?" he thought, when he had stood for some
while in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what
would happen when he had done it and both were lying dead before him.
"Either I must shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters
behind me in misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself
tip to justice to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as
great."

"It is madness, in any case"--so he ended his reflections--"but I shall
do it all the same."

And suddenly he saw under Ulrich's fur, which had been a little turned
back from his breast, a sparkling array of tinsel stars, such as ladies
fasten onto gentlemen's coats in the cotillon.

"So they allowed themselves to be decorated with stars by others, while
my sisters are in misery!"

"But first I will speak a few home words to them," he muttered, seized
hold by the shoulder of Ulrich, who sat on his side, and shook him
violently, so that his head rolled from side to side.

Ulrich started from sleep, and when he saw the dark figure of Paul, with
the revolver in his hand, standing close behind him, he began to cry out
loud and piteously. The other one woke up as well, and both stretched
out their arms in pitiful entreaty.

"What do you mean to do to us?" cried the one,

"Do not murder us!" cried the other.

"Put away your revolver. Have pity on us--have pity!" They clasped
their hands, and would have fallen on their knees had not the fur rugs
prevented them.

Paul looked at them in amazement. He had always seen them daring and
eager for fight, so that now in their terror they seemed to him like
entirely different people.

He wished in his heart that they would draw their knives against him,
so that he could make use of his revolver in an honest fight. And then
suddenly the thought arose in his mind: "If you had only once treated
them like this when they were boys, you would have been spared many a
humiliation--and your sisters, above all."

Ulrich meanwhile tried to clasp his knees, and Fritz kept on crying out,
"Take pity on us--take pity on us!"

"You know very well what I want of you," answered Paul, who now felt
freed from all hesitation, and with cold resolution pursued his aim.

"What do you want? say, what do you want? We'll do all you want!" cried
Ulrich; and Fritz, who tried to hide behind his brother, seemed suddenly
speechless.

"You shall keep your promise, as I will keep mine," said Paul. "I wish
you could find courage to defend yourselves, so that at last there might
be a clear account between us.... But perhaps it is best as it is....
And now repeat after me what I say: 'We swear before God and by the
memory of our mother that we will redeem within three days our promise
given to your sisters.'" Trembling and faltering, they repeated the
words after him.

"And I swear to you before God and the remembrance of my mother," he
answered, "that I will shoot you down whenever I find you if you do not
keep your oath. There! now you may drive on--I will harness the horse
to the sledge myself. Stay where you are!" he repeated when, in spite of
that, they wanted to lend him a helping hand.

They did not stir again, so obedient had they become. And when he had
finished, they said, with great politeness,

"Good-evening," and drove away.

"So that is how to do it," he murmured, throwing the pistol down in the
snow and looking after the sledge with folded hands. "If you rely upon
what is right and honorable, and wish, in the goodness of your heart, to
turn everything to good, you are called a coward and treated like a dog.
But if you treat others like dogs from the first, without considering
whether you are in the right or wrong, you are called brave, everything
succeeds with you, and you are a hero. So that is how it is done."

He shuddered. He was seized with such disgust towards himself and the
whole world. In his own eyes he appeared so polluted that nothing on
earth could ever cleanse him again.

The next forenoon he stood in the snow behind the shed and gazed towards
Helenenthal, where a dark funeral procession was preparing for its sad
journey. Twice he had gone to the stables to tell the servants to get
the sledge ready, and each time the word had stuck in his throat.

Now he stood there with his hands folded, watching how the long, black,
undulating line crept on over the dazzling-white snowy heath; it grew
smaller and smaller, and disappeared at last behind the wood, for the
cemetery of Helenenthal lay far off on the way to the town.

"How nice it would be," he thought, "if they would bury her, too,
beneath the three fir-trees; then mother would have a good neighbor
and--"

He started! As quick as lightning his brain had pictured how, on a
beautiful spring evening, he might meet Elsbeth there, who would come
and sit near the grave that belonged to her, as he would come to his.

"But it is better as it is," he said to himself; "how could I ever find
courage to look into her eyes again?--I, who lurk about the road at
night to get husbands for my wretched sisters!"

Then suddenly the twins came running up breathless; they trembled all
over and struggled for words.

"What is the matter, children?"

Greta hid her head on his shoulder, and Kate sniffled like a child
trying to keep back its tears.

"They have come," they stammered, and then they both began to sob.

"That is a good thing," answered Paul, and kissed them.

"Won't you come into the house?" Katie asked, sucking her apron.

"Where have you left them?"

"They are talking to father."

"Ah! that is a very different thing. Run to your room--I will come in a
moment."

"And what a price it cost," he murmured, looking after them; then he
gave a glance at Helenenthal, and went into the shed where "Black Susy"
stood. "It is time that you should come back to life," he said, stroking
her black body; "we shall have to work bravely, you and I, if we want to
procure the dowry for the girls."

When he stepped into the house he heard the loud-sounding voice of his
father coming out to him.

"I am curious all the same to see how they will behave," he thought, and
listened.

"Yes, he is a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What
I have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his
petty, mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting
about the machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe,
and meanwhile the farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here
a cripple, but if I still bore the sceptre, gentlemen, I would coin
thousands of thalers out of the ground, no less than Vanderbilt, the
American, whose life is written in this almanac in a very instructive
manner."

"Couldn't you manage to direct the affairs from your chair?" inquired
Ulrich's voice.

"Oh, gentlemen, behold my tears! I shed them for the most ungrateful,
the most degenerate child which this earth has ever seen. In this
almanac there is the story of a son who, at the risk of his life,
fetches draughts of water from the hands of robbers for his parents
languishing in the desert. I am not able to offer you even a little
liquor, a little ginger brandy with aniseed, which I am so fond of
drinking myself."

"In future we will bring some for you," Fritz answered him.

"Oh, why has not God given me two such sons as you are? And fancy, he
never consults me, he locks me out of the kitchen. I wonder that I have
not been starved out. Well, you know him from a child; was he not always
a rough, spiteful creature?"

"Oh yes; there was always something violent about him," said Ulrich.

"And he was always handling pistols and whips, especially behind one's
back," Fritz added.

"Especially behind one's back--ha! ha! ha! that is characteristic,
that is his way. Ah, gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the
proverb in this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover
again, you shall see how I will take my revenge--first on the rogue,
the incendiary, the villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and
then on my dear son who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit
him, hunt him away from the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, if I do
this?"

"Quite right," both declared.

"How do you do?" said Paul, coming forward.

All three started. His father crouched shyly down in his arm-chair, like
a dog who fears the whip, and the brothers stretched out their hands,
very embarrassed and very humble, and begged him to let by-gones be
by-gones.

"Why not?" he answered, combating his repugnance; "you know the right
way now."

When the two brought forward their suit, the old man's boastfulness
broke out stronger than ever.

"Gentlemen," he said, repressing his voice so that it might sound more
dignified, "your proposal is a great honor naturally, but I am not able
to answer it with 'Yes.' First, I must ask for a sufficient guarantee,
that I may know what future awaits my daughters, who, by their beauty
and amiability, as well as by stainless virtue, are destined for a high
position. I have educated them most carefully, and watched over them so
lovingly that my fatherly heart cannot decide to give them away without
serious consideration."

In this tone he went on boasting till Paul quietly said, "Let it be,
father, the matter is already settled." Then he was silent, secretly
highly elated to have made such a magnificent speech.

In the afternoon Paul went into his sisters' room and said:

"Children, say a prayer for Frau Douglas, who was buried to-day."

They looked at him with eyes sparkling with joy, and a dreamy smile
passed over their faces.

"Have you not understood me?"

"Yes," they said, softly, and looked terrified--they clung to each other
as if they feared the rod. He left them alone in their happiness, and
stepped out into the clear, cold winter air. "How is it," he thought,
"that everybody now fears me and no one understands what I mean?"

The same day he dismissed all the servants, and wrote to the foreman to
come back on the morrow to resume work again.

During the same week it began to thaw, the work went on quickly, and one
Friday evening at the beginning of March "Black Susy" stood there, smart
and shiny in her newly-mended garment. Next day the boiler was to be
tried, and the wood and coal lay heaped up by the walls of the shed.

Paul, unable to sleep, tossed on his bed. The hours crept slowly by,
and a short eternity of the most painful expectation elapsed between
midnight and dawn.

"Will she come to life? Will she?"

The clock struck one. He could not stand it any longer; he dressed and
crept out into the cold, wet March night, a flickering lantern in his
hand. The wind caught his clothes and the icy drizzling rain scourged
his face.

"Black Susy" glared sulkily out of the dark shed as if she resented
being deprived of her last night's rest.... The lantern threw a ghostly
light over the inhospitable place, and each time it flickered the shadow
of the machine danced in grotesque forms on the yellow deal wall.

"Shall I wake up the foreman?" thought Paul. "No, let him sleep; I will
have the first pain or the first joy all to myself."

Heaps of coal sank rattling into the great iron jaws. A little blue
flame leaped up, flickered all round, and soon a red glow filled the
dark interior.... The lantern on the wall shone dimly, as if jealous of
the warm, cheerful fire-light.

Paul seated himself upon a coal-heap and watched the play of the
flames.... The oven-door began to glow and half-burnt cinders to fall,
throwing out sparks all round.

Paul could hear his heart beat, and as he pressed his hand upon it to
still its tumult he felt Elsbeth's flute in his breast-pocket. He had
found it lying on the locomobile the day the work was begun again, and
had carried it about with him ever since.

"I wonder if I shall ever learn that, too?" he asked himself, in
tumultuous joy at what he had already accomplished. He put the flute to
his mouth and tried to blow it--the minutes passed so slowly that he was
forced to try and while away the time. But the sounds which he produced
sounded hollow and squeaky--still less could he squeeze out a melody.

"I shall never learn it," he thought. "Whatever I do for myself
fails--that is a law in my life; I must sow for others if I want to
reap."

But in spite of this he put the flute to his lips again.

"It would have been nice," he thought, "if, instead of heating engines
here, I had become an artist, as Elsbeth used to prophesy." A thrill of
excitement went through him. "Will she live again? Will she?"

He extracted another shrill sound from the flute.

"B-r-r," he said, "that goes through one's nerves! I shall have to leave
love and flute-playing to others."

But at this moment there arose in the body of "Black Susy" that
mysterious singing which had remained faithfully in his memory all these
years. It sounded as if the fates were singing beneath the ash-tree.

"Ah, that is far better music!" he cried, springing up and throwing
the flute away from him.... The iron door rattled.... The glowing jaws
swallowed new heaps of coal. The shovel fell clattering to the ground.

"It will wake them up in the house," he thought, startled for a moment.
"But let it, let it," he continued; "their happiness and their future
are at stake."

The singing grew louder and louder; then his joy came to a climax,
so that he began to whistle aloud. "How nice that sounds! Yes, we
understand how to make music; we are brave musicians, Susy." The chimney
sent forth mighty clouds of black smoke, which disseminated itself under
the ceiling like a canopy, heaving and sinking as though a storm were
driving it.... One of the valves sent forth a hissing sound, and a white
cloud of steam spirted up, which quickly mixed with the black smoke....
The hissing grew louder and louder, the hand of the manometer went on
and on....

"Now is the time!"

With a trembling hand he felt for the lever.... A jerk ... a swing ...
and whirling, as if driven by supernatural force, the wheel went round.

"Victory! she lives, she lives!"

"Now they may hear, now they may come!" His hand pulled at the valve of
the steam-whistle, and shrilly the night echoed her cry:

"I live! I live!"

Then he folded his hands and murmured, softly,

"O mother, you should have lived to see this!" And as he said so it
suddenly occurred to him that this, too, was useless--that death was
upon him also, crying into his ear,

"You will die! will die! before having lived."

"I have still work to do," he said, with moist eyes. "First, I will see
my sisters happy, for if they remain poor they will be treated brutally;
then I must see the farm right itself; then death may come."

And, like the black clouds around, years and years of struggling and
years of care rose up before his eyes.

With sleepy faces the inmates appeared at the gate of the shed; the
sisters came, too, and stood anxiously clinging to each other, in the
smoke and the glow of the fire, looking in their white dressing-gowns
like two pale roses on the same stalk.

"Here your future is being prepared, you poor things," he murmured,
nodding to them.

When the foreman had come, Paul went into his father's bedroom, who
stared at him confusedly.

"Father," he said, modestly, though his heart swelled with pride, "the
locomobile is in working order; as soon as the ground has thawed the
work on the moor can begin."

The old man said, "Leave me in peace," and turned his head to the wall.

Next morning, when the locomobile was pulled out, a strange rattling,
scrunching sound was heard on the threshold of the shed.

"Something has got under the wheels," said the foreman.

Paul looked. There, in a heap of little fragments, broken in half, and
pressed quite flat, lay--Elsbeth's flute.

A bitter smile came over his face, as if he meant to say, "Now I have
sacrificed to you all that I have; now can you be satisfied, Dame Care?"

Since that day he felt as if the last link between himself and Elsbeth
was severed--he had lost her, like his dreams, his hopes, his dignity,
his own self.

With hurrahs, "Black Susy" wandered out onto the moor.

CHAPTER XIX.

Years went by. The sisters had already long been settled as happy wives,
their dowry was paid, and the brothers-in-law had already begun to
borrow from Paul.

How silent it was now in the quiet Haidehof. The father could hobble
about the house and garden on a crutch, but he had grown much too lazy
to wield the sceptre again. Paul did not know what else to do for him,
except to have his favorite dishes cooked, not to measure his rations of
ginger and aniseed too sparingly, and to present him each Christmas with
a new almanac. The old man might have been well satisfied with this, for
indeed he needed nothing more--he had even grown too heavy to drive
to the town; but the better his body throve the more imbittered and
exasperated grew his mind. He would sit and brood for hours, and it
was dreadful to see how in doing so he gnashed his teeth and shook his
fists. One of his fixed ideas was that his son kept him under on purpose
that he might claim for himself the glory of the great ideas which his
father had conceived, and the better the moor paid the more eagerly he
calculated what his company would have brought in. He was not sparing
with the millions; he had no need to be so.

But something sprang up from the darkest corner of his soul, and that
was a plan of revenge against Douglas, which he privately nursed and
cherished as his most important secret. Even his sons-in-law, to whom he
liked to open his heart, knew nothing of this. Ulrich once said to Paul,

"Take care; the old man is brewing something against Douglas."

"What could it be?" he replied, apparently unconcerned, although he had
often felt anxiety on this subject.

Dull, and without interest, Paul lived from one day to the next. His
whole inner being was sacrificed to the commonplace cares about property
and money, yet without his ever experiencing any joy at the success he
attained. There was no longer anybody whom he could make happy, and
he worked on without knowing why--as a cart-horse in the traces moves
forward, ignorant of what the plough does, which it drags through the
briers. Months sometimes passed without his taking one retrospective
glance at his soul. He did not whistle any more, either. He feared the
torments which overwhelming sentiment called into life, but he looked
back on the time when he could commune with himself in the language of
music as on a lost paradise. Often when he compared the result of his
work, his toiling, his wakeful nights, to that which he had sacrificed
for it, he was overcome by intense bitterness. It seemed to him to have
been something unspeakably noble, sweet and blissful, only he could not
find the right name for it.

He could rid himself of these black thoughts most successfully by
plunging deep into some new work, and then a long time would pass before
the fit of melancholy attacked him again.

Meanwhile the Haidehof was thriving more splendidly from year to year;
the debt to Douglas was paid off, the crops flourished, and in the
meadows thorough-bred cattle were feeding. The whole place was to be
rebuilt. The house, stables, and barn all were to be thoroughly renewed.
And one spring there came a crowd of workmen of all kinds into the yard.
The house was pulled down, and while Paul chose a wooden barrack for his
dwelling, his father was easily induced to go over to stay with one of
his sons-in-law.

"I shall never come back," he said, taking leave; "I cannot stand the
sight of your mad proceedings any longer." But the first to come back
in the autumn was the old man. He seated himself comfortably in his own
arm-chair, and henceforth added his son-in-law to the list of those he
abused. It was very possible they might not have treated him with too
much consideration.

"Now I have no longer a place on earth where I can rest my gray hairs,"
he grumbled, stretching himself lazily on his cushions.

Next spring it was the turn of the farm buildings; the barn, especially,
was to be made an example of rural magnificence, as a monument of that
terrible night which had given the death-blow to his mother.

The farmers who now drove across the heath often halted to look
admiringly at the smart buildings which, with their red-tiled roofs,
impressed them already in the distance, and many a one shook his head
thoughtfully and murmured the old proverb:

  "To build and to lend
  Bring cares without end."

"Black Susy" on the moor was sending forth her black clouds of smoke,
the knives of the cutting-machine bored themselves deep into the clammy
ground, and the press worked slowly and silently like a good-natured
domestic animal. A newly-built shed with its white walls looked dazzling
in the sunshine, and all round about the long black rows of compressed
peat were to be seen. The blocks were hard and heavy, with little
fibre and much coal. They easily beat all competition and had a good
reputation as far as Koenigsberg.

Paul, who on his business journeys mixed much with strange people, now
also enjoyed the happiness of being greeted as a man of consequence, and
of being treated by the worthy land-owners as their equal. But he had no
longer any pleasure in it.

When they shook hands with him in a friendly manner, congratulated him
upon his success, or requested a visit from him, he asked himself
in silence, "Are they mocking me?" And though he saw well that the
gentlemen were quite in earnest about it, he always felt as if freed
from a nightmare when they let him go.

"Why did not these kind people come here before," he said to himself,
"at that time when I needed them--when each kind word would have been of
great advantage to me? Now I am as insensible as a stone--now it is too
late."

But his ambition increased more and more. And as if Heaven itself wished
to consecrate it all, it caused the fruit to thrive in such abundance
that year (the seventh since his mother's death), sent rain and sunshine
so lavishly, each at its proper time, that the people began to feel
uncomfortable at all this profusion, and asked each other anxiously,
"Can it be for any real good?"

"Something will still come and spoil all--a hailstorm or the like," said
Paul, who was always prepared for the worst. But no; the harvest wagons
came in one after the other heavily laden, swaying from side to
side, and kept pouring the profusion of golden ears into the granary,
scattering grains around until it was full up to the rafters.

But neither did this give pleasure to Paul. The more he saw his property
accumulate, the more proudly the fruits of his handiwork greeted him,
the heavier grew his care. Any one who had seen him slowly walking
across the yard, with deep lines in his forehead and bowed head, might
have taken him for a man encumbered with debts and very near to ruin.

About this time he read in the newspaper that Elsbeth was betrothed.
The name of Elsbeth Douglas and Leo Heller stood side by side in letters
full of beautiful flourishes.

He did not feel any sharp pain, he was not even startled; only a
smile of melancholy satisfaction played round his mouth, as if he were
murmuring to himself, "I always said so!"

And then he remembered the document which had once been circulated in
church by the younger Erdmann to vex him, and which sounded just the
same, only that his own name had stood there instead of the strange one.
And that certainly made a difference.

He had not seen her for years. Although their properties lay so close
together there had been no meeting between them. The White House still
gleamed just as brightly over the heath and overlooked his window as at
the time when the longing to wander thither had arisen in his childish
heart, but the magic glitter which surrounded it then, and for fifteen
years after, had now vanished, extinguished by the deepening shadows of
every-day life.

"May she be happy!" he said, and considered himself comforted by this
wish.

Next Sunday the harvest festival was celebrated in the church. Paul
sat in his corner, and listened to the tones of the organ and the vicar
sending up praise and thanksgiving to Heaven. The sun shone through the
painted windows in a thousand bright colors, just as it did on the day
when he and Elsbeth were confirmed; but there, too, sad and sombre in
her ash-colored garments, stood the gray woman, still gazing down upon
him with her big, hollow eyes.

"I, too, am celebrating a harvest festival to-day, the harvest festival
of my youth," he thought, "but mine is scarcely a too happy one."

The service was at an end. With a triumphant song the organ dismissed
the joyful worshippers, who crowded together under the yews in the shady
church-yard to shake hands and congratulate each other.

As Paul came down the steps he saw Elsbeth only a few paces before him,
on the arm of her betrothed.

She seemed older, and looked pale and delicate. When her look met his
she turned a shade paler still.

He trembled all over, but his eyes did not quit her face. In confusion
he raised his cap; and at the same place where fifteen years ago they
had spoken the first words to one another, they now passed each other in
silence and like strangers.

CHAPTER XX.

"Whatever is the matter with father?" said Frau Kate Erdmann to Frau
Greta Erdmann, as they were both driving along the road on the way
to visit their old home and take the opportunity at the same time of
telling their brother all that weighed on their minds.

The old man stood crouched up in a corner behind the barn, and was
busying himself over a heap of straw which lay there. When he heard the
rattle of the dog-cart he stopped in alarm and rubbed his hands like
some one who wished to appear unconcerned.

The two sisters looked at each other, and Greta said,

"We must give Paul a hint of this."

Oh, they had become very reasonable, these two wild girls! not less so
inwardly than outwardly; their truant brown curls were combed smoothly
behind their ears, and the sparkling eyes had a weary look in them, as
though they now knew how it feels to sit in a lonely room and cry one's
heart out.

Frau Kate, indeed, had three strapping boys, and

Frau Greta had already hopes of a fourth; and every one knows "Maternity
renders weary."

Paul was not at home; he was working on the moor; but their father came
towards them with a cunning laugh, swinging his crutch, and crying out,
"Can't I run again like a youth?"

Frau Kate expressed her admiration and Frau Greta agreed with her.

"It goes first-rate," he laughed; "the day before yesterday I even went
as far as Helenenthal."

They looked at him in surprise, and almost in terror, for since he was
forced to leave it he had never been there again.

"How were you received?" asked Frau Greta.

"Who? What? Oh, you think perhaps I went for a neighborly visit? You
are real geese! I would sooner be the guest of your watch-dog and try to
take his mutton-bone away."

"But what did you do there, then?"

"I peeped through the gate and looked at the clock and then I came home
again. How long do you think it takes me to walk there? just guess."

They had no idea.

"An hour and a half, just like a professional runner.... Indeed," he
looked down meditatively, "if one had anything to carry, it might take
two."

"And you went only to find that out?"

"That was all, my love, that was all!" and his eye sparkled meaningly.

Then they seated themselves in the veranda, which Paul had had erected
before the door, on the model of the White House. The old house-keeper,
who had formerly managed the Erdmanns' establishment, and who after they
were married had emigrated to the Haidehof, had to go into the kitchen
to make coffee and waffle cakes, and as their father did not know what
to talk about to his daughters, he abused Paul and his sons-in-law.
To-day he did it less from absolute love of abuse than from old habit;
his thoughts seemed to be wandering somewhere else, and while he spoke
he wriggled on his chair with uncomfortable activity.

"Let us go in," said Kate; "we must look after household matters a
little, and the wind is blowing us away here."

"There will be a storm to-night," said Greta. And then they both turned
round terrified, for the laugh which the old man gave sounded so very
strange.

"Let there be a storm," he said, a little embarrassed; "that won't
matter at all. There are storms in married life too, sometimes, are
there not?"

In Kate's face there lurked something of her old mischievous look, but
Greta drew down the corners of her mouth, as if she were going to cry.
She seemed not quite to have got over the last.

"Yes, autumn will be early this year," she said, with a touch of
melancholy.

The old man whistled "Wenn die Schwalben Heimwarts Ziehn" (When the
Swallows Homeward Fly), and Katie said:

"Let autumn come; the barns are full."

"Thank God!" tittered the old man, "they are full."

The sisters put their arms round each other, and pressing their
foreheads against the window panes, looked out into the sunny yard, from
which clouds of dust were whirling to the sky....

At dusk Paul came home, black as a nigger, for the peat-dust, which the
wind had been blowing about, had settled on his beard and face.

He mutely shook hands with his sisters, looked sharply into their eyes,
and said, "You shall tell me all about it afterwards."

Greta looked at Kate, and Kate looked at Greta; then they suddenly
laughed aloud, and, seizing him by both shoulders, danced about the room
with him.

"You will make yourselves black, children," he said.

"My sweetheart is a chimney-sweep," hummed Greta; and Kate sang the
second verse, "My sweetheart comes from the nigger's land."

Then they kissed him and ran to the looking-glass to see whether the
kiss had left a mark.

When he had gone out to make himself tidy, Greta said, "It's funny that
he has only to look at one and all is right again."

And Kate added, "But he is more silent himself to-day than ever."

"Paul, be good," they said, caressingly, as they sat together at the
supper-table; "we may only come here on such rare occasions!... show us
a friendly face."

"Have you forgotten what day it is?" he answered, stroking their hair.

They started, for their first thought was of the anniversary of their
mother's death, but they breathed freely again, for that fell near
Midsummer-day.

"Well?" they asked.

"To-day, eight years ago, our barn was burned down!"

All were silent; only their father chuckled and sighed to himself....

It began to grow dark; over the heath there still streamed a streak of
red light, which was reflected a fiery glow upon the white table-cloth.
The storm rattled at the shutters.

It was a good thing that the house-keeper now entered the room. She was
a garrulous woman, who had always much news to relate.

"Well, Frau Jankus, what have you to tell us?" called out Kate to her,
who was glad to shake off the nightmare of remembrance.

"Oh, dear madam," cried the old person, "don't you know yet? There
are great goings-on in the church to-day. The whole village is
making wreaths; over the altar they have hung a whole garland of rare
tea-roses, and on each side the most beautiful oleander trees are
placed."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"A wedding is the matter! Miss Douglas's wedding will be to-morrow!"

The two sisters started, exchanged a quick glance with each other, and
then looked at Paul.

But he was rolling a crumb of bread between his fingers, and looked as
if the story did not concern him in the least.

The sisters exchanged another glance and nodded significantly. Then,
with the same impulse, they both seized his hands.

"Children, you tear me to pieces," he said, with a feeble smile.

"Ah, then there will be _polterabend_ there today?" asked their father,
growing quite lively all of a sudden.

"Probably, probably!" answered the old housekeeper. "Not long ago I saw
a troop of children go by quite laden with old flower-pots and rubbish."

"At our wedding they showed more moderation," said Greta, and both
sisters looked at each other and smiled dreamily.

"That's a splendid coincidence," muttered the old man, and rubbed his
hands.

"Why splendid?" asked Paul.

"Oh, I only meant ... coincidence--the same day that they burned down
our barn. Just tell me, Paul--you were awake--what hour might it have
been when you saw the flames rise?"

"It might have been one o'clock."

"Well, you ought to know. Though what the business really was that took
you to Helenenthal that night passes my comprehension, but it is all
right quite right! now I know the exact hour."

Then you know a great deal! said Greta, laughing.

"So I do," he answered, sulkily. "You'll see, my little daughter, you'll
see!"

Kate was about to come to her sister's assistance, but Paul made them a
sign, secretly, to leave the old man in peace.

Soon after, the sisters took leave.

"You wanted to tell Paul that father has secrets behind the barn," said
Kate, when they were both sitting in the dog cart.

"Yes that is true!" she answered, made the driver stop, and beckoned
to Paul. But the old man, who, in his distrust, always liked to hear
everything that was said, thrust himself in, and so they had to leave it
unsaid.

When Paul, on his usual evening round, came into the kitchen, he saw how
his father was negotiating with the house keeper for an earthen pot.

"What do you want the pot for, Mr Meyerhofer?" asked the old woman.

"I also am going to celebrate _polterabend_, Frau Jankus," he replied,
with a hollow laugh. "Perhaps they will give me some of the wedding
cake."

The old woman nearly died of laughing, and his father limped off to his
bedroom with the pot, locking the door carefully behind him.

The whole house had retired to rest, only Paul still paced up and down
in the dark yard.

"So to morrow will be her wedding," he thought, folding his hands "If I
were a good Christian I ought to say a prayer for her happiness. But
I am not such an inert fellow yet, by a long way I believe that I once
loved her very much, more than I knew myself. How can it have been that
I became a stranger to her?" He thought and thought, but could come to
no right conclusion.

The moon rose over the moor--a great blood red disk--which spread an
uncertain light all over the yard. The storm seemed to be augmenting. It
whistled round the corners and howled through the trees.

"If a fire were to break out to day it would not content itself with the
barn only," thought Paul and then it occurred to him that he must send
a reminder to the agent, to hasten the insurance. "For one never knows
what might happen during the night. I will go to sleep"--he concluded
his reflections--"to morrow is another day, and a wedding day, too."

He went on tiptoe to the bedroom, which he had prepared for himself near
that of his fathers, so as to be at hand if anything should happen to
the old man. He lighted no candle, for the full moon, rising higher,
already shone brightly into the room.

"I wonder if you will sleep to night? he thought an hour later. The
shadows of the storm blown leaves led a wild dance on his counterpane,
and in between the light of the moon quivered like little tongues of
white flame.

"On that midsummer night the moon shone just as bright," and then he
remembered how white Elsbeth's dressing gown had looked, peeping out
underneath her dark cloak.

"That was the finest night of my life," he murmured, with a sigh, and
then he decided to go to sleep! and drew his blanket over his head to
strengthen his resolution.

Some time after, he thought he heard his father get up softly in the
next room and limp out at the door. He could distinctly hear how the
crutch clattered on the stone flags of the hall.

"He will come back directly," he thought, for it often happened that his
father got up in the night.

With that he fell into an uneasy doze, in which all sorts of terrible
dreams chased each other through his head. When he next came to full
consciousness the moon was already high in the heavens, her beams now
scarcely illumined his room at all, but the garden and yard lay bathed
in light.

"Strange--it seems to me as if I had not heard father come back," he
said to himself. He sat up and looked at the watch that was hanging over
his bed.

"Light minutes to one." Two hours had elapsed meanwhile.

"I suppose I was fast asleep," he thought, and was about to lie down
again. Then the house door, caught by the storm, slammed noisily to, so
that the whole house shook.

He jumped up, terrified What is that? The house door open, father not
back yet? The next moment he had thrown on his coat and trousers, and
with bare feet and bare head rushed out.

The door which led from his father's bedroom into the hall stood wide
open. Pale with anxiety, he stepped towards the bed--it had not been
used, only on the foot of it there was an impression on the feather
quilt So his father had been sitting there without stirring for more
than an hour and a half--evidently waiting till he himself was asleep.

What in the name of Heaven did all this mean?

His look wandered searchingly round the room. The worsted slippers in
which his father generally crept about the house were thrown in the
corner, but the boots, which for months had been standing there unused,
were gone.

What? Did his lame father want to go for a ramble in the middle of the
night? His heart almost stopped beating He rushed out into the yard.

It was as clear as daylight, only as far as the shadow of the barn
extended night still reigned.

The storm howled among the trees, the glistening white sand was whirled
in the air, otherwise all was silent and deserted.

He hastened through the garden--no trace of him--to the back of the
stables--still no trace of him. Ah, what did this mean? The gate open?
Where had he gone? The dog near him whined, he hastily unfastened his
chain. "Seek for your master, Turk. Seek."

The dog sniffed about on the ground and ran to the front of the barn,
where the bundles of straw were lying piled up like pale mountains of
sand along the wall.

The moonlight was dazzling on the whitewashed wall, and lay bright and
glittering on the ground One might have found a pin by its light.
There was nothing to be noticed, except in one place the straw seemed
disarranged.

But stop! how does the ladder come here, which is leaning against the
wall? The ladder which but two hours ago was lying flat along the inside
of the fence?

Who has taken it from its place?

And, by heaven!--what is this?--

Who has opened the window of the loft, which he himself had bolted from
the inside before the barn was filled with the sheaves?

Below at the foot of the ladder, the ground looked moist, as if a liquid
had been spilled. An odor of petroleum rose from the spot.

With trembling hands he seized the straw which was strewn on the ground.
Yes, it was wet, and the obnoxious odor communicated itself to the
fingers that touched it.

He felt his knees tremble under him, a dull, terrible foreboding clouded
his senses. With difficulty he raised himself up and mounted the ladder,
till he reached the window of the loft.

The dog whined below.

"Seek for your master, Turk. Seek!"

The animal broke out into a joyous howl and ran sniffing round and
round, till he seemed to have found the scent.

Paul gazed at him. He was trembling feverishly, in agonizing suspense.

The way the animal took was through the gate. Then it really had been
his father who had opened it.

But then--then.... Which way would he turn?

"Seek for your master, Turk. Seek!"

The dog again gave a short howl, and then ran with great speed down the
path towards Helenenthal.

Helenenthal! What does father want in Helenenthal? Ah, did he not say a
short time ago that he had been there one afternoon for an experiment?
For an experiment! And how strangely and unpleasantly he laughed when he
said it.

And to-day, too. How mysterious his behavior had been! And when they
were speaking of the barn catching fire, what did he mean by the words
that it was a splendid coincidence today? Why to day? Whatever happens,
I must find the solution of this riddle ere it is too late!

He looked around, seeking help.

As his hand was groping mechanically in the dark aperture he laid hold
of the handle of a tin can which stood hidden there among the sheaves.
It was the petroleum can, which he had freshly filled yesterday. And on
whose advice? Who was it who came and said,

"Father, father, for Jesus' sake, what do you want to do at
Helenenthal?"

And now, how much is there still in it? It is scarcely half full.

As he unconsciously went on groping about, he came upon some boxes of
matches which lay by the can.

This opened his eyes, he gave a terrible cry, "He is going to set
Helenenthal on fire!"

Everything swam before his eyes, and he would have fallen backward from
the ladder had he not clung to the framework of the window.

All was clear. His father's confused talk, his laughs, his threats.

But there was yet time. The old man could only creep along on his
crutch. He might throw himself on his horse, and gallop after him.

"Saddle a horse!" he called out through the dark, and sprang down from
the ladder. Then suddenly it shot through his brain--"Why did father ask
so minutely about the time years ago? Would his revenge be executed at
the same moment? Good heavens' then all is lost. I told him one o'clock
was the hour, and it is one now."

Mad fear seized him--again he climbed the ladder.

In the next moment the flames would rise over there.

Is it not burning there already? No, it is only the moon that shines on
the windows of the White House. Heavenly Father, is there no salvation,
no mercy? If a prayer, if a curse could have the power to lame the out
stretched hand! Who will warn him, who will give him a sign to turn
back?

But there are the flames No. Perhaps in another second the fiery glow
will rise to the sky.

"Elsbeth, awake'"

It will flame up as it did then, eight years ago, when the blood red
reflection paralyzed all his faculties, as he roamed in the garden of
Helenenthal. If to day, as at that time, a fire were to rise on the
heath, or that his father's hand might be stiffened in the midst of his
criminal purpose.

Oh, God in Heaven, let a miracle happen! Let a fire break out on the
heath, as it happened before--as happened before.

There _must_ be a fire! And there must be a fire here! If lightning
would but strike the roof of his own home, so that the flames might cry
out to his father, "Stop, stop!" Ah, why is it such a clear, starlight
night? Why is there no threatening cloud upon the horizon? Perhaps he is
even now stretching up to the thatched roof. Perhaps he is now striking
the match. In another moment all warning will be too late.

There must be a fire! There must be a fire here!

And there is no torch that I could swing to warn him!

"There must be a fire! There must be a fire here!"

And as he looked around with eyes starting from his head, there suddenly
flashed upon him an idea as bright as the fire he was longing for.

He shouted with joy.

"Yes, that's the thing. The terror will benumb him. It must be saved.
Saved at any price."

With both hands he seized the can, and swinging it round him, poured its
contents on the piled-up sheaves.

He grasped the matches. There is a soft hissing, the storm howls through
the opening, and the flame shoots up high into the air, a whistling,
hissing roaring is heard. The fire has already reached the roof.

He rushes back into the yard, which still lies silent before him.

"Fire! fire! fire!" he cries, to wake the sleepers.

In the stables, where the farm servants sleep, there is a great stir,
shrieks come from the servants' rooms.

The roof is already wrapped in a fiery mantle. The tiles begin to crack,
and fall rattling to the ground. Wherever there is an outlet a fountain
of flame immediately spirts up towards the sky.

Hitherto he had been standing in the yard all alone, watching his
terrible work with folded hands, but now the doors were torn open, and
the farm servants and maids rushed screaming into the yard.

Then he sighed, relieved, as at a duty accomplished, and walked slowly
into the garden to avoid meeting anybody. "I have worked long enough,"
he murmured, slamming the gate behind him. "To-day I will rest!"

With lagging steps he went along the gravel path like one tired out,
murmuring incessantly "Rest! rest!"

His glance wandered wearily around, the garden lay before him, bathed in
a sea of light caused by the moonbeams and the flames, and the shadows
of the storm driven leaves danced before his eyes like something
supernatural. Here and there a spark fell upon the path before him,
looking like a glowworm. He searched for the darkest arbor, and hid in
its farthest corner. There he sat down on the turfy seat and buried his
face in his hands.

He wanted neither to hear nor to see anything more.

But a dull feeling of curiosity made him look up after a while, and as
he raised his eyes he saw the flames arch over the house like a crimson,
white-edged canopy, for the storm was blowing that way.

Then he knew all was lost.

He folded his hands. He felt as if he ought to pray.

"Mother! mother!" he cried, his eyes full of tears, stretching out his
arms to the sky.

Then, suddenly, a strange change came over him. He felt quite happy and
free, the heavy load which had weighed on his mind all these years had
vanished, and, with a deep breath, he drew his hands along his shoulders
and arms, as though he longed to rid himself of the sinking fetters.

"There," he cried, like one from whose heart a burden is taken, "now
I have nothing more, now I need care no longer. I am free, free as the
birds in the air."

He hit his forehead with his fists, he cried, he laughed. He felt as if
an undeserved, unheard of happiness had descended upon him from heaven.

"Mother! mother!" he shouted, wild with joy. "Now I know how your fairy
tale ends. I am released! I am released!"

At this moment the frightened lowing of the cattle fell upon his ear,
and brought him back to his senses. "No, you poor animals shall not
perish on my account," he cried, springing up, "I would rather die
myself."

He hurried to the back door of the house, where the servants were
eagerly carrying out the furniture.

"Look at master!" they exclaimed, weeping, and drew each other's
attention to his bare feet.

"Leave that alone!" he cried. "Save the animals!"

An axe lay on the path. With it he broke open the back door of the
stables, which led into the fields, for the yard was already a sea of
flames.

As in a dream he sees how the garden and field are filling with people.
The village fire engine comes rattling along, the road to Helenenthal,
too, becomes alive.

Three, four times he rushes into the flames, the servants behind him,
then he sinks down, fainting with pain, in the middle of the burning
stables.

A shriek, a piercing shriek from a woman, causes him to open his eyes
once more.

Then it seemed to him as if he saw Elsbeth's face vanishing in mist over
his head, then it was night again round him....

CHAPTER XXI

At the first streak of dawn a sad procession went across the autumnal
heath, on the way to Helenenthal. Two miserable wagons crept slowly, one
behind the other. In them was found room for all that remained of the
Haidehof.

In the first wagon, wrapped in blankets among the straw, lay the master,
terribly burned, unconscious ... The pale, trembling woman who anxiously
bent over him was the playfellow of his youth.

In this state she fetched him home at last. "We will take him to one of
his sisters," Mr. Douglas had said but she had laid her hands on Paul's
breast, from which the singed rags hung down, as if she wanted to take
possession of him for evermore, and had answered:

"No, father, he is coming with us."

"But your wedding, child--the guests?"

"What is the wedding to me?" she replied, and the gay bridegroom stood
by stupefied.

In the second cart lay the few pieces of furniture which had been saved:
an old chest of drawers, a few drawers with linen and books and ribbons,
earthen ware dishes, a milk pail, and his father's long pipe.

But where was the latter?

The only one who might have given an explanation lay there unconscious,
perhaps already struggling with death.

Had he taken to flight? Had he perished in the flames? The maids had
found his bedroom empty, and no trace of himself.

"I suspect no good of him," said old Douglas, "he was always inclined to
madness, and if we find his bones to morrow beneath the ruins I shall
be quite convinced that he set fire to the barn himself, and then threw
himself into the flames."

However, just as they were coming through the gates of Helenenthal they
heard a dog howling piteously near the barn, and saw a strange cur with
his fore paws on a dark mass lying there, and from time to time pulling
at something that looked like the end of a garment.

Douglas, surprised, ordered the cart to stop, and walked up to it.
There he found the person they were seeking--a corpse. His features were
horribly distorted, and his arms still half uplifted, as if he had been
suddenly turned to stone. Near him lay a broken pot, and a matchbox was
shimming in a pool of petroleum, which as flowing down the wheel ruts as
in a gutter.

Then the gray giant folded his hands and murmured a prayer When he came
back to the cart he trembled all over, and his eyes were full of tears.

"Elsbeth, look here," he said, "there lies the body of old Meyerhofer.
He wanted to set fire to our property, and God has struck him dead."

"God does not set barns on fire," said Elsbeth, and looked back at the
burning farm, from which a dark-blue smoke was rising in the chilly
morning air.

"But is it not through God's providence that we were saved?"

"If any one saved us, this one did," said Elsbeth.

"What? would he have sacrificed everything, would he have become an
incendiary--only--to--"

"Ask him," she said, hoarsely, and in the growing anxiety of her heart
she folded her hands on her breast and groaned aloud.

"Heaven grant that he may ever be able to answer again," murmured
Douglas. Then he ordered the servants to bring the old man's body into
the house. He had already sent for a doctor; he himself would drive to
the sisters and give them the news.

The guests, horror-stricken, came rushing out to the cart, which stopped
before the flower-decked veranda.

"Elsbeth, how ill you look! Elsbeth, spare yourself," cried out her
aunts, and tried to take possession of her.

"Go away!" she said, and repulsed the caressing hands with a movement of
horror.

Then the gay bridegroom, who during this night had played such a
lamentable part, came to her and tried to persuade her to leave the
helpless body. But she looked at him with an absent, wandering glance,
as if she did not remember ever to have seen him before. Depressed and
discouraged, he left her alone.

The aunts, wringing their hands, hurried to old Douglas, who was walking
up and down before the stables awaiting a conveyance. His powerful
chest heaved, his white, bushy brows were knitted, and his eyes shot
lightning. A storm seemed to be passing over his soul.

"Have pity," cried the women; "make Elsbeth rest; she must recover
herself; she looks as if she were going mad."

"If it is as she says," he muttered to himself, "if he has sacrificed
all his belongings.... Plague you, leave me in peace!" he cried to the
women who surrounded him.

"But think of Elsbeth," they called out. "At twelve o'clock the vicar
comes, and what will she look like?"

"That's her lookout!" he shouted. "Let her be, she knows quite well what
she is doing."

At the same moment that Paul was lifted from the cart a troop of
servants came from the gate carrying his father's corpse.

One after the other the two bodies were carried into the White
House, and the dog went whining and sniffing after them. It was a sad
procession.

Elsbeth had Paul carried into her own bedroom, locked the door, and
seated herself near the bed.

Vainly the aunts implored to be let in.

At eleven o'clock the doctor came, and declared himself willing to stay
with his patient till next morning. He had evidently come prepared for
it, for he was an old friend of the house and one of the wedding guests.
Meanwhile they were to telegraph for a nurse.

"May I not stay with him?" asked Elsbeth.

"If you can," he answered, astonished.

"I can," she answered, with a mysterious smile.

The aunts knocked again. "Spare yourself, child," they cried through the
chink of the door; "you must dress--you must go to the register-office.
The vicar has come."

"He can go away again," she answered.

There was a murmur outside; the bridegroom, too, was giving his advice.

"What will you do, my child?" said the old doctor, and looked
searchingly into her eyes. Then she sank, weeping, on her knees by the
bed, seized Paul's powerless hand and pressed it to her eyes and mouth.

"Is that your firm resolution?" the old man asked. She nodded assent.

"And if he dies?"

"He will not die," she said; "he must not die."

The doctor smiled, sadly; "Very good," he said, then, "stay with him a
while, and renew the compresses every two minutes. I will insure quiet
meanwhile."

Soon the carriages were heard coming to the door and leaving the yard.
An hour later the doctor re-entered the sick-room. "The house will soon
be empty," he said; "the ceremony is put off."

"Put off?" she asked, anxiously.

The old man looked at her and shook his head. The human heart showed
itself to him every day in new complications.

For weeks the patient lingered between life and death. The nervous fever
which had set in seemed to take away all hope.

Elsbeth scarcely left his bedside. She did not eat, she did not sleep;
her whole life seemed to be engrossed by the care of her beloved one.

Her old father let her alone. "She must cure him," he said, "so that I
can question him."

The gay cousin began to feel that his position was not an enviable
one, and, after he had allowed his uncle to pay all his debts, left
Helenenthal.

Old Meyerhofer's body had been fetched by the twins the day after the
fire. His mysterious death made a great sensation; the newspapers in
the capital spoke of it, and what he had not attained through his whole
life--to be celebrated as a hero--was granted to him in death.

But all this time the law was hanging over Paul's head awaiting his
recovery.

CHAPTER XXII.

The lawyer for the defence had ended. A murmur went through the
wide court of the assizes, the galleries of which were crammed with
spectators.

If the accused did not spoil the effect of the brilliant speech by an
imprudent word he was saved.

The president's answer resounded unheard.

And now the eye-glasses and opera-glasses began to click. All eyes were
directed to the pale, simply-clad man who was sitting in the same dock
where, eight years ago, the vicious servant had sat.

The president asked whether the accused had anything more to add to
strengthen the proof of his innocence.

"Silence! silence!" was murmured through the court.

But Paul rose and spoke--first, low and hesitatingly, then every moment
with greater firmness.

"I am heartily sorry that the trouble my defender has taken to save me
should have been useless; but I am not as innocent of the deed as he
represents."

The judges looked at each other. "What is he at? He is going to speak
against himself."

He said: "Anxiety made me nearly unconscious. I then acted in a kind of
madness which at that moment rendered me incapable of calculation."

"He is cutting his own throat!" said the audience.

"I have all my life been shy and oppressed, and have felt as if I could
look nobody in the face, though I had nothing to conceal; but if this
time I behave in a cowardly manner, I believe I should be less able to
do so than ever--and this time I should have good reason enough for
it. My defender has also represented my former life as a pattern of
all virtues. But this was not so, either. I lacked dignity and
self-possession; I passed over too much as regards both other people and
myself, and that has always rankled in my mind, though I was never clear
about it. Too much has weighed upon me to enable me ever to breathe
freely as a man should if he does not want to grow dull and care-laden.
This deed has made me free, and has given me that which I lacked so
long; it has been a great happiness to me; and should I be so ungrateful
as to deny it to-day? No; I will not do that. Let them imprison me as
long as they like. I shall abide my time and begin a new life.

"And so I must say I have set fire to my belongings in full
consciousness; I was never more in my senses than at the moment when I
poured the petroleum over my sheaves; and if to-day I were to be in the
same position, God knows I should do the same again. Why should I not?
What I destroyed was the work of my own hands--I had created it after
long years of hard toil, and could do with it what I liked. I well know
that the law is of a different opinion, and therefore I shall quietly
go to prison for my time. But who else suffered by the injury except
myself? My sisters were well provided for, and my father--" he stopped
a moment, and his voice shook as he continued--"yes, would it not have
been better if my old father had passed the last years of his life in
peace and tranquillity with one of his daughters than where I am now
going?

"Fate would not have it so. A stroke killed him, and my brothers say
that I was his murderer. But my brothers have no right at all to judge
about that; they neither know me nor my father. All their lives they
have been concerned with themselves only, and have let _me_ alone care
for my father, mother, and sisters, house, and farm, and I was only good
enough when they wanted something. They turn away from me to-day, but
they can never be more estranged from me in the future than they have
always been in the past.

"My sisters"--he turned towards the witness-box, where Greta and Kate
sat crying with covered faces, and his voice grew softer as if from
suppressed tears--"my sisters won't have anything to do with me any
more, but I gladly forgive them; they are women, and made of more
delicate metal; also, there are two men standing behind them who find it
very easy to be indignant at my monstrous deed. They have all abandoned
me now--no, not all"--a bright look crossed his face--"but that need not
be mentioned here. But one thing I will say, even though I be considered
a murderer--I do not repent that my father died through my deed; I loved
him more when I killed him than if I had let him live. He was old and
weak, and what awaited him was shame and dishonor--he lived such a quiet
life, and would have miserably dwindled away here; surely it was better
death should come to him like lightning that kills people in the middle
of their happiness. That is my opinion. I have settled it with my
conscience, and have no need to render account to any one but to God and
to myself. Now you may condemn me."

"Bravo!" cried a thundering voice in the court from the witness-box.

It was Douglas.

His gigantic figure stood erect, his eyes sparkled beneath his bushy
brows, and when the president called him to order he sat down defiantly
and said to his neighbor, "I can be proud of him--eh?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

Two years later, on a bright morning in June, the red-painted gate of
the prison opened and let out a prisoner, who, with a laugh on his face,
was blinking his eyes in the bright sun, as if trying to learn to bear
the light again. He swung the bundle which he carried to and fro,
and looked carelessly to the right and the left, like one who was not
decided which direction to follow, but for whom, on the whole, it was
unimportant whither he strayed.

When he passed the front of the prison building he saw a carriage
standing there which appeared known to him, for he stopped and seemed
to be reflecting. Then he turned to the coachman, who, in his tasselled
fur-cap, nodded haughtily from the box.

"Is anybody from Helenenthal here?" he asked.

"Yes; master and the young lady. They have come to fetch Mr.
Meyerhofer."

And directly after was heard from the steps, "Hey, holloa! there he is
already--Elsbeth, see! there he is already."

Paul jumped up the steps, and the two men lay in each other's arms.

Then the heavy folding doors were opened softly and timidly, and let out
a slender female figure, clad in black, who, with a melancholy smile,
leaned against the wall and quietly waited until the men unclasped each
other.

"There, you have him, Elsbeth!" shouted the old man.

Hand in hand they stood opposite each other and looked in one another's
eyes; then she leaned her head on his breast and whispered, "Thank God
that I am with you again!"

"And in order that you may have each other all to yourselves, children,"
said the old man, "you two shall drive home, and I will meanwhile drink
a bottle of claret to the health of my successor. I am well off, for I
retire from business this day."

"Mr. Douglas!" exclaimed Paul, terrified.

"_Father_, I am called--do you understand? Let me be fetched towards
evening. You are now master at home. Good-bye."

With that he strode down the steps.

"Come," said Paul, gently, with downcast eyes. Elsbeth went after him
with a shy smile, for now when they were alone neither dared to approach
the other.

And then they drove silently out onto the sunny, flowery heath.... Wild
pinks, bluebells, and ground-ivy wove themselves into a many-colored
carpet, and the white meadowsweet lifted its waving blossoms, as
if snow-flakes had been strewn on the flowers. The leaves of the
weeping-willow rustled softly, and like a net of sparkling ribbons
the little streams flowed along beneath their branches. The warm air
trembled, and yellow butterflies fluttered up and down in couples.

Paul leaned back in the cushions, and gazed with half-shut eyes at this
profusion of charming sights.

"Are you happy?" asked Elsbeth, leaning towards him.

"I don't know," he answered; "it is too much for me."

She smiled; she well understood him.

"See there, our home!" she said, pointing to the White House, which
stood out clear in the distance. He pressed her hand, but his voice
failed him.

At the edge of the wood the carriage had to stop. Both got out and
proceeded on foot.

Then he saw that she carried a little white parcel under her arm, which
he had not seen before.

"What is that?" he asked.

"You will soon see," she answered, while a serious smile crossed her
face.

"A surprise?"

"A remembrance."

When they entered the wood he perceived something black between the red
stems which was hung with garlands.

"What does that mean?" he asked, stretching out his hand.

"Don't you recognize your friend again?" she replied. "She wanted to be
the first to greet you."

"Black Susy," he shouted, and began to run.

"Take me with you," she gasped, laughing. "You forget that henceforth
there are two of us."

He seized her hand, and so they stepped before the faithful monster that
was keeping watch on the road.

"Dear creature," he said, and stroked the sooty boiler, and as they went
on he looked back at her every three steps as if he could not part with
her.

"I have watched over her well," said Elsbeth; "she generally stands
underneath my window, for we have purchased the whole of your father's
inheritance that nothing should be lost to you."

When they approached the opposite edge of the wood, he said, pointing to
two trees which stood twenty steps away from the road.

"Here is the place where I found you lying in your hammock."

"Yes," she said, "it was there, too, that I found out for the first time
that I should never be able to do without you."

"And there is the juniper-tree," he continued, when they stepped out
into the fields, "where we--" and then he suddenly cried aloud, and
stretched out both his hands into space.

"What is the matter?" she exclaimed, anxiously, looking up at him. He
had turned deathly pale and his lips quivered.

"It is gone," he stammered.

"What?"

"It--it--my--my own."

Where once the buildings of the Haidehof rose there now stretched a
level plain; only a few trees spread out their miserable branches.

He could not accustom himself to this sight, and covered his face with
his hands, while he shivered feverishly.

"Do not be sad," she pleaded. "Papa would not have it rebuilt before you
could make your own arrangements."

"Let us go there," he said.

"Please, please, not," she replied, "there is nothing to be seen except
a few heaps of ruins--at another time, when you are not so excited."

"But where shall I sleep?"

"In the same room in which you were born--I have had it arranged for
you, and your mother's furniture put in. Can you still say now that you
have lost your home?"

He pressed her hand, gratefully, but she pointed to the juniper-bush,
which had struck them before.

"Let us go there," she said, "lay your head on the mole-hill and whistle
me something. Do you remember?"

"I should think so!"

"How long is it since then?"

"Seventeen years."

"Oh, heavens, I have loved you so long already, and in the mean time
have become an old maid! And I have waited for you from year to year,
but you would not see it. 'He must come at last,' I thought, but you
did not come. And then I was discouraged, and thought: 'You cannot force
yourself upon him; in reality he does not want you at all. You must come
to some resolution.' And to put an end to all my longings, I accepted
my cousin, who for the last ten years had been dangling after me. He had
made me laugh so often, and I thought he would--but enough of this--"
and she shuddered. "Come, lie down--whistle."

He shook his head and pointed with his hand silently across the heath,
where, on the horizon, three lonely fir-trees stretched their rough arms
towards the sky.

"Thither," he said. "I cannot rest ere I have been there."

"You are right," she replied, and hand in hand they walked through
the blooming heather, over which the wild bees were swarming, sleepily
humming.

When they entered the cemetery the clock at the White House was striking
noon. Twelve times it sounded in short strokes, a soft echo quivered
in the air, and then all was quiet again; only the humming and singing
continued.

His mother's grave was overgrown with ivy and wild myrtle, and at
its head rose the radiant blossom of a golden-rod. Between the leaves
rust-colored ants were creeping, and a lizard rustled down into the
green depths.

Silently they both stood there, and Paul trembled. Neither dared to
interrupt the solemn stillness.

"Where have they buried my father?" Paul asked at last.

"Your sisters took the body over to Lotkeim," answered Elsbeth.

"That is as well," he replied. "She has been lonely all her life; let
her be so in death, too. But to-morrow we will also go over to him."

"Will you go and see your sisters?"

He shook his head sadly. Then they relapsed into silence.

He leaned his head on his hands and cried.

"Do not cry," she said, "each one of you has now a home." And then she
took the little parcel that she held under her arm, unfastened the white
paper of the cover, and there appeared an old manuscript-book with torn
cover and faded leaves.

"See," she cried, "she sends you this, her greeting."

"Where did you get it from?" he asked, surprised, for he had recognized
his mother's handwriting.

"It lay in the old chest of drawers which was saved from the fire,
squeezed between the drawers and the back. It seems to have been lying
there ever since her death."

Then they sat down together on the grave, laid the book between them on
their knees, and began to study it. Now he remembered that Katie, at
the time when he surprised her with her lover, had spoken of a song-book
which had belonged to their mother; but he had never made up his mind to
ask after it, because he did not want to bring to life again the painful
remembrance of that hour.

All sorts of old songs were in it, copied out neatly; near them
others half scratched out and corrected. The latter she seemed to have
reproduced from memory, or perhaps composed herself.

There was also the one about the poet which Katie had recited at the
time.

And then came one, which was this:

  "Dear child, sleep on; sleep on, dear child;
  Beside thy bed thy mother mild
  Watches till dreams shall bring thee peace--Sleep on!

  "The little bell whose tones so clear
  From out the wood resounded here
  Its silver music soon will cease--
  Sleep on!

  "Dear child, sleep on; sleep on, dear child!
  Without the moon shines soft and bright,
  A legend tell the linden-trees--
  Sleep on!

  "About the heath the shepherd's son,
  The princess in the White House lone;
  While leaves are flutt'ring in the breeze--
  Sleep on!

  "Dear child, sleep on; sleep on, dear child!
  Thy rose-bush at the door dreams wild
  Of heath and hill and many things--
  Sleep on!

  "Thy little bird upon the sill
  Chirps gently towards thy bed his trill,
  And closes wearily his wings--
  Sleep on!

  "Dear child, sleep on; sleep on, dear child!
  Beside thy bed thy mother mild
  Watches the hour-glass slowly turn--
  Sleep on!

  "Thy mother watches--time goes by--
  The midnight hour approaches nigh,
  And then thy father may return--
  Sleep on!"

And then another poem:

  I knew a sweet maiden in years that are gone,
  Who on the green heath dwelt forsaken and lone.
  And longed sore for love--
  She looked from her window by day and by night
  Her lovely blue eyes glanced out smiling and bright;
  Ah! she longed sore for love!

  Then by there came riding a bold youthful knight,
  Who asked, 'So strange on me gaze thine eyes bright?'
  'I long sore for love!'
  Then he laughed, 'Foolish maiden, wilt come to my arms,
  There can'st thou rest sweetly, free from all harms,
  And there find'st thou love.'

  "'Dear heart, dost thou know how forsaken I dwell?
  Oh, take me, poor maiden, o'er moor and o'er fell,
  But give, give me love!'
  When of her company wearied at last,
  He said, 'Pretty rogue we've a pleasant time passed,
  So hast thou had love!"

  "'And of my love art thou weary, dear heart?
  So will I stay by thee, nor evermore part,
  For I long for thy love.'
  But heartily laughed the knight bold and gay;
  He saddled his horse and he rode far away,
  And left her in sorrow to love.

  "And when the time had passed sadly away,
  In sorrow her son saw the light of the day,
  An offspring of love.
  She carried him out in the night on the heath;
  'With a kiss, thou poor child, will I do thee to death--
  I will kill thee with love."

  "'Do to me, judge, what you will,' then she cried.
  'Forsaken am I of the whole world so wide,
  And left without love.'
  She mounted the scaffold in bridal array,
  And said 'Take me hence, thou good God, I pray,
  And I long sore for love!'"

Then his two sisters came to his mind, and he had a feeling as if his
mother had known all and forgiven all beforehand.

And directly after stood written, in big letters, this title:

THE FAIRY TALE OF DAME CARE.

There was once a mother, to whom the good God had given a son, but she
was so poor and lonely that she had nobody who could stand godmother
to him. And she sighed, and said, "Where shall I get a godmother from?"
Then one evening at dusk there came a woman to her house who was dressed
in gray and had a gray veil over her head. She said, "I will be your
son's godmother, and I will take care that he grows up a good man and
does not let you starve; but you must give me his soul."

Then his mother trembled, and said, "Who are you?"

"I am Dame Care," answered the gray woman; and the mother wept; but as
she suffered much from hunger, she gave the woman her son's soul and she
was his godmother.

And her son grew up and worked hard to procure her bread. But as he had
no soul, he had no joy and no youth, and often he looked at his mother
with reproachful eyes, as if he would ask,

"Mother, where is my soul?"

Then the mother grew sad and went out to find him a soul.

She asked the stars in the sky, "Will you give me a soul?" But they
said, "He is too low for that."

And she asked the flowers on the heath; they said, "He is too ugly."

And she asked the birds in the trees; they said, "He is too sad."

And she asked the high trees; they said, "He is too humble."

And she asked the clever serpents, but they said, "He is too stupid."

Then she went away weeping. And in the wood she met a young and
beautiful princess surrounded by her court.

And because she saw the mother weeping she descended from her horse and
took her to the castle, which was all built of gold and precious stones.

There she asked, "Tell me why you weep?" And the mother told the
princess of her grief that she could not procure her son a soul nor joy
and youth.

Then said the princess, "I cannot see anybody weep; I will tell you
something--I will give him my soul."

Then the mother fell down before her and kissed her hands.

"But," said the princess, "I will not do it for nothing; he must ask
me for it." Then the mother went to her son, but Dame Care had laid
her gray veil over his head, so that he was blind and could not see the
princess.

And the mother pleaded, "Dear Dame Care, set him free."

But Care smiled--and whoever saw her smile was forced to weep--and she
said, "He must free himself."

"How can he do that?" asked the mother.

"He must sacrifice to me all that he loves," said Dame Care.

Then the mother grieved very much, and lay down and died. But the
princess waits for her suitor to this very day.

"Mother, mother!" he cried, and sank down on the grave.

"Come," said Elsbeth, struggling with her tears as she laid her hand on
his shoulder; "let mother be, she is at peace; and she shall not harm us
any more--your wicked Dame Care!"

NOTES.

L TRANSLATION OF THE DEDICATION:

TO MY PARENTS.

FOR THE 26TH OF NOVEMBER.

  Dame Care, the deep gray-veiled dame,
  You know her, dear parents, not only by name;
  She came, His thirty years to-day,
  And into strange countries she followed your way.
  As the November day, sad and dreary and dull,
  Lay on the heath in a leaden lull,
  And in the willow-trees the wind
  Whistled your wedding-dance, rough and unkind.

  And when, after hours without any rest,
  In Littau's forest you found a nest,
  And trembling stood at the threshold so bare,
  She entered with you, gray Dame Care,
  And waving her arms she blessed the two,
  The home you entered, the house and you,
  And blessed those two, who, without harm,
  Still slept in creation's shielding arm.

  The empty cradle that time did mark
  Stands under the staircase in the dark,
  Indulging in long deserved rest,
  As four times it saw a new little guest.
  Then when sun sunk, and all round slept,
  From some dark corner a shadow crept,
  And staggered dumbly and grew and rose,
  And crept with stretched arms to the cradle close.

  And what Dame Care then promised to you,
  Life has so faithfully made it true
  In sighs and weeping and ever and aye,
  In troubles of weary working-day,
  In pain of so many a sleepless night,
  With need and torment ever in sight.

  And you are gray, your strength grew lame,
  But ever still the deep-veiled Dame
  Walks with fixed eyes and blessing hand
  All through the poor house, to pass without end
  From the tables so poor to the chests so bare.
  From threshold to threshold, and blows in the glare
  Of the flame on the hearth, and ever and aye
  Rivets the weary day to the day.
  O dearest parents, don't cease to strive,
  And as you had work and cares all your life,
  A life so hard and a life so long,
  So will at last from Heaven descend
  A day of rest when care has an end.

  We boys are young, and we can strive,
  Our courage is still fresh in life.
  We know how to fight with care and need,
  And where luck's flower is blooming so sweet.
  Soon we return, and when we are there,
  We laughingly turn her out, gray Dame Care.

II. DU (_Thou_) AND SIR (_You_), pages 68, 115, 116: References to the
German use of the former pronoun to denote greater intimacy than the
latter implies.

III. AUGUST, page 143: Name of the chief clown in the Berlin Circus.

IV. POLTERABEND, page 275; Evening before the wedding. In some parts of
Germany it is customary for the friends of the bride to bring old china
or glass, which they smash before her door.

THE END.