Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

"Such a novel as no English author with whom we are acquainted could have written, and no American author except Hawthorne. What separates it from the multitude of American and English novels is the perfection of its plot, and its author's insight into the souls of his characters.... If Germany is poorer than England, as regards the number of its novelists, it is richer when we consider the intellectual value of their works. If it has not produced a Thackeray, or a Dickens, it has produced, we venture to think, two writers who are equal to them in genius, and superior to them in the depth and spirituality of their art--Auerbach and Spielhagen."--Putnam's Magazine.

"The name is suggested by a passage nn Goethe, which serves as a motto to the book. Spielhagen means to illustrate what Goethe speaks of--natures not in full possession of themselves, 'who are not equal to any situation in life, and whom no situation satisfies'--the Hamlet of our latest civilization. With these he deals in a poetic, ideal fashion, yet also with humor, and, what is less to be expected in a German, with sparkling, flashing wit, and a cynical vein that reminds one of Heine. He has none of the tiresome detail of Auerbach, while he lacks somewhat that excellent man's profound devotion to the moral sentiment. There is more depth of passion and of thought in Spielhagen, together with a French liveliness by no means common in German novelists.... At any rate, they are vastly superior to the bulk of English novels which are annually poured out upon us--as much above Trollope's as Steinberger Cabinet is better than London porter.--Springfield Republican.

"The reader lives among them (the characters) as he does among his acquaintances, and may plead each one's case as plausibly to his own judgment as he can those of the men whose mixed motives and actions he sees around him. In other words, these characters live, they are men and women, and the whole mystery of humanity is upon each of them. Has no superior in German romance for its enthusiastic and lively descriptions, and for the dignity and the tenderness with which its leading characters are invested."--New York Evening Post.

"He strikes with a blow like a blacksmith, making the sparks fly and the anvil ring. Terse, pointed, brilliant, rapid, and no dreamer, he has the best traits of the French manner, while in earnestness and fulness of matter he is thoroughly German. One sees, moreover, in his pages, how powerful is the impression which America has of late been making upon the mind of Europe."--Boston Commonwealth.

"The work is one of immense vigor; the characters are extraordinary, yet not unnatural; the plot is the sequence of an admirably-sustained web of incident and action. The portraitures of characteristic foibles and peculiarities remind one much of the masterhand of the great Thackeray. The author Spielhagen In Germany ranks very much as Thackeray does with us, and many of his English reviewers place him at the head and front of German novelists."--Troy Daily Times.

"His characters have, perhaps, more passion, and act their parts with as much dramatic effect as those which have passed under the hand of Auerbach."--Cincinnati Chronicle.

The N. Y. Times, of Oct. 23d, in a long Review of the above two works, says: "The descriptions of nature and art, the portrayals of character and emotion, are always striking and truthful. As one reads, there grows upon him gradually the conviction that this is one of the greatest of works of fiction.... No one, that is not a pure egoiste, can read Problematic Characters without profound and even solemn interest. It is altogether a tragic work, the tragedy of the nineteenth century--greater in its truth and earnestness, and absence of Hugoese affectation, than any tragedy the century has produced. It stands far above any of the productions of either Freytag or Auerbach."

LEYPOLDT & HOLT, Publishers,

Hammer and Anvil

A Novel

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

Hammer and Anvil

A NOVEL

Friedrich Spielhagen

FROM THE GERMAN

WILLIAM HAND BROWNE

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
LEYPOLDT & HOLT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.

HAMMER AND ANVIL.

Part First.

CHAPTER I.

We were standing in a deep recess at the open window of our class-room. The sparrows were noisily chattering in the school-yard, and some scattered rays of the late summer sun glanced past the old gray walls down to the grass-grown pavement; from the class-room, which was high-ceilinged, sunless, and ill-ventilated, came the buzzing sound of repressed talk from our schoolfellows, who were all in their places, bent over their Sophocles, and watching for the arrival of the "old man," who was looked for every moment.

"At the worst, you can shuffle through somehow," I was saying, when the door opened and he came in.

He--Professor Lederer, Provisory Director of the Gymnasium, and Ordinarius of the first form,^[1] "the old man," as we used to call him--was in reality not exactly old, but a man past the middle of the forties, whose small head, already turning gray, rested upon a stiff white cravat, and whose tall and extraordinarily lean figure was buttoned up, from one year's end to the other, summer and winter, in a coat of the finest and glossiest black. His slender hands, of which he took extreme care, with their long and tapering fingers--when twitching nervously, as they had a habit of doing, close under my eyes--had always a sort of fascination for me, and more than once I could scarcely resist the temptation to seize one of those artistic-looking hands and crush it in my own coarse brown fist.

Professor Lederer always paced the distance from the door to his desk in twelve measured, dignified strides, head and eyes a little drooped, with the austere look of intensest meditation; like a priest approaching the sacrificial altar, or a Caesar entering the senate--at all events like a being who, far removed from the modern plebeian sphere, walked day by day in the light of the sun of Homer, and was perfectly aware of the majestic fact. So it was never a judicious proceeding to try to detain this classical man upon this short journey, and in most cases a prohibitory gesture of his hand checked the attempt; but the sanguine Arthur was so sure that his request would not be refused, that he ventured it, reckless of further consequences. So, stepping out in front of the professor, he asked for a holiday for the day, which was Saturday.

"To go sailing," urged Arthur, not in the least deterred by the stern tone of the professor, for my friend Arthur was not easily abashed--"to go in my uncle's steamboat to examine the oyster-beds which my uncle planted two years ago. I have a note from my father, you know, professor," and he produced the credential in question.

"Certainly not!" repeated the professor. His pale face flushed a little with irritation; his white hand, from which he had drawn his black glove, was extended towards Arthur with a classical minatory gesture; his blue eyes deepened in hue, like the sea when a cloud-shadow passes over it.

"Certainly not!" he exclaimed for the third time, strode past Arthur to his desk, and after silently folding his white hands, explained that he was too much excited to begin with the customary prayers. And presently followed a stammering philippic--the professor always stammered when irritated--against that pest of youth, worldliness and hankering after pleasure, which chiefly infected precisely those upon whom rested the smallest portion of the spirit of Apollo and Pallas Athené. "He was a mild and humane man," he said, "and well mindful of the words of the poet, that it was well to lay seriousness aside at the proper time and place; ay, even at times to quaff the wine-cup and move the feet in the dance; but then the cause should be sufficient to justify the license--a Virgil must have returned from a far-off land, or a Cleopatra have freed the people from imminent peril by her voluntary, yet involuntary death. But how could any one who notoriously was one of the worst scholars--yes, might be styled absolutely the worst, unless one other"--here the professor gave a side-glance at me--"could claim this evil pre-eminence--how could such a one dare to clutch at a garland which should only encircle a brow dripping with the sweat of industry! Was he, the speaker, too strict? He thought not. Assuredly, no one could wish it more earnestly than he, and no one would rejoice more heartily than he, if the subject of his severe rebuke would even now give the proof of his innocence by translating without an error the glorious chorus of the Antigone, which was the theme of the morning's lecture. Von Zehren, commence!"

Poor Arthur! I still see, after the lapse of so many years, his beautiful, but even then somewhat worn face, striving in vain to hold fast upon its lips the smile of aristocratic indifference with which he had listened to the professor's rebuke, as he took the book and read, not too fluently, a verse or two of the Greek. Even in this short reading the scornful smile gradually faded, and he glanced from under his dropped lids a look of beseeching perplexity towards his neighbor and Pylades. But how was it possible for me to help him; and who knew better than he how impossible it was? So the inevitable came to pass. He turned the "shaft of Helios" into a "shield of Æolus," and blundered on in pitiable confusion. The others announced their better knowledge by peals of laughter, and a grim smile of triumph over his discomfiture even played over the grave features of the professor.

"The curs!" muttered Arthur with white lips, as he took his seat after the recitation had lasted a couple of minutes. "But why did you not prompt me?"

I had no time to answer this idle question, for it was now my turn. But I had no notion of making sport for my comrades by submitting to be classically racked; so I declared that I was even less prepared than my friend, and added that I trusted this testimony would corroborate the charge that the professor had been pleased to bring against me.

I accompanied these words with a threatening look at the others, which at once checked their mirth; and the professor, either thinking he had gone far enough, or not deigning to notice my insolent speech, turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and contented himself with treating us with silent contempt for the rest of the recitation, while towards the others he was unusually amiable, enlivening the lesson by sallies of the most classical and learned wit.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, than Arthur stood up before the first form and said:

"You fellows have behaved meanly again, as you always do; but as for me, I have no notion of staying here any longer. The old man will not be back any more to-day; and if the others ask for me, say I am sick."

"And for me too," cried I, stepping up to Arthur and laying my arm on his shoulder. "I am going with him. A fellow that deserts his friend is a sneak."

A moment later we had dropped from the window twelve feet into the yard, and crouching between two buttresses that the professor might not espy us as he went out, we consulted what was next to be done.

There were two ways of getting out of the closed court in which we now were: either to slip through the long crooked corridors of the gymnasium--an old monastery--and so out into the street; or to go directly through the professor's house, which joined the yard at one corner, and thence upon the promenade, which nearly surrounded the town, and had in fact been constructed out of the old demolished town-walls. The first course was hazardous, for it often happened that a pair of teachers would walk up and down the cool corridors in conversation long after the regular time for the commencement of the lessons, and we had no minute to lose in waiting. The other was still more dangerous, for it led right through the lion's den; but it was far shorter, and practicable every moment, so we decided to venture it.

Creeping close to the wall, right under the windows of our class-room, in which the second lesson had already begun, we reached the narrow gate that opened into the little yard of the professor's house. Here all was quiet; through the open door we could see into the wide hall paved with slabs of stone, where the professor, who had just returned, was playing with his youngest boy, a handsome black-haired little fellow of six years, chasing him with long strides, and clapping his white hands. The child laughed and shouted, and at one time ran out into the yard, directly towards where we were hidden behind a pile of firewood--two more steps of the little feet, and we should have been detected.

I have often thought, since that time, that on those two little steps, in reality, depended nothing less than the whole destiny of my life. If the child had discovered us, we had only to come forward from behind the wood-pile, which every one had to pass in going from the gymnasium to the director's house, as two scholars on their way to their teacher to ask his pardon for their misbehavior. At least Arthur confessed to me that this idea flashed into his mind as the child came towards us. Then there would have been another reprimand, but in a milder tone, for the professor was a kind man at the bottom of his heart; we should have gone back to the class-room, pretended to our schoolmates that our running away was only a joke, and--well, I do not know what would have happened then; certainly not what really did happen.

But the little trotting feet did not come to us; the father, following with long strides, caught the child and tossed it in the air till the black curls glistened in the sunshine, and then carried it back, caressing it, to the house, where Mrs. Professor now appeared at the door, with her hair in papers, and a white apron on; and then father, mother, and child disappeared. Through the open door we could see that the hall was empty--now or never was the time.

With beating hearts, such as only beat in the breasts of school-boys bent on some dangerous prank, we stole to the door through the silent hall where the motes were sparkling in the sunbeams that slanted through the gothic windows. As we opened the house-door, the bell gave a clear note of warning; but even now the leafy trees of the promenade were beckoning to us; in half a minute we were concealed by the thick bushes, and hastening with rapid steps, that now and then quickened to a half run, towards the port.

"Nothing at all, because he will ask no questions," Arthur replied; "or if he does, I will say that I was let off; what else? It will be capital; I shall have splendid fun."

We kept on for a while in silence. For the first time it occurred to me that I had run away from school for just nothing at all. If Arthur came in for a couple of days in the dungeon, he, at all events, would have had "splendid fun," and thus, for him at least, there was some show of reason in the thing. His parents, too, were very indulgent; his share of the danger was as good as none, while I ran all the risk of discovery and punishment without the least compensation; and my stern old father was a man who understood no trifling, least of all in matters of this sort. So once again, as many times before, I had helped to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for somebody else. However, what did it matter? Here, under the rustling trees, after our brisk race, it was more pleasant than in the stifling class-room; and for me, in those times, every silly, venturesome frolic had a pleasure in itself. So I felt it a special piece of magnanimity on the part of my usually selfish friend, when he suddenly said:

"Look here, George, you shall come too. Uncle charged me particularly to bring as many friends as I could. I tell you it will be splendid. Elise Kohl and Emilie Heckepfennig are going with us. For once I shall leave Emilie to you. And then the oysters, and the champagne, and the pineapple punch--yes, you certainly must come."

"And my father?" I said; but I only said it, for my resolution to be one of the party was already taken. Emilie Heckepfennig--Emilie, with her little turned-up nose and laughing eyes, who had always shown me a decided preference; and recently, at forfeits, had given me a hearty kiss, to which she was in no wise bound, and whom Arthur, the coxcomb, was going to leave especially to me! Yes, I must go along, happen what might.

"Can I go as I am, do you think?" I asked, suddenly halting, with a glance at my dress, which was plain and neat, it is true--I was always neat--but not exactly the thing for company.

"Why not?" said Arthur. "What difference does it make? And, besides, we have not a minute to spare."

Arthur, who was in his best clothes, had not looked at me, nor slackened his pace in the least. We had not a minute to spare, that was true enough, for as slipping through some narrow alleys we reached the harbor, we heard the bell ringing on board the steamer that was lying at the wharf just ready to start. The sturdy figure of the captain was seen standing upon the paddle-box. We pushed through the crowd on the wharf, ran up the gang-plank, which they were just hauling in, and mingled with the gay throng on deck, as the wheels began to turn.

CHAPTER II.

"How you startled me!" said Frau von Zehren, seizing her son by both hands. "We began to think, what was really impossible, that Professor Lederer had refused you permission. You see now, Zehren, that I was right."

"Well, it is all right now," replied the steuerrath.^[2] "The young ladies were inconsolable at the prospect of your absence Arthur--or am I saying too much, Fräulein Emilie and Fräulein Elise?" and the steuerrath turned with a polite wave of his hand to the young ladies, who tittered and nodded their dark broad-brimmed straw-hats at each other.

"And now you must speak to your uncle," he went on; "but where is your uncle, then?" and he ran his eye over the company that was moving about the deck.

The Commerzienrath Streber came bouncing up. His little, light-blue eyes glittered under bushy gray brows, the long peak of his old-fashioned cap was pushed back from his bald forehead, the left sleeve of his loose blue frock-coat, with gold buttons, had slipped half off his shoulder, as he hurried along on his little legs, cased in yellow nankeen trousers:

"Very good," cried the commerzienrath, without even giving a look at the presentee. "Aha! there the villain is!" and he made a dart at his servant, who was just coming up the companion-way with a tray of glasses.

The steuerrath and his lady exchanged a look, in which "the old brute," or some similarly flattering expression, was plainly legible. Arthur had joined the young ladies and said something at which they burst out laughing and rapped him with their parasols; I, whom nobody seemed to notice, turned away and went on the more quiet forward deck, where I found a seat upon a coil of rope, and leaning my back against the capstan, looked out upon the bright sky and the bright sea.

In the meantime the boat had left the harbor, and was moving down with the coast on our larboard, where the red roofs of the fishermen's cottages shone through the trees and bushes; while on the narrow strip of level beach here and there figures were seen, seafaring folks probably, or sea-bathers, who were watching the steamer go by. To our right the shore receded, so that it was only just possible to distinguish it from the water; before us, but at a still more remote distance, gleamed the chalk-coast of the neighboring island over the blue expanse of sea, which now began to roughen a little under a fresher breeze, while countless flocks of seabirds now flew up from the approach of the puffing steamer, and now, with their cunning heads turned towards us, sported on the waves and filled the air with their monotonous cries.

It was a bright and lovely morning; but though I saw its beauty, it gave me no pleasure. I felt singularly dejected. Had the Penguin that, with a sluggishness altogether at variance with her name, was slowly toiling through the water, been a beautiful swift clipper, bound for China or Buenos Ayres, or somewhere thousands of miles away, and I a passenger with a great purse of gold, or even a sailor before the mast, with the assurance that I should never again set eyes on the hateful steeples of my native town, I should have been light-hearted enough. But now! what was it then that made me so low-spirited? The consciousness of my disobedience? Dread of the disagreeable consequences, now, to all human foresight, inevitable? Nothing of the sort. The worst could only be that my stern father would drive me from his house, as he had already often enough threatened to do; and this possibility I regarded as a deliverance from a yoke which seemed to grow more intolerable every day; and as the idea arose in my mind, I welcomed it with a smile of grim satisfaction. No, it was not that. What then?

Well, to have run away from school with an ardor as if some glorious prize was to be won, and then, in a merry company, on the deck of a steamboat, to sit away by myself on a coil of rope, not one of the gentlemen or ladies taking the slightest notice of me, and with not even the prospect that the waiter, with the caviar-rolls and port wine, would at last come round to me! This last neglect, to tell the honest truth, for the moment afflicted me most sorely of all. My appetite, as was natural for a robust youth of nineteen, was always of the best, and now by the brisk run from school to the harbor and the fresh sea-breeze, it was sharpened to a distressing keenness.

I stood up in a paroxysm of impatience, but quickly sat down again. No, Arthur certainly would come and take me to the company; it was the least that he owed me, after I had been so obliging as to run away with him. As if he had ever yet paid me what he owed me! How many fishing-rods, canary birds, shells, fifes, pocket-knives, had he not already bought of me, that is, coaxed and worried me out of, without ever paying me for them. Ay, how often had he not borrowed my slender stock of pocket-money, whenever the amount made it worth his while; for which sometimes even a couple of silbergroschen sufficed.

Curious, that just now, on this bright sunny morning, I should take to reckoning up this black account! It was certainly the first time since the beginning of our friendship, which dated at least from our sixth year. For I had always loved the handsome slender boy, who had such sunny hair and gentle brown eyes, and whose velvet Sunday jacket felt so soft to the touch. I had loved him as a great rough mastiff might love a delicate greyhound that he could crush with one snap of his jaws; and so I loved him even now, while he was flirting with the girls, and chattering and laughing with the company like the petit maître he was.

I grew very melancholy as I watched all this from my place, where nobody could see me--very melancholy and altogether disspirited. I must have been very hungry.

We were now just rounding a long headland, which ran out from the western coast. At its farthest low extremity, in a spot entirely surrounded by water, separated by a wide interval from the row of houses on the dune, and shadowed by a half-decayed oak, stood a cottage, the sight of which called into my mind a flood of pleasant memories. The old blacksmith, Pinnow, lived there, the father of my friend Klaus Pinnow. Smith Pinnow was by far the most remarkable personage of all my acquaintance. He possessed four old double-barreled percussion guns, and a long single-barreled fowling-piece with a flint lock, which he used to hire to the bathers when they took a fancy to have a little shooting, and sometimes to us youngsters when we were in funds, for Smith Pinnow was not in the habit of conferring gratuitous favors. He had, besides, a great sail-boat, also kept for the bathing company, at least of late years, since he had grown half blind and could not venture longer trips. The rumor ran that formerly he used to make very different voyages, of by no means so innocent a character; and the excise officers, my father's colleagues (my father had lately been promoted to an accountantship) shook their heads when Smith Pinnow's by-gone doings happened to be referred to. But what was that to us youngsters? Especially, what was it to me, who owed the happiest hours of my life to the four rusty guns, and the fowling-piece, and Smith Pinnow's old boat, and who had had the best comrade in the world in Klaus Pinnow? Had had, I say, for during the last four years, while Klaus was an apprentice to the locksmith Wangerow, and afterwards when he became a journeyman, I had seen him but seldom, and, indeed, for the last half year not at all.

He came at once into my mind as we steamed past his father's cottage, and I perceived a figure standing on the sands by the side of the boat which was drawn up on the beach. The distance was great, but my keen eyes recognized Christel Möwe, Klaus's adopted sister, whom sixteen years before, old Pinnow's wife--long since dead--had found the morning after a storm, lying on the beach among the boxes and planks driven ashore from a wreck, and whom the old blacksmith, in an unwonted impulse of generosity, as some said, or to raise his credit with the neighbors, according to others, had taken into his house. The wreck was a Dutch ship from Java, as they made out from some of the things cast ashore; but her name and owners were never discovered--probably from the negligence of the officials charged with the investigations--and they named the little foundling Christina, or Christel, Möwe [Gull], because the screams of a flock of gulls in the air had attracted Goodwife Pinnow to the spot where the child was lying.

A noise close at hand caused me to look round. Two paces from me a hatchway was opened, and out of the hatchway emerged the figure of a man who was standing on the ladder, but whose head rose high enough above the deck to allow him to see over the low bulwarks. His short stiff hair, his broad face, his bare muscular neck, his breast open almost to the belt, his shirt which had once been striped with red, and his trousers which had once been white--were all covered with a thick black deposit of coal-dust; and as he was blinking with his small eyes almost shut in order to see more keenly some distant object, he would have presented an unbroken surface of blackness, had he not at this moment expanded an immense mouth into a joyous grin, and displayed two rows of teeth of unsurpassed whiteness. And now he raised himself a few inches higher, waved his great black hand as a greeting towards the beach, and all at once I recognized him.

"Hallo!" he cried, starting, and quickly bringing his small eyes to bear upon me.

Klaus blushed visibly through his rind of soot, and showed all his teeth. "Why, in the name of ----, George," cried he, "where do you come from, and what has brought you here?"

"I have been here ever since Easter. I have had it in my mind for some time to come to see you and inquire after your health."

"Oh, you belong to the great folks now," replied Klaus, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the quarter-deck.

"I wish I were below with you, and you would give me a good thick slice of bread and butter. Hang the great folks, as you call them."

"Yes, I am--a complete ass. I wish all my friends were as good as you are, Klaus." Here I gave a glance towards the perfidious Arthur, who was strutting about among the guests with the parasol of the perfidious Emilie, while she had set his little straw-hat in a coquettish fashion on her curls.

"I am wanted below," said Klaus, with a friendly grin; "Good-by." And down the ladder he went.

I turned hastily round, rising from my seat. There stood a charming little lady of eight, in a little white frock with ribbons of cornflower blue at the shoulders and streaming from her straw-hat, whose great cornflower blue eyes first stared with intense curiosity at the hatchway through which my black friend had vanished, and then turned inquiringly to me.

At this moment the hatch was raised again, and Klaus's head emerged--"Shall I really get you a slice?"

"Oh, mercy!" cried the little lady. Klaus vanished instantaneously, and the hatch shut down with a bang.

"What frightened you, ma chère!" asked another voice. The voice was extremely thin, and so was the lady to whom it belonged, and who had just come out of the deck-cabin. So also was the worn dress of changeable silk that fluttered about her figure, and the reddish locks that drooped on each side of her pale face.

This lady was Fräulein Amalie Duff, and the little maid with the cornflower eyes and ribbons was her pupil, Hermine Streber, the commerzienrath's only child. Of course I knew them both, as indeed I was pretty well acquainted with everybody in our little town, as soon as they were out of long-clothes; and they might well have known me, for I had been two or three times with Arthur in his uncle's large garden at the town-gate, and a fortnight before had even had the honor to swing the little Hermine in the great wooden swing, from which, if you swung high enough, you could catch a sight of the sea through the tops of the trees. Fräulein Duff, moreover, was a native of the little Saxon town which was the birthplace of my parents; and when she arrived, some months before, she brought various messages and greetings from the old home, which unhappily came too late for my good mother, who had been resting in the churchyard for fifteen years. She had frequently condescended indeed no longer ago than the afternoon of the swinging to bestow her instructive conversation upon me; but she was very near-sighted, and I could not take it amiss that she applied her gold double eye-glass to her pale eyes, and with a sweeping reverence, which in the dancing-school is called, I believe, grand compliment, inquired: "Whom have I the honor to----?"

CHAPTER II.

"O ciel!" cried Fräulein Duff, "mon jeune compatriote! A thousand pardons!--my near-sightedness! How is your respected father, and your amiable mother? Dear me! how confused I am! But your sudden appearance in this retired corner of the world has quite unnerved me. I was about to say--the company are asking for you. How did you manage to elude observation?--they are looking for you everywhere."

"Yet I might have been found easily enough," I said, probably with a touch of wounded pride in the tone, which did not escape the quick ear of Fräulein Duff.

"Ah, yes," she said, conveying a look of intelligence into her pale eyes. "'Who solace seeks in solitude'--alas! too true.

"'For gold all are longing,
Round gold all are thronging--'"

These last words were addressed to the little Hermine, who had begun to romp on the smooth deck with a pretty little spaniel that had run to her barking and jumping.

"You have a feeling heart," continued the governess, turning again to me; "I see it in the pained expression of your mouth. Your soul shrinks from noisy joys; this boisterous merriment is odious to you. But we poor ones must submit to the inevitable--or I, at least must. Would I be here if it were not so? Upon this tossing bark, in terror for my life? And all for what purpose? to assist at a cannibal feast! Innocent oysters, which men tear from the maternal bosom of the sea to devour alive! Is that a fit spectacle to be exhibited to a child?" and Fräulein Duff shook her thin locks with an expression of the deepest solicitude.

"It remains yet to be seen whether we shall find any," I said, with something like a sneer.

"Do you think so? The other gentlemen doubt it, too. The water of the Baltic is not salt enough. True, we are informed that the Romans propagated them in fresh-water lakes near Naples--but why parade my modest bit of learning before a young scholar like yourself? The good commerzienrath! Yes, yes; despise reason and learning who will!--but here he comes himself. Not a word of what we have been saying, my young friend, I beseech you!"

I had no time to assure the pale lady of my discretion, for nearly the whole company came crowding on the forward-deck, in the wake of the commerzienrath, who had the fat Mrs. Justizrath Heckepfennig upon his arm, to look at a three-master that was just passing us under full sail. In the next moment I was in the midst of the crowd, and the ice, in which I had been sitting, so to speak, was broken. Arthur, whose delicate face was already flushed by the wine he had been drinking, clapped me on the shoulder and asked where upon earth I had been hiding. The perfidious Emilie held out her hand and murmured: "Had you then entirely forgotten me?" and--as just at that moment a salute was fired from some small mortars on board the steamer--fell, with a little scream, into my arms. The three-master, that was just returning from the West Indies, belonged to the commerzienrath's fleet. They knew that she would arrive to-day; and it was by no means disagreeable to the commerzienrath to be able to carry his guests, on their way to his oyster-beds, past the finest of his ships. He mounted the paddle-box, speaking-trumpet in hand, and roared, at the pitch of his lungs, something which, amid the universal hurrahing and the explosions of the mortars, was perfectly inaudible to the bronzed captain of the ship, who shrugged his broad shoulders as a sign that he could not catch a word of it all. What difference did it make? It was a splendid sight; and the commerzienrath upon the paddle-box, trumpet in hand, was the chief figure in it. That was enough for him; and as the Albatros with her wide wings swept by, and the short legs of the Penguin began to paddle again, and he descended from his pedestal to receive the congratulations of the company, his little clear eyes sparkled, his nostrils expanded, and his loud laugh rang like the crowing of a cock, exulting in the proud consciousness that he is the master of the dunghill.

The rest of the poultry freely acknowledged this superiority: there was cackling and clucking, bowing and scraping, and no one more obsequious than Arthur's father, the steuerrath, who kept constantly at the side of the great man, saying, in his smooth voice, flatteries, which the other received as a matter of course--something to which he was well accustomed, especially from that quarter--with an indifference which to most others would have been insulting. It is quite possible that the steuerrath did not find this behavior on the part of his rich brother-in-law altogether pleasant, but he was too much a man of the world to give any outward sign of his inward emotions. But his spouse was not quite so successful in her self-command, who, as born Baroness Kippenreiter, had an unquestionable claim to respectful attention, and a right to be dissatisfied if this were withheld. So she sought to indemnify herself for the humiliation by the extremest possible condescension of manner towards the other ladies, Mrs. Burgomaster Koch, Mrs. Justizrath Heckepfennig, Mrs. Bauinspector Strombach, and the rest of the feminine élite of our little town, though even this satisfaction could not roll away the clouds from her aristocratic brow.

I had hardly begun to feel at ease in the company, which happened quickly enough, when my natural vivacity, which bordered on rudeness, returned and impelled me to a hundred pranks, which were decidedly not in the best taste, though certainly not instigated by any intention to offend, and which I carried on all the more recklessly, as I perceived I had all the laughers on my side. I could blush with shame even now, when I think of my shallow attempts at wit, and how poor in invention and clumsy in execution were the comic imitations to which I must needs treat my respectable audience, because forsooth I had a sort of celebrity in the town for this sort of thing, (my masterpiece, I remember, was a lover bent on regaling his mistress with a serenade, and incessantly disturbed by barking dogs, mewing cats, scolding neighbors, and malicious passers-by, and finally taken up by the watch,) what foolish flippancy and want of tact in the speeches that I made at the table, and with how many glasses of wine I repaid myself for all my ridiculous exertions.

And yet this lunch under an awning on deck of the steamer that was now anchored in the calm, smooth sea, was the last real merry-making that I was to have for many long years. I do not know if it was this that keeps it so bright in my memory, or rather the youth that then glowed in my veins, the wine that sparkled in the glasses, the bright sunshine that glistened on the sea, and the sweet air that swept so softly over the water that it did not suffice to cool the flushed cheeks of the maidens. It was rather all together--youth, sunlight, sea-breeze, golden wine, rosy cheeks; and ah! the oysters, the unlucky oysters, that had had two years in which to multiply like the sand of the sea, and which the sea-sand and sea-currents had buried and swept away, all to a few empty shells! What an inexhaustible theme were these empty shells, displayed with humorous ostentation in a splendid dish in the centre of the table! how every one tried his wit on them, and what a malicious joy each felt that the millionaire's obstinate conceit had had a lesson, and that not all his millions could extort from nature what she had determined to refuse!

But the old fellow bore it all with the utmost good-humor; and after he had bewailed his ill-luck in a humorous speech, suddenly a loud clamor arose on the forward-deck, and the sailors dragged forward great barrels of oysters, which they declared they had just taken up. Then there was no end to the exultation and cheers to our magnificent host, who once more had shown that his sagacity and foresight were even greater than his conceit and his obstinacy.

I do not know how late the feast was protracted, while the ladies promenaded the deck; it was certainly kept up far too long for us youngsters. Very queer stories were told, in which the commerzienrath particularly distinguished himself; we laughed, we shouted--I must volunteer songs, which were received with storms of applause, and I was not a little vain as my powerful bass drew even the ladies to the table again, and did my best, when both ladies and gentlemen joined in unison in the glee, "What it means I cannot tell," to carry through a second voice (in thirds), keeping my eye all the while on Fräulein Emilie--an attention which naturally set the other young ladies to giggling and nudging each other, and occasioned Arthur such pangs of jealousy, that afterwards, as we were walking up and down the deck, with our cigars, he called me to account for it.

By this time it was evening, for I remember that, while talking with Arthur, I noticed on the coast of the island, which we had neared on our return, an old ruin, standing picturesquely on a high and steep cliff, and glowing in the light of the setting sun. The sight of this ruin gave an unpleasant turn to our discussion, which had already grown sharp. This tower happened to be the sole remnant of the ancient Zehrenburg, the ancestral seat of Arthur's family, which, in former times, had enjoyed large possessions on the island. Arthur pointed with a pathetic gesture to the ruddy walls, and demanded that I, here and now, with my eye upon the castle of his ancestors, should renounce forever all pretensions to Emilie Heckepfennig. "A plebeian like myself," he said, "was in duty bound to give way to a patrician." I maintained that there were no such things as plebeians or patricians in affairs of the heart, and that I would never consent to a pledge which would entail perpetual wretchedness on both Emilie and myself.

"Slave!" cried Arthur, "is it thus that you repay me for the condescension that has so long tolerated your society?"

I laughed aloud, and my laughter still further exasperated Arthur's drunken passion.

"My father is Steuerrath von Zehren," he cried, "and yours a miserable subaltern."

"Let us leave our fathers out of the question, Arthur; you know I will not endure any insult to mine."

"Once more I warn you, Arthur, leave my father's name alone. My father, at the very least, is as good as yours. And if you say another word about my father, I'll fling you overboard," and I shook my fist in Arthur's face.

"What's the matter here?" asked the steuerrath, who suddenly appeared. "How, young man, is this the respect that you owe to my son--that you owe to me? It appears that you are disposed to add the crown to your disgraceful behavior all day. My son has invited you into his company for the last time."

"Invited me, indeed!" I said. "We ran away, both of us!"--and I burst into a shout of laughter that quite justified the steuerrath's qualification of my behavior.

But Arthur was not in condition to give an intelligible answer. He stammered out something, and rushed toward me, apparently with the intention of striking me, but his father caught his arm and led him away, speaking very earnestly to him in a low tone, and as he went he threw a furious look at me.

My blood, already excited, was now boiling in my veins. The next thing I remember I was walking arm-in-arm with the commerzienrath--I have never been able to understand how I did it--and passionately complaining to him of the crying outrage I had received from my best friend, for whom I was at all times ready to sacrifice fortune and blood. The commerzienrath seemed as if he would die with laughing. "Fortune and blood!" he cried; "as for the fortune"--here he shrugged his shoulders and blew out his cheeks--"and as for the blood"--here he nudged me with his elbow in the side. "Full blood, capital blood, of course. I have had one of the breed myself; a Kippenreiter! Baroness Kippenreiter! My Hermann, at all events, is of the half blood. There she runs; is she not an angel? Pity she was not a boy: that's the reason I always call her Hermann. Hermann! Hermann!"

The little maid came running: she had on a red scarf, which her father, after kissing her, wrapped closer around her delicate shoulders.

"Is she not an angel--a pride?" he went on taking my arm again. "She shall have a count for a husband; not a poor, penniless sprig of nobility, like my brother-in-law, nor like his drunken brother at Zehrendorf, nor the other, that sneaking fellow, the penitentiary superintendent at What-d'ye-call-it. No, a real count, a fellow six feet high, just like you, my boy, just like you!"

The short commerzienrath tried to lay his two fat hands upon my shoulders, and tipsy emotion blinked in his eyes.

"You are a capital fellow, a splendid fellow. Pity you are such a poor devil; you should be my son-in-law. But I must call you thou: thou mayst say thou to me, too, brother!" and the worthy man sobbed upon my breast and called for champagne, apparently with a view of solemnly ratifying the bond, of brotherhood after the ancient fashion.

I have my doubts whether he carried this design into effect: at all events I remember nothing of the ceremony, which could scarcely have escaped my memory. But I remember that not long after I was in the engine-room with a bottle of wine, hobnobbing with my friend Klaus, and swearing that he was the best and truest fellow in the world, and that I would appoint him head-stoker in hell as soon as I got there, which would not be long coming as I must have a settlement with father this evening, and that I would let myself be torn in pieces for him at any time, and that I would be glad if it were done right at once, and that if the great black fellow there did not stop swinging his long iron arm up and down I would lay my head under it, and there would be an end of George Hartwig.

How the good Klaus brought me out of this suicidal frame of mind, and how he got me up the ladder again, I cannot say; it must have been managed somehow, for as we steamed into the harbor I was sitting on deck, watching the masts of the anchored ships glide past us, and the stars glittering through the spars and cordage. The crescent moon that was standing over the spire of the church of St Nicholas seemed suddenly to drop behind it, but it was I that dropped, as the Penguin struck the timbers of the wharf, on which there was again assembled a crowd of people, not hurrahing, however, as when we started, but, as it seemed to me, strangely silent; and, as I made my way through them, staring at me I thought in a singular manner, so that I felt as if something terrible must have happened, or was on the point of happening, and that I was in some mysterious way the cause of it.

I stood before my father's small house in the narrow Water street. A light was glimmering through the closed shutters of the room to the left of the front door, by which I knew that my father was at home--he usually took a solitary walk around the town-wall at this hour. Could it be so very late, then? I took out my watch and tried to make out the time by the moonlight--for the street-lamps were never lighted in Uselin on moonlight nights--but could not succeed. No matter, I said to myself, it is all one! and grasped resolutely the brass knob of the front door. To my feverish hand it felt cold as ice.

CHAPTER III.

As I closed the door behind me, old Frederica, who, since my mother's death, had been housekeeper for my father, came suddenly out of the small room on the right. By the light of a lamp burning dimly on the hall-table I saw the good old woman throw up her hands and stare at me with wide, frightened eyes. "Has anything happened to my father?" I stammered, seizing the table to support myself What with the warm atmosphere of the house after the fresh night-air, and my alarm at Frederica's terrified looks, my breath failed me, the blood seemed to rush to my head, and the room began to go round.

Here my father opened the door of his room and appeared upon the threshold. Being a large man and the door small, he nearly filled up the doorway.

At this moment I experienced no other feeling than that of joyful relief from the anxiety which seemed on the point of suffocating me; in the next, this natural emotion gave way to another, and we glared at each other like two foes who suddenly meet, after one has long been seeking the other, and the other nerves himself for the result, be it what it may, from which he now sees there is no escape.

I obeyed: there was a humming noise in my ears, but my step was firm; and if my heart beat violently in my breast, it was certainly not with fear.

As I entered, a tall black figure slowly rose from my father's large study-chair---my father allowed no sofa in his house--it was Professor Lederer. I stood near the door, my father to the right, by the stove, the professor at the writing-table in front of the lamp, so that his shadow reached from the ceiling to the floor, and fell directly upon me. No one moved or spoke; the professor wished to leave the first word to my father, and my father was under too much excitement to speak. In this way we stood for about half a minute, which seemed to me an eternity, and during which the certainty flashed into my mind that if the professor did not immediately leave the room and the house, all possible chance of an explanation between my father and myself was cut off.

The professor looked at me as if he could not believe his ears. A delinquent, a criminal--for such I was in his eyes--to dare to interrupt his judge in such a tone, and with such a request--it was impossible.

"I tell you, leave us alone together," I cried with a louder voice, and making a motion towards him.

"He is mad," said the professor, taking a hasty step backwards, which brought him in contact with the table.

"Sirrah!" exclaimed my father, stepping quickly forward, as if to protect the professor from my violence.

"If I am mad," I said, turning my burning eyes from one to the other, "so much the greater reason for leaving us alone."

"No; remain, remain," said my father, his voice quivering with passion. "Is this audacious boy again to have his insolent way? I have too long been culpably negligent; it is high time to take other measures."

My father began to pace up and down the room, as he always did when violently agitated.

"Yes, to take other measures," he continued. "This has gone on far too long. I have done all I could; I have nothing to reproach myself with; but I will not become a public by-word for the sake of a perverse boy. If he refuses to do what is his plain duty and obligation, then have I no further duty or obligation towards him; and let him see how he can get through the world without me."

He had not once looked at me while he uttered these words in a voice broken with passion. Later in life I saw a painting representing the Roman holding his burning hand in the glowing coals, and looking sideways upon the ground with an expression of intensest agony. It brought at once into my mind the remembrance of my father at this fateful moment.

"Your father is right"--commenced for the third time the professor, who held it his duty to strike in while the iron was hot--"when was there ever a father who has done more for his children than your excellent parent, whose integrity, industry and virtue have become a proverb, and who through your fault is now deprived of the crowning ornament of a good citizen; that is, a well-disciplined son, to be the stay of his declining years. Is it not enough that inevitable fate has already hard smitten this excellent man--that he has lost a dear consort and a son in the bloom of youth? Shall he now lose the last, the Benjamin of his old age? Shall his unwearied solicitude, his daily and nightly prayers----"

My father was a man of strictest principles, but far from devout, in the ordinary acceptation of the word; an untruth was his abhorrence, and it was an untruth to say that he had prayed by night and day; and besides, he had an excessive, almost morbid modesty, and the professor's panegyric struck him as exaggerated and ill-timed.

"Let all that pass, Herr Professor"--he interrupted the learned man rather impatiently--"I say again, I have done my duty. Enough! let him do his. I want nothing of him--nothing--nothing whatever--not so much as"--and he brushed one hand over the other; "but this I will have, and if he refuses----"

My father had worked himself into a rage again, and my apparent composure only further exasperated him. Strange! Had I fallen to prayers and entreaties, I know that my father would have despised me, and yet, because I did what he himself would most assuredly have done in my position, because I was silent and stubborn, he hated me at this moment as one hates anything that stands in one's way, and which yet cannot be spurned aside with contempt.

"You have been guilty of a heavy offence, George Hartwig"--the professor began again in a declamatory tone--"that of leaving the Gymnasium without the permission of your teachers. I will not speak of the boundless disrespect with which, as so often before, you rejected the precious opportunity offered you of acquiring knowledge: I will only speak of the terrible guilt of disobedience, of insolent defiance of orders, of the evil example that your disgraceful conduct has presented to your class-mates. If Arthur von Zehren's facile temper has at last been warped into confirmed frivolity, this is the evil fruit of your bad example. Never would that misguided boy have dared to do what he has done to-day----"

As I knew the misguided boy so much better than he, I here broke into a loud, contemptuous laugh, which drove the professor completely beyond his self-control. He caught up his hat, and muttering some unintelligible words, apparently expressing his conviction that I was lost beyond all possibility of reformation, was about to leave the room, when he was detained by my father.

"One moment, Herr Professor," he said, and then turning to me--"You will instantly ask pardon of your teacher for this additional insolence--instantly!"

He stood before me his whole frame quivering with anger. His naturally sallow complexion had turned of an ashy gray, the veins of his brow were swollen, his eyes flashed. His last words had been spoken in a hoarse, hissing tone.

My father raised his arm as if to strike me, but he did not strike; his arm slowly descended, and with outstretched hand he pointed to the door:

I looked straight into his eyes; I was about to say something--perhaps "Forgive me, father; I will ask your forgiveness;" but my heart lay like a stone in my breast; my teeth were clenched like a vice; I could not speak. I moved silently towards the door. The professor hurried after me and seized my arm, no doubt with the kindest intentions; but I saw in him only the cause of my disgrace. I thrust him roughly aside, flung the door to after me, ran past the old housekeeper--the good old creature had evidently been listening, for she stood there wringing her hands, the picture of despair--and out of the house into the street.

CHAPTER IV.

I ran for a short distance like a madman, when suddenly my limbs began to totter under me; the moonlit roofs, the lighted windows in some of the houses, danced wildly before my eyes; the fumes of the wine I had been drinking, repressed for a while by my mental excitement, now rose again to my brain; I had to lean against a wall to keep myself from falling.

I had probably remained for a few minutes in a state of partial insensibility when the voices of some maids, who were bringing water from the adjacent fountain, recalled me to consciousness. I roused myself, and staggered down the street. Soon my strong natural constitution began to assert itself; my steps grew firmer, and I began to consider what I should do, and first of all, whither I should go. The idea of seeking lodgings at an inn I rejected at once; I had never yet passed a night from home; and besides, my whole stock of money did not exceed one thaler--my father always kept me on a very meagre allowance of pocket-money--and I had an indistinct notion that I should have to make this slender sum go a long way. Had I not quarreled with Arthur and parted from him in anger, I should probably have gone to him; but as it was, I felt it impossible to present myself at his house as a supplicant; and, besides, by this time he was most likely sleeping off his intoxication, and his parents had never been friendly disposed towards me. The commerzienrath! He had embraced me, called me thou and brother: he would assuredly receive me with rapture, have me shown to a magnificent chamber, with a grand four-post curtained bed----

But while I was indulging in the picture of my brilliant reception at the commerzienrath's, I was hastening steadily in the opposite direction, towards the harbor. I passed some low taverns in which sailors were roaring out coarse songs. How if I went in and joined the drinkers, and to-morrow went out into the wide world a sailor, like my brother Fritz? That would be a way to be revenged upon my father! To lose two sons--both in the same way! And then to perish at sea, and my corpse to lie at the bottom of the ocean, where my brother's bones had long been lying! "Shame upon you, George!"--I said to myself--"shame! The poor old man!"

How if I turned back? The professor had certainly long since left the house. My father was alone in his room. I would go to him and say--"Strike me if you will, father; I will not resist; I will not move an eyelid!"

But I did not return, nor even slacken my pace; I had already left the town behind, and was now in the wide street of the suburb, on both sides of which stood the little cottages which at this season were chiefly occupied by the bathing-guests. Here and there they shone through the dark trees; some of them had lamps burning in glass globes at the doors, and under trellises, and in the little gardens sat cheerful groups; song and laughter and the merry voices of children came up on the pleasant evening air; a light breeze just stirred the tops of the trees over my head, and fire-flies twinkled in the bushes.

The moist, warm breeze from the sea seemed to refresh me; how pleasant it must be, I thought, over there beyond the houses; and on the instant, Smith Pinnow's cottage came into my mind. The very thing! there I was sure of a shelter. The old man would give me a bed, or at least a shake-down in the forge; or there was the old woman's great arm-chair--certainly she could not sit crouching in it all night as well as all day. Pity Klaus was not at home; but then the pretty Christel was there. Christel had always been a favorite of mine; indeed, at one time I had fancied myself really in love with her, and her charms had attracted me to the hut at least quite as often as the old man's four double-barrels and the long single-barrel, or the mulled wine which he used to sell in the winter to the skaters that thronged the beach.

Strange light-heartedness of youth! At this moment all the mischief I had done, my father's grief, my own serious position, were all forgotten; or, if not forgotten, they were only the dark background upon which shone brightly and cheerily the picture of the old ruinous hut with the glowing forge-fire, and above all the pretty figure of the brisk Christel moving lightly about. What was the school--what was my father's house and all the rest of my slavery to me now? At other times, when I had been out at this hour, I was haunted with anxiety how I should get in without the knowledge of my father, who went to bed punctually at half-past nine: now my father had himself driven me from his house. No need now to pull off my boots at the door, and creep softly up the creaking stair to my chamber; I was a free man and could do what I chose, and come and go at my pleasure.

The wide street and the suburbs were now behind me; I strode along the well-known path, on my left a little meadow, on my right a potato-field, here and there a solitary tree, blackly defined against the clear starlit sky, and on either side the water, whose hollow sound I heard plainer and plainer as the tongue of land narrowed, especially towards the west, the windward quarter, where lay the open sea. I noticed for the first time that I had no cap. I had either lost it or left it by the lamp on the hall-table; so much the better, the sea-breeze could play freely around my heated temples and in my loose hair.

A pair of wild swans flew high above me; I could not see them, but heard their peculiar wailing cry--two simple notes that rang strangely through the silence of the night. "Good speed!" I called out to them: "Good speed, my good comrades!"

A strangely happy feeling, mingled of sadness and joy, came over me, such as I had never known before. I could have thrown myself upon the earth and wept; I could have leaped and shouted in exultation. I could not then comprehend what it was that so singularly possessed me. Now I know well what it was: it was the sense of delight that must thrill through the fish when he darts like an arrow through the liquid crystal, the bird when he sweeps on expanded pinions through the air, the stag when he bounds over the wild plain; the rapture that thrills man's breast when in the full glow of youth and vigor he feels himself one with the great mother, Nature. The fore-feeling of this delight, the longing to taste it, are what drives the man from the narrow round of circumstances in which he was born, out into the wide world, across seas, into the desert, to the peaks of the Alps, anywhere where the winds blow free, where the heaven broadens grandly above, where he must risk his life to win it.

Does this after-thought excuse the insolent obstinacy of which I had been guilty towards my father; and the terrible rashness with which I staked my whole future on a cast of the die? Assuredly not. I will excuse nothing, extenuate nothing; but simply narrate what happened to me and within me during these events and those that followed; only giving an explanation here and there when circumstances seem to require it. Let the story tell its own moral; only this will I add, for the consolation of thoughtful souls, that if, as cannot be gainsaid, my conduct deserved punishment, this punishment was dealt out to me speedily, and that in no stinted measure.

But at the time the haggard form with the lame foot was still too far behind to cast the shade of her terrors upon me; two other figures, however, as I hastened with a quickened pace over the heath, appeared in sight, who had assuredly nothing spectral about them, for they were standing in a close embrace. They sprang apart, with a cry of alarm from a female voice, as, turning sharply around a hillock, I came directly upon them. The maiden caught up a great basket, which she had set upon the ground, having just had other employment for her arms, and her companion gave an "Ahem!" which was so loud and so confused that it could only have proceeded from a very innocent breast.

"Good Lord! is it really you?" said the man. "Why, Christel, only think it's him!"--and Klaus caught Christel Möwe, who was about taking to flight, by her dress, and detained her.

"Oh! I thought it was him!" stammered Christel, whose mind did not seem entirely relieved by the discovery that if they had been espied it was by a good friend.

Although the position in which Klaus and Christel evidently stood to each other did not exactly require an explanation, still I was somewhat astonished. As long as Klaus lived with his father, from the commencement of our friendship, I had never detected in the good fellow's heart anything more than brotherly affection for his pretty adopted sister; but then that was four years ago. Klaus was but sixteen when he went to work with locksmith Wangerow; and perhaps this temporary separation had aroused the love which otherwise would have calmly slumbered on, and possibly never awakened of itself. This was confirmed by what the lovers themselves told me, as we walked slowly on together towards the forge, often stopping for a minute at a time when the story reached a point of particularly critical interest. One of these points--and indeed the most serious--was the strongly and even violently expressed aversion of old Pinnow to the engagement. Klaus did not say so, but from all that I gathered I surmised that it was not altogether impossible that the old man himself had cast an eye upon his pretty adopted daughter; at least I could see no other reasonable explanation of the fact that year by year, and day by day, he had grown more morose and rancorous towards Klaus, and at last, after much snarling and storming over his gadding about, and his shameful waste of time, had ended by forbidding him the house, without the good fellow--as he solemnly asseverated, and I believed him--having ever given him the slightest cause of complaint. Therefore they--the lovers--were under the necessity of keeping their meetings secret, a proceeding not without considerable difficulties, as the old man was extraordinarily watchful and cunning. For instance, he would send the deaf and dumb apprentice, Jacob, to the town to make the necessary purchases, although he was certain to make some blunder or other; and to-day he would not have sent Christel, had he not heard that Klaus had some late work to do on board the steamer, that would prevent his coming ashore.

As I had a sincere affection for the good Klaus, who had been my comrade in many a merry frolic by land and water, and was no less fond of the rosy, soft-voiced Christel Möwe, I felt the liveliest sympathy with them; and improbable though it may seem, their love, with its sorrows and its joys, and the possibility of its happy termination, lay at this moment nearer my heart than the thought of my own fortune. My mind, however, recurred to my own situation, when, as we reached a slight elevation in the path, the forge, with the light of the kitchen-fire shining through its low window, appeared close at hand, and Klaus asked if we should now turn back. He then for the first time learned that it was no mere evening stroll that had brought me so far from the town across the heath, and that my intention was to ask his father for shelter for a day at least, or perhaps for several days. At the same time I briefly explained to him the cause that compelled me to so singular a step.

Klaus seemed greatly affected by what he heard; he grasped me by the hand, and taking me a little aside, asked in an agitated whisper if I had well considered what I was about? My father, he said, could not mean to deal so harshly with me, and would certainly forgive me if I returned at once. He himself would go and prepare the way, and let the storm spend its first wrath upon him.

"But, Klaus, old fellow," I said, "you are no better off than I. We are comrades in misery: your father has forbidden you his house, just as mine has done with me. What difference is there between us?"

"This difference," Klaus answered, "that I have done nothing to give my father the right to be angry with me, while you tell me yourself that you--don't take it hard of me--have been playing a very ugly trick."

I answered that, be that as it might, home I would never go. What further I should do, I did not know: I would come on board the steamer to-morrow and talk the matter over with him; it was very likely that I would need his assistance.

Klaus, who saw that my resolution was taken, and who had always been accustomed to adapt himself to my plans, gave my hand another hearty grasp, and said: "Well, then, till to-morrow."

His good heart was so full of what he had just heard that he was going off without bidding Christel good-by, had I not, laughing, called his attention to this highly reprehensible oversight. But he did not get the kiss I had hoped for him; Christel said I had been very wicked; and so we departed, Klaus going back towards the town, and soon disappearing in the darkness, and Christel and I keeping on to the forge, where through the window the fire was now blazing brighter than before.

I put other questions, to all of which I received but the briefest possible answers. Christel and I had always been the best friends in the world, and I had ever known her as the brightest, merriest creature. I could only suppose that she had been seriously offended by my bit of sportiveness. As it was never my nature, unless when overcome with passion, to wound the feelings of any one, least of all a poor girl of whom I was really fond, so I did not for a moment hesitate to frankly ask her pardon, if I had offended her, saying that what I had done was with the best intention in the world, namely, that her lover should not, through my fault, leave her without a good-by kiss. Christel made me no answer, and I was about placing my arm around her trim waist, in order to give more emphasis to my petition for forgiveness, when the girl suddenly burst into tears, and in a frightened tone said that I must not go with her to "his" house; and that it was anyhow of no use, for "he" would certainly give me no lodging there.

This declaration and this warning would have made most persons hesitate. The forge was in such a lonely place, the reputation of the old smith was far from being a good one, and I was sufficiently versed in robber-stories to recall the various romantic situations where the robber's daughter warns the hero, who has lost his way, against the remaining members of her estimable family, and at the same time reveals her love for him in a style equally discreet and intelligent. But I was never subject to those attacks of timidity to which imaginative persons are so liable; and besides, I thought, if the old man is jealous of his son--and this I set down as certain--why may he not be so of me?--and in the third place, a little cur at this moment rushed, furiously barking, at my legs, and simultaneously appeared a stout figure at the open door of the forge, and Smith Pinnow's familiar voice called out in his deep bass: "Who is there?"

"A friend--George Hartwig," I answered, tossing the little yelping brute with my foot into the bushes.

Christel must have given the old man an intimation of what I wanted as she pushed by him into the house, for he said at once, without moving from his post in the doorway, "I can give you no lodging here; my house is not an inn."

"I know that very well, Pinnow," I answered, stepping up and offering my hand; "but I thought you were my friend."

"I shall not return home, you maybe sure of that," I continued. "So, if you do not mean that I shall lie here in the bushes, and join your dog in howling at the moon, you will let me in, and mix me a glass of grog--half-and-half, you know; and take a glass or two yourself: it will do you good, and put better thoughts in your head."

With these words, I laid my hand on the shoulder of the inhospitable smith, and gave him a hearty shake, in token of my friendly feelings.

"Would you attack a weak old man in his own house?" he exclaimed in an angry tone, and in my turn I felt on my shoulders two hands whose size and steely hardness were, for "a weak old man," quite remarkable. My blood, which the cooler night air had by no means yet lowered to the desirable temperature, needed but little provocation; and besides, here was too favorable an opportunity to put to the proof my much-admired strength; so I seized my antagonist, jerked him at a single effort from the threshold, and hurled him a couple of paces to one side. I had not the slightest design of forcing an entrance into his house; but the smith, who feared that this was my intention, and was resolved to prevent it at all hazards, threw himself upon me with such fury that I was obliged in self-defence to exert my whole strength. I had had many a hard tussle in my time, and had always come off victorious; but never before had I been so equally matched as now. Perhaps it was from some small remains of regard for the old man who now assaulted me, in sailor fashion, with heavy blows of his fist, that I refrained from repaying him in the same coin, but endeavored to grapple with him. At last I felt that I had him in my power: seizing a lower hold, I raised him from the ground, and the next moment he would have measured his length upon the sand, when a peal of laughter resounded close at hand. Startled, I lost my hold, and my antagonist, no sooner felt himself free, than he rushed upon me again. Unprepared for this new attack, I lost my balance, stumbled and fell, my antagonist above me. I felt his hands of iron at my throat, when suddenly the laughter ceased. "For shame, old man!" cried a sonorous voice, "he has not deserved that of you;" and a pair of strong arms tore the smith from me. I sprang to my feet and confronted my deliverer, for so I must call him, as without his interference I do not know what would have happened to me.

CHAPTER V.

He was, as well as I could distinguish by the faint light of the moon that was now partly obscured by clouds, a man of tall stature and slender frame; so alert in his movements that I took him to be young, or at least comparatively young, until, at a sudden turn he made, the flickering glare of the fire through the open door fell upon his face, and I saw that his features were deeply furrowed, apparently with age. And as now, holding my hand, he led me into the forge, which glowed with a strong light, he seemed to me to be neither young nor old, or rather both at once.

It is true, the moment was not precisely favorable to physiognomical investigations. The stranger surveyed me with large eyes that flashed uncannily out of the crumpled folds and wrinkles that surrounded them from head to foot, and felt my shoulders and arms, as a jockey might examine a horse that has got over a distance in three minutes that it takes other horses five to accomplish. Then, turning on his heel, he burst into a peal of laughter, as the smith turned upon the deaf and dumb apprentice, Jacob, who all this time had been blowing the bellows, quite indifferent to what was going forward, and gave him a push which spun him around like a top.

"Bravo! bravo!" cried the stranger, "that was well done! Easier handling him than the other--eh, Pinnow?"

"The other may thank his stars that he gets off so easily," growled the smith, as he drew a red-hot bar from the coals.

"I am ready to try it again at any time, Pinnow," I cried, and was delighted that the stranger, with an amused look, nodded his approbation, while with affected solemnity he cried: "For shame young man, for shame! a poor old man! Do you consider that a thing to boast of?"

The smith had seized his heavy forge-hammer, and was plying the glowing bar with furious strokes until the sparks flew in showers, and the windows rattled in the frames.

The stranger stopped his ears. "For heaven's sake, man," he cried, "stop that infamous noise! Who in the devil's name can stand it, do you think? Do you suppose that I have your plebeian ears? Stop, I say, or----"

He gave the smith a push, as the latter had just before done to his apprentice, but the old man stood more firmly than the young one. With a furious look he raised his hammer--it seemed as if the next moment he would bring it down on the stranger's head.

"Have you gone mad?" said the stranger, casting a stern look at the enraged smith. Then, as the latter slowly lowered the hammer, he began speaking to him in an undertone, to which the old man answered in a muttering voice, in which I thought I could at intervals distinguish my own name.

"Excuse me," I said, "I have not the least idea of thrusting my company upon you: I would not have set my foot in the house, had not----"

"Now he's beginning again," exclaimed the stranger, with a laugh of half vexation; "will you ever come to your senses, you two? What I want is peace and quiet, and above all, some supper; and you shall keep me company. Hallo! Christel! Where is the girl? You, Pinnow, take off your leather apron and come in too."

With these words he opened the low door on the right of the forge-fire, which led from the forge into the living-room. I had often enough been in the latter, and indeed I knew the whole place well: the living-room was a moderately large apartment, but only half as high from floor to ceiling as the forge; the sleeping-rooms lying above it, which were reached by a steep stair, or sort of ladder, in a corner of the room, passing through a hole in the ceiling. There was also a door, reached by two steps, which led into a small side-room, where the smith's mother slept. This old woman, a prodigy of age, was now crouching in her easy-chair in her usual corner, close to the stove, which was heated from without. In the middle of the room stood a heavy oaken table, and on the table the great basket which Christel had brought from the town. Christel herself was apparently searching for something in a closet at the further end of the room.

"Now, Christel," said the stranger, taking a light to look into the basket, "what have you brought? That looks inviting. But bestir yourself, for I am hungry as a wolf--and you too," turning to me--"are you not? One is always hungry at your age. Come this way to the window. Sit down."

He made me sit on one of the two benches that stood in the recess of the window, seated himself on the other, and continued in a somewhat lower tone, with a glance at Christel, who was now, with a noiseless despatch, beginning to set the table:----

"A pretty girl: rather too much of a blonde, perhaps; she is a Hollander; but that is in keeping here: is not the old woman nodding there in her easy chair just like a picture by Terburg? Then old Pinnow, with the face of a bull-dog and the figure of a seal, and Jacob with his carp's eyes! But I like it; I seldom fail, when I have been in the town without my carriage, as happens to-day, to look in here, and let old Pinnow set me over; especially as with a good wind I can get across in half an hour, while by the town-ferry it takes me a full hour, and then afterwards as much more before I reach my estate."

The stranger spoke in a courteous, engaging manner, which pleased me exceedingly; and while speaking, repeatedly stroked with his left hand his thick beard, which fell half-way down his breast, and from time to time glanced at a diamond ring on his finger. I began to feel a great respect for the strange gentleman, and was extremely curious to know who he was, but could not venture to ask him.

"What an abominable atmosphere in this room!" he suddenly exclaimed; "enough to make one faint;" and he was about opening the window at which we were sitting, but checking himself, he turned and said: "To be sure! the old woman might take cold. Christel, can't you get the old lady to bed?"

"Yes, sir; directly," said Christel, who had just finished setting the table, and going up to the old woman, screamed in her ear, "Grandmother, you must go to bed!"

The old woman received this intimation with evident disfavor, for she shook her head energetically, but at last allowed herself to be raised from her crouching position, and tottered from the room, leaning on Christel's arm. When Christel reached the steps that led to the side room she looked round. I sprang to her assistance, and carried the old lady up the steps, while Christel opened the door, through which she then disappeared with her charge.

"Well done, young man," said my new acquaintance, as I came back to him; "we must always be polite to ladies. And now we will open the window."

He did so, and the night air rushed in. It had grown darker; the moon was hidden behind a heavy mass of cloud that was rolling up from the west; from the sea, which was but a few paces distant, came a hollow roaring and plashing of the waves breaking on the beach; a few drops of rain drove into my face.

The stranger looked out intently at the weather. "We must be off presently," I heard him say to himself. Then turning to me: "But now we will have some supper; I am almost dying of hunger. If Pinnow prefers grumbling to eating, let him consult his taste. Come."

He took his seat at the table, inviting me by a gesture to place myself beside him. I had, during the day, eaten far less than I had drunk, and my robust frame, which had long since overcome the effects of my intoxication, now imperatively demanded sustenance. So I very willingly complied with the invitation of my entertainer; and indeed the contents of the basket which Christel had now unpacked were of a nature to tempt a far more fastidious palate than mine. There were caviare, smoked salmon, ham, fresh sausage, pickles; nor was a supply of wine wanting. Two bottles of Bordeaux, with the label of a choice vintage, stood upon the table, and out of the basket peeped the silvery neck of a bottle of Champagne.

"Quite a neat display," said the stranger, filling both our glasses, helping himself first from one dish and then from another, and inviting me to follow his example, while chatting at intervals in his pleasant fashion. Without his questioning me directly, we had somehow come to speak of my affairs; and, unsuspicious and communicative as I was, before the first bottle was emptied I had given him a pretty fair account of my neither long nor eventful life. The occurrences of the past day, so momentous for me, occupied rather more time in the recital. In the ardor of my narration, I had, without observing it, filled and drunk several glasses of wine; the weight that had laid upon my spirits had disappeared; my old cheerful humor had returned, all the more as this meeting with the mysterious stranger under such singular circumstances, gave my imagination room for the wildest conjectures. I described our flight from the school, I mimicked Professor Lederer's voice and manner, I threw all my powers of satire into my sketch of the commerzienrath, and I fear that I smote the table with my fist when I came to speak of Arthur's shameful ingratitude, and the outrageous partiality of the steuerrath. But here my talkative tongue was checked; the melancholy dimness of my father's study spread a gloom over my spirits; I fell into a tragic tone, as I swore that though I should have to go on a pilgrimage to the North Cape, barefoot, as I was already bareheaded, and beg my bread from door to door--or, as begging was not my forte, should I have to take to the road--I would never more set foot in my father's house again, after he had once driven me from it. That what I was in duty bound to bear from a parent had here reached its limits; that nature's bond was cancelled, and that my resolution was as firmly fixed as the stars in the sky, and if any one chose to ridicule it, he did it at his peril.

With these words I sprang from the table, and set down the glass from which I had been drinking, so violently, that it shivered to pieces. For the stranger, whose evident enjoyment of my story had at times encouraged me, and at others embarrassed, when I came to my peroration, which was delivered with extreme pathos, burst into a paroxysm of laughter which seemed as if it would never end.

"You have been kind to me," I exclaimed; "true, I think I could have held my own without your assistance; but no matter for that--you came to my help at the right moment, and now you have entertained me with food and drink. You are welcome to laugh as much as you please, but I, for my part, will not stay to listen to it. Farewell!"

I looked round for my cap; then, remembering that I had none, strode to the door, when the stranger, who in the meantime had also risen from his seat, hastened after me, caught me by the arm, and in the grave but kindly tone that had previously so charmed me, said:

"Young man, I entreat your pardon. And now come back and take your seat again. I offer you the word of a nobleman that I will respect your feelings, even if your expression of them takes a somewhat singular form."

His dark eyes gleamed, and there were twitchings in the maze of wrinkles that surrounded them.

"I am not," he replied, "upon the word of a nobleman. On the contrary, you please me extremely, and I was several times on the point of interrupting your story to ask a favor of you. Come and stay awhile with me. Whether you are reconciled with your father, as I hope, or if the breach be past closing, as you believe, at all events you must first have a roof over your head; and you cannot possibly stay here, where you are evidently not wanted. As I said, I will feel it a favor if you will accept my invitation. I cannot offer you much, but--there is my hand! Good! now we will pledge good fellowship in champagne."

I had already forgiven my mysterious but amiable acquaintance, and pledged him in the sparkling wine with all my heart. With merriment and laughter we had soon emptied the flask, when the smith entered. He had thrown off his leather apron, donned a sailor's jacket, and wrapped a thick muffler round his muscular neck. It now struck me for the first time that he had not on the great blue spectacles which for several years I had never seen him without, and which he wore on account of his alleged near-sightedness: and it now occurred to me that he was not wearing them at the time of our quarrel. Still, I might be mistaken on that point; but I had no time to reflect upon so unimportant a matter, for my attention was at once fixed by some words exchanged in a low tone between the smith and the stranger.

The stranger stood for a few moments in thought; his handsome face seemed suddenly to have grown twenty years older; he stroked his beard, and I noticed that he was observing me from the corner of his eye. He then caught the smith by the arm and led him out of the door, which he closed behind him. Outside the door I heard them talking, but could make out nothing, for the stranger spoke in a subdued voice, and the smith's growling speech was at all times difficult to understand; presently, however, the dialogue grew louder, and, as it seemed, more and more vehement, especially on the part of the smith.

The voices sank again, and presently I heard the outer door creak. They had left the forge; I stepped to the open window and saw them go to the little shed close to the beach, by which Pinnow's boat was usually drawn up on the sand. They disappeared in the shadow of the shed; then I heard a chain rattle, and a grating on the sand; they were launching the boat. All was then still: the only sounds audible were the stronger roaring of the sea, mingled with the rush of the wind in the leaves of the old oak, which threw its half-decayed boughs over the forge.

I heard a rustling in the room, and turned quickly round. It was Christel; she stood behind me, looking with an intense gaze, as I had just done, through the window into the darkness.

She placed her finger on her lips, and whispered, "Hush!" then beckoned me from the window. Surprised rather than alarmed, I followed her.

"Don't go with them, whatever you do. And go away from here at once. You cannot stay here."

"I must not tell you; I must not speak his name. If you go with them, you will learn it soon enough; but do not go!"

A noise was heard outside; Christel turned away and began clearing the table, while the voices of the two who were returning from the beach came nearer and nearer.

I do not know what another would have done in my place; I can only say that the girl's warning produced upon me an effect precisely opposite to that intended. True, I well remember that my heart beat quicker, and that I cast a hurried glance at the four double-barrels and the long fowling-piece that hung in the old places on the wall; but the desire to go through with the adventure was now fully awaked in me. I felt equal to any danger that might beset me; and, for the matter of that, Christel had just said that no harm was intended to me.

Besides--and this circumstance is, perhaps, the real key to my conduct that evening--the stranger, whoever he might be, with his partly serious and partly jocose, half-sympathetic and half-mocking language, had somehow established a mysterious influence over me. In later years, when I heard the legend of the Piper of Hameln, whom the children were irresistibly compelled to follow, I at once recalled this night and the stranger.

He now appeared at the door, dressed in a coarse, wide sailor's jacket, and wearing a low-crowned tarpaulin hat in place of his cloth cap. Pinnow opened a press in the wall, and produced a similar outfit for me, which the stranger made me put on.

"It is turning cold," he remarked, "and your present dress will be but little protection to you, though I trust our passage will be a short one. So: now you are equipped capitally: now let us be off."

The smith had stepped to Christel and whispered her a few words, to which she made no reply. She had turned her back upon me since the men had entered, and did not once turn her head as I bade her good-night.

We went through the forge, where the fire had now burnt down, and stepped out into the windy night. After proceeding a few steps, I turned my head: the light in the living-room was extinguished; the house lay dark in the darkness, and the wind roared and moaned in the dry branches of the old oak.

The noise of the sea had increased; the wind had freshened to a stiff breeze; the moon had set; no star shone through the scudding clouds which from time to time were lighted with a lurid gleam, followed by a mutter of distant thunder.

We reached the boat which was already half in the water, and they made me get on board, while the stranger, Pinnow, and the deaf and dumb Jacob, who had suddenly made his appearance out of the darkness, and was, as well as I could make out, also in sailor's dress and fisherman's boots--pushed off. In a few minutes we were flying through the water; the stranger stood at the helm, but presently yielded it to Pinnow, when the latter with Jacob's assistance had finished setting the sails, and took his seat beside me.

"Glorious!" I exclaimed. "But I think, Pinnow, that you had better take in another reef; we are carrying too much sail, and over yonder"--I pointed to the west--"it has an ugly look."

Pinnow made no reply but gave the hasty order: "Take in the foresail," at the same time putting up the helm and letting the boat fall off the wind. It was not a moment too soon, for a squall striking us an instant after made her careen so violently that I thought she would founder, though luckily she righted again. The jib was taken in altogether, and the foresail now hoisted only half-mast high, and under this canvas we flew through the waves, upon whose whitening crests played the pale glare of the lightning at ever shorter intervals, and still louder and louder followed the roll of the thunder.

After a while the squall abated as rapidly as it had come up, and the stars began to shine here and there through the clouds. I came aft--I had been helping Jacob to handle the sails--and took my seat again by the stranger. He passed his hand over my jacket:

I felt more pride from this short speech than I had ever felt shame during the longest diatribe of Professor Lederer, or any of my other teachers. There were few things which I would not have been willing at that moment to attempt had the stranger required it; but he offered no compact with the powers of darkness, nor anything of the sort, but only advised me to lie down in the boat and be covered with a piece of canvas, as the trip was likely to last longer than had been expected, the wind having hauled round another quarter; I could be of no more service now, and "Sleep is a warm cloak, as Sancho Panza says," he added.

I protested, affirming that I could keep awake for three days and three nights together; but I yielded to his insistence, and had hardly stretched myself on the bottom of the boat, when sleep, which I had thought so far, fell upon me heavy as lead.

How long I slept I do not exactly know; but I was awakened by the grating of the keel upon the sand of the shore. The stranger helped me up, but I was still so heavy with sleep that I cannot remember how I got ashore. The night was still dark; I could distinguish nothing but the gleaming crests of the waves breaking on a long level beach, from which the land rose higher as it ran inward. When I had recovered my full consciousness the boat had already pushed off; my unknown friend and I were following a path that ascended among trees. He held me by the hand, and in a friendly, pleasant manner pointed out the various irregularities of the path, in which he seemed to know every stone and every projecting root. At last we reached the top of the cliff; before us lay the open country, and in the distance a dark pile, which I gradually made out, in the dawning light, to be a mass of buildings, with a park or wood of immense trees.

"Here we are," said the stranger at last, as, after passing through a silent court-yard, we stood before a great dark building.

"At my house," he responded, laughing. We were now standing in the hall, and he was trying to light a match.

"And where is that?" I asked again. I could not myself have told how I found the boldness to put this question.

The match kindled; he lighted a lamp which was in readiness, and the light fell upon his long dishevelled beard and haggard face, in which the rain and surf seemed to have deepened every wrinkle to a fold and every fold to a furrow. He looked at me fixedly with his large deep-set eyes.

"At Zehrendorf," he replied, "the house of Malte von Zehren, whom they call 'The Wild.' You don't regret having come with me?"

CHAPTER VI.

On awaking the next morning, it was long ere I could arrive at a clear consciousness of my situation. My sleep had been disturbed by frightful dreams, which had left an oppression upon my spirits. It still seemed to me that I heard my father's voice, when a part of my dream recurred to my memory. I had been fleeing from my father, and came to a smooth pond, into which I threw myself, to escape by swimming. But the smooth pond suddenly changed into a stormy sea, upon whose waves I was now tossed towards heaven, and now plunged into the abyss. I was paralyzed with terror; and strove in vain to call to my father for help, while my father did not see me, although he ran up and down the shore, within reach of me, wringing his hands and breaking into loud lamentations over his drowned son.

I passed my hand repeatedly over my brow to drive away the frightful images, and opened my eyes and looking around, found myself in the room into which my host had conducted me on the previous night. The light in the great bare apartment was so dim, that I thought at first it must be very early; but my watch had stopped at nine, and on examination I discovered that this greenish twilight was produced by the thick foliage of trees whose branches touched the solitary window. At this moment a ray of sunlight found its way through some aperture, and fell upon the wall in front of me, upon which I at first thought the most singular and fantastic figures were painted, until closer observation showed me that the dark hangings had here and there detached themselves from the lighter ground, and hung in irregular strips, which seemed the strange garments of grotesque forms.

Altogether the appearance of the room was as inhospitable as it well could be: the plaster in several places had fallen from the ceiling, and lay in white fragments upon the floor, which was laid in parquetry, but now cracked in all directions. The whole furniture consisted of a great canopied bed, the curtains of which were of faded green damask; two high-backed chairs, covered with similar materials, one of which possessed its normal complement of legs, while the other, which in years had not yet learned to stand upon three, was propped against the wall; and finally, a pine washstand painted white, in singular contrast to the great oval mirror in a rich antique rococo frame, which hung above it; although it is true that the gilding on this piece of magnificence was in many places tarnished by age.

I made these observations while putting on my clothes, which in the short time I had slept by no means dried as thoroughly as I could have desired. But this was but a trifling discomfort: the thought that troubled me was, how should I dress myself the next day, and after? upon which followed the associate reflection:--what was going to become of me altogether?

The answer to this question was by no means clear; and after some consideration I hit upon the idea that it would be as well, before I came to a decision--which in any event was not a matter of such instant urgency--to consult my friendly host upon the subject. Singular enough! up to this day I had always rejected the advice of those whose position and knowledge best qualified them to give it, and had always maintained that I knew best what I had to do; and now I found myself looking with a sort of superstitious reliance to a man whom I had but just learned to know, and that under circumstances by no means of a nature to inspire confidence, and whose name was in evil repute, far and near. It was in this fact, possibly, that lay the greatest attraction for me. "The Wild Zehren" had held a place in my boyish imagination by the side of Rinaldo Rinaldini and Karl Moor; and I had keenly envied my friend Arthur, who used to tell the wildest stories about him, the possession of such an uncle.

Of late years he had been less talked about: I once heard the steuerrath, in a public garden, in the presence of my father and others, thanking God that the "mad fellow" had at last shown some signs of reformation, and the family might consider itself relieved from the perpetual fear that sooner or later he would come to some bad end. At the same time some allusions were made to a daughter, at which several of the gentlemen whispered together, and Justizrath Heckepfennig shrugged his shoulders. Later, Arthur told me that his cousin had eloped with a young tutor, but had not gone far, as his uncle gave chase to the fugitives and caught them before they reached the ferry. She was very beautiful, he said further, and on that account he the more regretted that his father and his uncle were on such unfriendly terms, for, owing to this disagreement, he had never seen Constance (I remembered the name) but once, and that was when she was a child.

All this and much more in this connection came into my mind while I finished my simple toilet before the dim mirror with the tarnished rococo frame; and as I thought of the pretty cousin, I felt chagrin at the tardy development of the beard that had begun to sprout on my upper lip. I caught up the sailor's hat which I had brought with me when I landed, and left the room to look for Herr von Zehren.

Pretty soon it became evident that this very natural intention was not so easy of accomplishment. The room which I left had, luckily, only two doors in it; but that which I entered had three, so that I had to make a choice between two, not including that which led into my chamber. Apparently I did not hit upon the right one, for I came upon a narrow corridor, very dimly lighted through a closed and curtained glass door. Another which I tried, opened into a hall of stateliest dimensions, the three windows of which looked out upon a large park-like garden. From this hall I passed into a great two-windowed room looking upon the court, and from this one happily back to the one adjoining my chamber, from which I had set out. I had to laugh when I made this discovery, but my laughter sounded so strangely hollow as to check my mirth at once. And indeed it was no wonder if laughter had a strange sound in these empty rooms, which seemed as if they had heard few sounds of merriment in recent times, however joyous they might have been in years by-gone. For this room was just as bare and cheerless as that in which I had slept; with just such ragged hangings, crumbling ceilings, and worm-eaten, half ruinous furniture, which might once have adorned a princely apartment. And so was it with the other rooms, which I now examined again more attentively than at first. Everywhere the same signs of desolation and decay; everywhere mournful evidences of vanished splendor: here and there upon the walls hung life-size portraits, which seemed to be spectrally fading into the dark background from which they had once shone brilliantly; in one room lay immense piles of books in venerable leather bindings, among which a pair of rats dived out of sight as I entered; in another, otherwise entirely empty, was a harp with broken chords, and the scabbard of a dress-sword, with its broad silken scarf. Everywhere rubbish, dust and cobwebs; windows dim with neglect, except where their broken panes offered a free passage to the birds that had scattered straw and dirt around--to a plaster cornice still clung a pair of abandoned swallow's nests; everywhere a stifling, musty atmosphere of ruin and decay.

After I had wandered through at least a half dozen more rooms, a lucky turn brought me into a spacious hall, from which descended a broad oaken staircase adorned with antique carved work. This staircase also, that once with its stained windows, its dark panels reaching almost to the ceiling, its antlers, old armor, and standards, must have presented an unusually stately and imposing appearance, offered the same dreary picture of desolation as the rest; and I slowly descended it amazed, and to a certain extent confounded, by all that I had seen. More than one step cracked and yielded as I placed my foot upon it, and as I instinctively laid my hand upon the broad balustrade, the wood felt singularly soft, but it was from the accumulated dust of years, into which, indeed, the whole stair seemed slowly dissolving.

I knew that I had not come this way the previous night, when my host conducted me to my chamber. A steep stair, as I afterwards learned, led from a side hall directly to that dark corridor which adjoined the room I had occupied. I had, therefore, never before been in the great hall in which I was now standing; and as I did not wish to go knocking in vain at half-a-dozen doors, and the great house-door that fronted the stairs, proved to be locked, I succeeded with some difficulty in opening a back-door, which luckily was only bolted, and entered a small court. The low buildings surrounding this, had probably been used as kitchens, or served other domestic purposes in former times; but at present they were all vacant, and looked up piteously with their empty window-frames and crumbling tile-roofs to the bare and ruinous main-building, as a pack of half-starved dogs to a master who himself has nothing to eat.

I was no longer a child: my organization was far from being a susceptible one, nor did I ever lightly fall into the fantastic mood; but I confess, that a strange and weird sensation came over me among these corpses of houses from which the life had evidently long since departed. So far I had not come upon the slightest trace of active human life. As it was now, so it must have been for years, a trysting place and tilt yard for owls and sparrows, rats and mice. Just so might have looked a castle enchanted by the wickedest of all witches; and I do not think that I should have been beyond measure astonished, if the hag had herself arisen, with bristling hair, from the great kettle in the wash-house, into which I cast a glance, and flown up through the wide chimney upon one of the broom-sticks that were lying about.

This wash-house had a door opening upon a little yard surrounded by a hedge, and divided by a deep trench, bridged by a half-rotten plank; which yard, as was evident from the egg-shells and bones scattered about, had formerly been a receptacle for the refuse of the kitchen, but grass had grown over the old rubbish-heaps, and a pair of wild rabbits darted at sight of me into their burrows in the trench. They might possibly preserve some legend of a time when the trench had been full of water, and these burrows the habitations of water-rats, but at such a remote period of antiquity that the whole tradition ran into the mythical.

Hearing a sound at hand which seemed to indicate the presence of a human being, I pushed through the hedge into the garden, and following the direction of the sound, found an old man who was loading a small cart with pales, which he was breaking with a hatchet out of a high stockade. This stockade had evidently once served as the fence of a deer-park; in the high grass lay the ruins of two deer-sheds blown down by the wind: the stags who used to feed from the racks, and try their antlers against the paling, had probably long since found their way to the kitchen, and why should the paling itself not follow?

So at least thought the withered old man whom I found engaged in this singular occupation. When he first came upon the estate, which was in the life-time of the present owner's father, there were forty head of deer in the park, he said; but in the year '12, when the French landed upon the island and took up quarters in the castle, more than half were shot, and the rest broke out and were never recovered, though a part were afterwards killed in the neighboring forest which belonged to Prince Prora.

After giving me this information, the old man fell to his work again, and I tried in vain to draw him into further conversation. His communicativeness was exhausted, and only with difficulty could I get from him that the master had gone out shooting, and would scarcely be back before evening, perhaps not so soon.

"Most likely up yonder," said the old man, pointing with his axe-handle in the direction of the park; then slipping the straps of his cart over his decrepit shoulders, he slowly dragged it along the grass-grown path towards the castle. I watched him till he disappeared behind the bushes; for a while I could still hear the creaking of his cart, and then all was silent.

Silence without a sound, just as in the ruinous castle. But here the silence had nothing oppressive; the sky here was blue, without even the smallest speck of cloud; here shone the bright morning sun, throwing the shadows of the aged oaks upon the broad meadows, and sparkling in the rain-drops which the night's storm had left upon the bushes. Now and then a light breeze stirred, and the long sprays, heavy with rain, waved languidly, and the tall spires of grass bent before it.

It was all very beautiful. I inhaled deep draughts of the cool sweet air, and once more felt the sense of delight that had come over me the evening before, as the wild swans swept above me, high in air. How often, in after days, have I thought of that evening and this morning, and confessed to myself that I then, in spite of all, in spite of my folly and frivolity and misconduct, was happy, unspeakably happy--a short lived, treacherous bliss, it is true, but still bliss--a paradise in which I could not stay, from which the stern realities of life, and nature itself, expelled me--and yet a paradise!

Slowly loitering on, I penetrated deeper into the green wilderness, for wilderness it was. The path was scarcely distinguishable amid the luxuriant weeds and wild overgrowth of bushes--the path which in by-gone days had been swept by the trains of ladies fair, and by which the little feet of children had merrily tripped along. The surface grew hilly; at the end lay the park, and over me venerable beeches arched their giant boughs. Again the path descended towards an opening in the forest, and I stood upon the margin of a moderately large, circular tarn, in whose black water were reflected the great trees that surrounded it nearly to the edge.

A few steps further, upon a slightly elevated spot, at the foot of a tree whose gigantic size seemed the growth of centuries, was a low bank of moss; upon the bank lay a book and a glove. I looked and listened on all sides: all was still as death: only the sunlight played through the green sprays, and now and then a leaf fluttered down upon the dark water of the tarn.

I could not resist an impulse of curiosity: I approached the bank and took up the book. It was Eichendorf's "Life of a Good-for-Nothing." I had never seen the book, nor even heard of the author; but could not refrain from smiling as I read the title: it was as though some one had called me by name. But at that time I cared little for books: so I replaced it, open, as I had found it, and picked up the glove, not, however, without another cautious glance around, to see if the owner might not be a witness of my temerity.

This glove, I at once divined, belonged to Arthur's beautiful cousin--whose else could it be? The inference was simple enough; and, indeed, the circumstance of a young lady leaving her glove on the spot where she had been resting, had nothing in it remarkable. But the fancy of a youth of my temperament is not fettered; and I confess that as I held the little delicate glove in my hand, and inhaled its faint perfume, my heart began to beat very unreasonably. I had walked, times without number, past Emilie Heckepfennig's window in hope of a glance from that charmer; and had even worn on my heart, for weeks together, a ribbon which she once gave me as I was dancing with her; but that ribbon never gave me such feelings as did this little glove; there must have been some enchantment about it.

I threw myself upon the bank of moss, and indulged my fancy in the wild dreams of a youth of nineteen; at times laying the glove on the seat beside me, and then taking it up again to scrutinize it with ever closer attention, as though it were the key to the mystery of my life.

I had been sitting thus perhaps a quarter of an hour, when I suddenly started up and listened. As if from the sky there came a sound of music and singing, faint at first, then louder, and finally I distinguished a soft female voice, and the tinkling notes of a guitar. The voice was singing what seemed the refrain of a song:

"All day long the bright sun loves me;
All day long."

"All day long," it was repeated, now quite close at hand, and I now perceived the singer, who had been concealed from me hitherto by the great trunks of the beeches.

She was coming down a path which descended rather steeply among the trees, and as she came to a spot upon which the bright sunshine streamed through a canopy of leaves, she paused and looked thoughtfully upwards, presenting a picture which is ineffaceably imprinted upon my memory, and even now after so many years it comes back to me vividly as ever.

A charming, deep brunette, whose exquisitely proportioned form made her stature appear less than it really was; and whose somewhat fantastic dress of a dark green material, trimmed with gold braid, admirably accorded with her striking, almost gypsy-like appearance. She carried a small guitar suspended around her neck with a red ribbon, and her fingers played over its chords like the rays of sunlight over the lightly waving sprays.

Poor Constance! Child of the sun! Why, if it loved thee so well, did it not slay thee now with one of these rays, that I might have made thee a grave in this lonely forest-glade, far from the world for which thy heart so passionately yearned--thy poor foolish heart!

I was standing motionless, fascinated by the vision, when with a deep sigh she seemed to awake from a reverie, and as she descended the path her eyes and mine met. I noticed that she started lightly, as one who meets a human being where he only expected to see the stem of a tree: but the surprise was but momentary, and I observed that she regarded me from under her drooped lids, and a transient smile played round her lips; in truth, a beautiful maiden, conscious of her beauty could scarcely have seen without a smile the amazed admiration, bordering on stupefaction, depicted in my face.

Whether she or I was the first to speak I do not now remember; and indeed I clearly retain, of this our first conversation, only the memory of the tones of her soft and somewhat deep voice, which to my ear was like exquisite music. We must have ascended together from the forest-dell to the upland, and the sea-breeze must have awakened me to a clearer consciousness, for I can still see the calm, blue water stretching in boundless expanse around us, the white streaks of foam lying among the rocks of the beach perhaps a hundred feet below, and a pair of large gulls wheeling hither and thither, and then dipping to the water, where they gleamed like stars. I see the heather of the upland waving in the light breeze, hear the lapping of the surf among the sharp crags of the shore, and amid it all I hear the voice of Constance.

"My mother was a Spaniard, as beautiful as the day, and my father, who had gone thither to visit a friend he had known in Paris, saw her, and carried her off. The friend was my mother's brother, and he loved my father dearly, but was never willing that they should marry, because he was a strict Catholic, and my father would never consent to become a Catholic, but laughed and mocked at all religions. So they secretly eloped; but my uncle pursued and overtook them in the night, upon a lonely heath, and there were wild words between them, and then swords were drawn, and my father killed the brother of his bride. She did not know this until long afterwards; for she fainted during the fight, and my father contrived to make her believe that he had parted from his brother-in-law in friendship. Then they came to this place; but my mother always pined for her home, and used to say that she felt a weight upon her heart, as if a murder were resting on her soul. At last she learned, through an accident, the manner of death of her brother, whom she had devotedly loved; and so she grew melancholy, and wandered about day and night, asking every one whom she met which was the road to Spain. My father at last had to shut her up; but this she could not endure, and became quite raving, and tried to take her own life, until they let her go free again, when she wandered about as before. And one morning she threw herself into this pool, and when they drew her out she was dead. I was then only three years old, and I have no recollection of her looks, but they say she was handsomer than I am."

I said that could hardly be possible; and I said it with so much seriousness, for I was thinking of the poor woman who had drowned herself here, that Constance again smiled, and said I was certainly the best creature in the world, and that one could say anything to me that came into one's head; and that was what she liked. So I was always to stay with her, she said, and be her faithful George, and slay all the dragons in the world for her sake. Was I agreed to that? Indeed was I, I answered. And again a smile played over her rosy lips.

"You look as if you would. But how did you really come here, and what does my father want with you? He gave me a special charge on your account this morning before he set out; you must stand high in his favor, for he does not usually give himself much care for the welfare of other people. And how come you to have a sailor's hat on, and a very ugly one at that? I think you said you came from school; are there scholars there as large as you? I never knew that. How old are you really?"

And so the maiden prattled on--and yet it was not prattling, for she remained quite serious all the time, and it seemed to me that while she talked her mind was far away; and her dark eyes but seldom were turned to me, and then with but a momentary glance, as though I were no living man, but an inanimate figure; and frequently she put a second question without waiting for an answer to the first.

This suited me well, for thus at least I found courage to look at her again and again, and at last scarcely turned my eyes from her. "You will fall over there, if you do not take care," she suddenly said, lightly touching my arm with her finger, as we stood on the verge of a cliff. "It seems you are not easily made giddy."

Upon what was nearly the highest part of the promontory on which we were, were the ruins of a castle, overgrown with thick bushes. But a single massive tower, almost entirely covered with ivy, had defied the power of the sea and of time. These were the ruins of the Zehrenburg, to which Arthur had pointed yesterday, as we passed on the steamer; the same tower on which I was to fix my gaze as I renounced in his favor all pretensions to Emilie Heckepfennig. This I had passionately refused to do--yesterday: what was Emilie Heckepfennig to me to-day?

The beautiful girl had taken her seat upon a mossy stone, and looked fixedly into the distance. I stood beside her, leaning against the old tower, and looked fixedly into her face.

"All that, once was ours," she said, slowly sweeping her hand round the horizon; "and this, is all that remains."

She rose hastily, and began to descend a narrow path which led, through broom and heather, from the heights down to the forest. I followed. We came to the beech-wood again, and back to the tarn, where her book and guitar still lay upon the bank. I was very proud when she gave me both to carry, saying at the same time that the guitar had been her mother's, and that she had never trusted it to any one before; but now I should always carry this, her greatest treasure, for her, and she would teach me to play and to sing, if I stayed with them. Or perhaps I did not mean to stay with them?

I said that I could not tell, but I hoped so; and the thought of going away fell heavy upon my heart.

We had now reached the castle. "Give me the guitar," she said, "but keep the book: I know it by heart. Have you had breakfast? No? Poor, poor George! it is lucky that no dragon met us; you would have been hardly able to stand upon your feet."

A side-door, that I had not previously noticed, led to that part of the ground-floor inhabited by the father and daughter. Constance called an old female servant, and directed her to prepare me some breakfast, and then she left me, after giving me her hand, with that melancholy transient smile which I had already noted on her beautiful lips.

CHAPTER VII.

The breakfast which the ugly, taciturn old woman--whom Constance called "Pahlen"--set before me after about half an hour, might well have been ready in less time, for it consisted only of black bread, butter, cheese, and a flask of cognac. The cognac was excellent; but the remainder of the repast far from luxurious, for the bread was sour and mouldy in spots, the butter rancid, and the cheese hard as a stone; but what was that to a youth of nineteen, who had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and whose silly heart, moreover, was palpitating with its first passion! So it seemed to me that I had never had a more sumptuous repast; and I thanked the old woman for her trouble with the utmost politeness. "Pahlen" did not seem to know what to make of me. She looked askance at me two or three times, with a sort of surly curiosity; and to the questions that I put to her, replied with an unintelligible grumbling, out of which I could make nothing.

The room in which I now found myself--it was the same into which Herr von Zehren had conducted me on our first arrival--might, in comparison with the deserted apartments of the upper story, be called habitable, though the carpet under the table was ragged, several of the carved oaken chairs were no longer firm upon their legs, and a great antique buffet in one corner had decidedly seen better days. The windows opened upon a court, into which, my breakfast once over, I cast a look. This court was very spacious, the barns and stables that enclosed it of the very largest dimensions, such as are only found on the most considerable estates. So much the more striking was the silence that prevailed in it. In the centre of the space was a dove-cot built of stone, but no wings fluttered about it, unless perhaps those of a passing swallow. There was a duck-pond without ducks, a dunghill upon which no fowls were scratching--one peacock sat upon the broken paling--everything seemed dead or departed. Here was no hurrying to and fro of busy men, no lowing of cattle or neighing of horses--all was vacant and silent; only from time to time the peacock on the paling uttered his dissonant cry, and the sparrows twittered in the twigs of an old linden.

As Constance did not return, and as Pahlen, to my question about the dinner hour, responded by asking me if I now wanted dinner too, I came to the conclusion that for some hours at least I would be left to my own devices. I therefore walked into the court, and then perceived that this part of the castle was an addition, which formed a continuation to the main building, and had probably served as the manager's house. In the castle the shutters on the ground floor were closed, and secured with massive iron bars, a fact which did not by any means tend to give the old pile a more cheerful appearance. That a manager's house had long been a superfluous appendage, the surroundings plainly showed. In truth, there was nothing here to manage; the buildings, which at a distance still presented a tolerable appearance, proved, when near, to be little better than crumbling ruins. The thatched roofs had sunk in decay and were overgrown with moss, the ornamental work had dropped away, the plaster peeled off in patches, the doors hung awry on their rusted hinges, and in many places were entirely wanting. A stable into which I looked had been originally built to accommodate forty horses; now there stood in a corner four lean old brutes that set up a hungry neighing as they saw me. As I came out again into the court, a wagon, partly laden with corn and dragged by four other miserable jades, went reeling over the broken stones of the pavement, and disappeared in the yawning doorway of one of the immense barns, like a coffin in a vault.

I strolled further on, passing one or two dilapidated hovels, where half-naked children were playing in the sand, and a couple of fellows, more like bandits than farm-hands, were lounging, who stared at me with looks half shy half insolent, and reached the fields. The sun shone brightly enough, but it lighted up little that was pleasant to the eye: waste land, with here and there scattering patches of sparse oats, overgrown with blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies, a little rusted wheat, an acre or so where the rye--late enough for the season--still stood in slovenly sheaves, and where a second wagon was being laden by two fellows of the same bandit appearance as the men at the hovels, and who stared at me with the same surprised and skulking looks, without answering my salutation. At some distance appeared through the trees and bushes the roofs of farm-buildings, evidently upon another estate, to which belonged, doubtless, the far better cultivated fields which I had now reached. Further to the right, above a larger collection of houses, arose the plain white steeple of a church. But I did not care to push my exploration further: an impulse drew me back to the park, which I reached by a circuitous route on the other side, for I wished to avoid the castle and the grumbling old Pahlen.

I had hoped here to meet Constance again; but in vain did I listen more than an hour under the trees and among the bushes, watching the castle until I knew by heart nearly every broken tile upon the roof, and each separate patch--and they were not few--where the rains of so many years had detached the plaster and laid bare the stones beneath. No one was to be seen; no sound was audible; while the afternoon sun gleamed upon the window-panes, save when the shadow of a passing cloud swept over them.

My spirits began to yield to the depressing influences of this scene of sunlit desolation. I felt as if the silence, like an invisible magic net, was folding around me closer and closer, until I scarcely ventured to move--scarcely to speak. In place of the careless audacity, which was my natural temperament, a deep sadness took possession of me. How came I here? What was I to do here--what did I want here, where no one troubled himself about me? Was not all that had happened to me since yesterday only a dream, and had I not merely dreamed the beauteous maiden with the dark eyes and strange smile?

A sense as of home-sickness came over me. I saw in fancy the town with the narrow, crooked streets running between the old-fashioned gabled houses; I saw my little room, to which I would have returned from school by this time to fling my wearisome books upon the table and then fly to my friend Arthur, who I knew had arranged a boat excursion in the harbor. I saw my father sitting at the window of his bureau in the excise-office, and crept close to the wall to avoid being seen by him. How had my father borne my departure? Was he anxious about me? Assuredly he was; for he still loved me, notwithstanding our mutual alienation. What would he do when he learned--as sooner or later he must learn--that I was with the wild Zehren? Would he allow me to stay? Would he command me to return? Perhaps come for me himself?

As this thought came into my mind, I looked uneasily around. It would be intolerable to have to go back to the stifling class-room, to be scolded again, like a boy by Professor Lederer, and never more to see Fräulein von Zehren Constance! Never would I endure it! My father had driven me from his house; he might take the consequences. Rather than go back, I would turn bandit--smuggler----

I do not know how the last word came upon my lips, but I remember--and I have since often thought of it--that when I had uttered the word half aloud, merely as a heroical phrase, without attaching any distinct meaning to it, I suddenly started as if some one had spoken it in my immediate vicinity; and at the same moment the adventures of the previous night and what I had since observed, arranged themselves in a definite connection, just as one looking through a telescope sees heaven and earth blended together in dim confusion, until the right focus is attained, when a distinct picture stands before him. How could I have been so blind--so destitute of ordinary apprehension? Herr von Zehren over at Pinnow's, the strange connection that manifestly existed between the nobleman and the smith, Christel's warnings, Pinnow's behavior towards me, and the night sail in the terrible storm! And then this uncared-for house, this ruinous farm-yard, these desolated fields, this neglected park! The solitary situation of the place, upon a promontory extending far into the sea! I had learned already from frequent conversations between my father and his colleagues in the excise-office, how actively smuggling was carried on in these waters, what a flourishing business it was, and how much might be made at it by any one who was willing to peril his life upon occasion. All was clear as day; this, and no other, was the solution of the mystery.

"You must be mad," I said to myself again, "completely mad. A nobleman like Herr von Zehren! Such doings are for the rabble. Old Pinnow--yes, yes, that is likely enough; but a Herr von Zehren--shame upon you!"

I endeavored with all my might to shake off a suspicion which was really intolerable; and thus afforded another proof that we all, however free we think ourselves, or perhaps have really become, still ever in our feelings, if not in our thoughts, are bound by other imperceptible but none the less firm ties to the impressions of our childhood and early youth. Had my father been a king and I the crown-prince, I should probably have seen the Evil One embodied in the person of a revolutionist; or in a runaway slave, had I been the descendant of a planter; so, as I had for a father a pedantically rigid excise-officer, to my conceptions the most hideous of all stigmas was affixed to the smuggler's career. Yet at the same time--and this will seem surprising to no one who remembers the strange duplicate character of the devil in the Christian mythology--this murky gate of Tophet, by which my childish fancy had so often stolen at a timid distance, was invested with a diabolical fascination. How could it be otherwise, when I heard tell of the privations which the wretches often endured with such fortitude, of the ingenuity with which they knew how to baffle the utmost vigilance of the officers, of the fearlessness with which they not seldom confronted the most imminent peril? These were perilous stories to reach the ear of an adventurous boy; but far too many such were talked over in our town; and what was the worst of all, I had heard the most terrible and most fascinating from the lips of my own father--naturally with an appendix of indignant reprobation always tacked on in form of a moral; but this antidote was, of a surety, never sufficient entirely to neutralize the poison. Had not Arthur and I, shortly before an examination in which we had the most confident assurance that we should cut but a poor figure, for a whole day taken earnest counsel together over the question whether we, in case we failed--or better yet, before standing the trial--should not turn smugglers ourselves, until we actually were scared at our own plans? That had been four years ago; but, although in the meantime the vehement antipathies and sympathies of youth had been moderated by maturer reason, still the thought of having fallen into the hands of a smuggler had even now the effect of making my heart beat violently.

"You must be mad--stark mad! Such a man--it is not possible!" I continually repeated to myself, as I hurried along the path I had followed that morning--for indeed I then knew no other--through the park into the forest, until I again reached the tarn with the bank of moss.

I gazed into the calm black water; I thought of the unhappy lady who had drowned herself there because she could not find the way back to Spain, and how strange it was that her daughter should select precisely this spot for her favorite resting-place. Behind the bank lay her other glove, for which we had looked in vain in the morning. I kissed it repeatedly, with a thrill of delight, and placed it in my bosom. Then leaving the place hastily I ascended the cliff, and passing the ruined tower, went out to the furthest extremity of the promontory, which was also its highest point. Approaching the verge, I looked over. A strong breeze had sprung up; the streaks of foam lying among the great rocks and countless pebbles of the beach had grown broader; and here and there upon the blue expanse flashed the white crest of a breaker. The mainland lay towards the south-west. I could have seen the steeples of my native town but for a cliff that intervened, rising abruptly from the sea, and now of a steel-blue color in the afternoon light. "And this is all that remains!" I said, repeating the words of Constance, as my eye, in turning, fell upon the ruined tower.

I descended and threw myself down upon the soft moss that grew among the ruins. No place could have been found more fit to inspire fantastic reveries. The wide expanse of sky, and beyond the edge of the upland a great stretch of sea, and the nodding broom around me! In the sky the fleecy clouds, on the water a gleaming sail, and in the broom the whispering wind! How luxurious to lie idly here and dream--the sweetest dream of sweet love that loves idleness: a dream, of course, full of combats and peril, such as naturally fills a youthful fancy. Yes! I would be her deliverer; would bear her in my arms from this desolate castle, a dismal dungeon for one so young and so fair--would rescue her from this terrible father, and these ruins would I erect again into a stately palace; and when the work was done and the topmost battlements burned in the evening-red, would lead her in, and kneeling humbly before her, say, "This is thine! Live happy! Me thou wilt never see more!"

Thus I wove the web of fancy, while the sun sank towards the horizon, and the white clouds of noon began to flush with crimson. What else could I have done? A young fellow who has just run away from school, who has not a thaler in his pocket, and a borrowed hat on, and who scarcely knows where he shall lay his head--what else can he do but build castles in the air?

CHAPTER VIII.

As I entered the court through a little door in the park-wall, there stood a light wagon from which the horses were being unharnessed, and by the wagon a man in hunting-dress, his gun upon his shoulder--it was Herr von Zehren.

I had planned to assume towards my host a sort of diplomatic attitude; but I never was a good actor, and had had, besides, so little time to get up the part, that the friendly smile and cordial grasp of the hand with which Herr von Zehren received me, completely threw me out, and I met his smile and returned his grasp with as much fervor as if I had all day been waiting for the moment when I should see my friend and protector: in a word, I was entirely in the power of the charm with which this singular man had, from the first moment of our meeting, captivated my young and inexperienced heart.

But in truth a maturer understanding than mine might well have been ensnared by the charm of his manner. Even his personal appearance had for me something fascinating; and as he stood there, laughing and jesting with the setting sun lighting up a face which seemed really to have grown young again from the excitement of his day's sport, and as he took off his cap and pushed the soft fine locks, already touched with gray, from his nobly-formed brow, and stroked his thick brown beard, I thought I had never seen a handsomer man.

"I came to your bedside this morning," he said, in a sportive manner; "but you slept so soundly that I had not the heart to waken you. Though if I had known that you could handle a gun as well as you can rudder and halyards--and yet I might have known it, for fishing and shooting and--something else besides--go together, like sitting by the stove and sleeping. But we will make up for it: we have, thank heaven, more than one day's shooting before us. And now come in and let us talk while supper is getting ready."

The room which Herr von Zehren occupied was in the front part of the building, just in the rear of the dining-room, and his sleeping apartment immediately adjoined it. He entered the latter, and conversed with me through the open door, keeping all the while such a clattering with jugs, basins, and other apparatus of ablution, that I had some difficulty in understanding what he was saying. I made out, however, that he had this morning written to his brother, the steuerrath, requesting him to apprise my father where I was now staying. My father certainly would not be sorry to hear that I had found shelter in the house of a friend, at least until some arrangement could be effected. In similar circumstances, he said, a temporary separation often prevented a perpetual one. And even should this not be the case here, at all events--here his head dipped into the water, and I lost the remainder of the sentence. Under any circumstances--he was saying when he became again intelligible--it would be as well if I mentioned to no one where it was that we had happened to meet. We might have met upon the road, as I was about to be ferried over to the island. What was to prevent a young man, whose father had just driven him from his house, from going, if he pleased, as far as the blue sky spread overhead? and why should he not meet a gentleman who has a vacant place in his carriage, and asks the young man if he will not get in? This was all very simple and natural. And in fact this was the way he had stated the circumstances in his letter to his brother this morning. He had given old Pinnow his cue yesterday evening. And besides, the question of where and how was really nobody's affair. He added some further remarks with his head inside his wardrobe, but I only caught the word "inconveniences."

I felt relieved from a load of anxiety. My frightful dream of the morning, of which I had not thought during the whole day, had recurred to my memory in the dusk of the evening twilight. For a moment an apprehension seized me that my father might think I had made away with myself; but it was but for a moment, for youth finds it so unlikely that others will take things more seriously than it does itself. One point, however, was clear: that I must give some account of myself to my father. But at this thought the old misery came back; I could, in any event, no longer stay here. And now I suddenly saw a way of escape from this labyrinth. The steuerrath, being his immediate chief, was, as I well knew, looked upon by my loyal and zealous father as a kind of superior being; indeed he knew upon earth but four other beings higher than himself; the Provincial Excise-Director, the General Excise-Director, His Excellency the Minister of Commerce, next to whom came His Majesty the King--which latter, however, was a being of distinct and peculiar kind, and separated, even from an excellency, by a vast chasm. If, therefore, Herr von Zehren wished to keep me with him, and the steuerrath would use his influence with my father--but would he? The steuerrath had never liked me much; and besides, the evening before, I had deeply offended him. I expressed my doubts on this point to Herr von Zehren. "I will make that all right," he said, as, rubbing his freshly washed hands, he came out of his chamber.

"And now then," he went on, stretching himself luxuriously in an easy-chair, "how have you spent the day? Have you seen my daughter? Yes? Then you may boast of your luck--many a time I do not see her for days together. And have you had something to eat? Poor fare enough, I warrant; the provision is but indifferent when I am at home, but execrable when I am away. Moonshine and beefsteak are two things that do not suit together. When I want good fare, I must go from home. Yesterday evening, for example, at old Pinnow's--wasn't it capital? Romantic too, eh? Friar Tuck and the Black Knight, and you besides as the Disinherited Knight. I love such little adventures above everything."

And he stretched himself at ease in his great chair, and laughed so joyously that I mentally asked his pardon for my suspicions, and pronounced myself a complete fool to have had such an idea enter my brain.

He went on chatting: asked me many questions about my father, my family, the past events of my life, all in a tone of such friendly interest that no one could have taken it amiss. He seemed to be much pleased with my answers; nor did I take offence again when, as he had done the evening before, he broke into loud laughter at some of my remarks. But when this happened, he was always careful to soothe my sensitiveness with a kind word or two. I felt assured that he meant well towards me; and to this day I have remained in the conviction that from the first moment he had conceived a hearty liking for me, and that if it was a mere caprice that drew him towards a young man who needed assistance, it was one of those caprices of which none but naturally generous hearts are capable.

"But what keeps our supper so long?" he cried, springing up impatiently and looking into the dining-room. "Ah! there you are, Constance!"

He went in; through the half-open door I heard him speaking in a low tone with his daughter; my heart beat, I could not tell why.

"Well, why do you not come?" he called to me from the dining-room. I went in; by the table, that to my unaccustomed eye seemed richly spread, stood Constance. The light of the hanging lamp fell upon her from above. Whether it was the different light, or the different arrangement of her hair, which was now combed upwards, so as to rest upon her head like a dark crown, with a golden ribbon interwoven in it, or her different attire--now a plain blue close-fitting dress, cut low at the neck, which was covered by a wide lace collar, worn somewhat like a handkerchief--whether it was all these together, and in addition the changed expression of her face, which had now something indescribably childlike about it, I cannot say; but I scarcely recognized her again; I could have believed that the Constance I had seen in the morning was the older, more impassioned sister of this fair maidenly creature.

"Last half of the previous century," said Herr von Zehren--"Lotte, eh? You only want a sash, and perhaps a Werther--otherwise superb!"

A shadow passed over the face of Constance, and her brows contracted. I had not entirely understood the allusion, but it pained me. Constance seemed so fair to me; how could any one who saw her say aught else but that she was fair?

Gladly would I have said it, but I had scarcely the courage to look at her, let alone speak to her; and she, for her part, was silent and abstracted; the dishes she hardly touched; and indeed now I cannot remember ever to have seen her eat. In truth, the meal, composed of fish and pheasants which Herr von Zehren had brought in from his day's shooting, was of a kind only suited to his own appetite, which was as keen as a sportsman's usually is. During supper he drank freely of the excellent red wine, and often challenged me to pledge him; and indeed he directed his vivacious and genial conversation almost exclusively to me. I was fairly dazzled by it; and as there was much that I only half understood, and much that I did not understand at all, it sometimes happened that I laughed in the wrong place, which only increased his mirth. One thing, however, I saw clearly; the constrained, not to say hostile, relations between father and daughter. Things of this kind are easily perceived, especially when the observer is as well prepared as was I to catch the meaning lurking under the apparent indifference of a hasty question, and to mark the unnecessarily prolonged pause which preceded the answer, and the irritated tone in which it followed. For it had not been so long since my father and I had sat together in the same way; when I used to thank heaven in my heart if any lucky chance relieved us sooner than usual of each other's presence. Here I should have been a disinterested spectator had I not been so inordinately in love with the daughter, and had not the father, by his brilliancy and amiability, obtained such a mastery over me. So my heart, shared between them both, was torn asunder by their division; and if a few hours before I had formed the heroic resolution to protect the lovely and unhappy daughter from her terrible father, I was now fixed like a rock in my conviction that to me had fallen the sublime mission to join these two glorious beings again in an indissoluble bond of love. That it would have better become me to go back to the door of a certain small house in Uselin, where dwelt an old man whom I had so deeply wounded--of that I never for a moment thought.

I breathed quick with expectation as a carriage came rattling over the broken pavement of the court and stopped at the door. It was a visitor whom Herr von Zehren had said he was expecting; a fellow-sportsman and the owner of an adjoining estate, who brought with him a friend who was staying at his house, and who had been out with them shooting. Constance had at once arisen from the table, and was about to leave the room, in spite of her father's request, uttered in a tone that almost made it a command, "I beg that you will remain!" when the gentlemen entered. One was a tall, broad-shouldered, fair young man, with handsome, regular features, and a pair of large, prominent blue eyes that stared out into the world with a sort of good-natured astonishment. My host introduced him to me as Herr Hans von Trantow. The other, a short, round figure, whose head, with its sloping brow, and almost deficient occiput, was so small as to leave scarce a hand's breadth of room for his close-cropped, stiff brown hair, and whose short turned-up nose, and immense mouth, always open, and furnished with large white teeth, gave their possessor a more than passing resemblance to a bull-dog--was called Herr Joachim von Granow. He had been an officer in the army, and on his succession, a few months before, to a handsome fortune, had purchased an estate in the neighborhood.

Constance had found herself compelled to remain, for the little Herr von Granow had at once turned upon her with an apparently inexhaustible flood of talk, and the bulky Herr von Trantow remained standing immovable so near the open door that it was not easy to pass him. From the first moment of seeing them I felt a strong antipathy to them both: to the little one because he ventured to approach so near to Constance, and to talk so much; and to the large one, who did not speak, indeed, but stared steadily at her with his glassy eyes, which seemed to me a still more offensive proceeding.

"We have had but a poor day's sport," said the little one in a squeaking voice to Constance; "but day before yesterday, at Count Griebenow's, we had an uncommonly splendid time. Whenever a covey rose I was right among them; three times I brought down a brace--right and left barrels; and that I call shooting. They were as jealous of me--I expected to be torn to pieces. Even the prince lost his temper. 'You have the devil's own luck, Granow,' he kept saying. 'Young men must have some luck,' I answered. 'But I am younger than you,' said he. 'Your highness does not need any luck,' said I. 'Why not?' 'To be a Prince of Prora-Wiek is luck enough of itself' Wasn't that a capital hit?" and he shook with laughter at his own wit, and shrugged his round shoulders until they nearly swallowed his little head.

It was the first word she had uttered in reply to the small man's chatter. Perhaps this was the reason that I, who had been standing by, taking no interest in what was said--Herr von Zehren had left the room, and Herr von Trantow still held his post at the door--suddenly gave all my attention to the conversation.

"Yes indeed; did you not know it?" said the little man. "To be sure, your father does not come to the shooting at Griebenow's; but I supposed Trantow would have told you."

"Herr von Trantow and I are not accustomed to keep each other au courant of our adventures," answered Constance.

"Indeed!" said Herr von Granow, "is it possible? Yes; as I was going on to say, the prince was there: he is going to be betrothed to the young Countess Griebenow, they say. At all events, he has fixed his quarters at Rossow; the only one of his estates in this part of the country, you know, that has anything like a suitable residence, and then besides it lies very handy to Griebenow. A capital opportunity--if a prince ever needs an opportunity. But that is only for us poor devils--ha! ha! ha!"--and the little fellow's head again nearly disappeared into his shoulders.

I was standing near enough to hear every word and observe every look, and I had clearly perceived that as Herr von Granow mentioned the young prince, Constance, who had been standing half-turned away from the speaker, with an inattentive, rather annoyed expression, suddenly turned and fixed her eyes upon him, while a deep blush suffused her cheeks. I had afterwards sufficient reason to remember this fact, but at the moment had not time to ponder over it, as Herr von Zehren now returned with the cigars for which he had gone; and Constance, after offering Herr von Granow the tips of her fingers, giving me her hand with great apparent cordiality, and saluting Herr von Trantow, who stood, as ever, silent and motionless at the door, with a distant, scarcely perceptible bow, at once left the room.

As the door closed behind her, Herr von Trantow passed his hand over his brow, and then turned his large eyes on me, as he slowly approached me. I returned, as defiantly as I was able, his look, in which I fancied I read a dark menace, and stood prepared for whatever might happen, when he suddenly stopped before me, his staring eyes still fixed upon my face.

"This is my young friend of whom I was speaking to you, Hans," said Herr von Zehren, coming up to us. "Do you think you can manage him?"

"You see I have laid a wager with Hans that you are the stronger of the two," our host continued. "He is counted the strongest man in all this part of the country; so I held it my duty to bring so formidable a rival to his notice."

"But not this evening," said Hans, offering me his hand. It was just as when a great mastiff, of whom we are not sure whether he will bite or not, suddenly sits on his haunches before us, and lays his great paw on our knees. I took it without an instant's hesitation.

"Heaven forbid!" said Herr von Zehren to Trantow's remark. "My young friend will make a long stay with me, I trust. He wishes to learn the management of a country place; and where could he sooner attain his object than upon such a model estate as mine?"

He laughed as he said it. Von Granow exclaimed, "Very good!" the silent Hans, said nothing, and I stood confused. Von Zehren, in our previous conversation, had made no allusion to my staying with him as a pupil. Why had he not done so? It was one of the happiest of ideas, I thought, and one that at once cleared away all the difficulties of my position. As for his "model estate," why might I not succeed in changing this ironical phrase to a real description? Yes; here I had a new mission, which went hand in hand with the other: to reconcile father and daughter, to reclaim the ruined estate, to rebuild the castle of their ancestors--in a word, to be the good genius, the guardian angel of the family.

All this passed through my mind as the gentlemen took their seats at the card-table; and with my brain still busy with the thought, I left the room, under the pretext of wanting a little fresh air, and strolled about the now familiar paths among the dark shrubbery of the park. The moon was not yet up, but a glimmer on the eastern horizon showed that she was rising. The stars twinkled through the warm air that was ascending from the earth. There was a rustling and whispering in bush and copse, and a screech-owl at intervals broke the silence with her cry. From one of the windows on the ground-floor of the castle came a faint light, and the breeze brought to my ear the notes of a guitar. I could not withstand the temptation, and crept with hushed breath, startled at the least noise that my footsteps made, nearer and nearer, until I reached the stone balustrade which surrounded the wide, low terrace. I now perceived that the light came from an open casement, through which I could see into a dimly-lighted room. Thick curtains were dropped before the two windows to the right and left. From the place where I stood I could not see the occupant, and I was hesitating, with a beating heart, whether I should venture to advance, when she suddenly appeared at the open casement. Not to be discovered, I crouched close behind a great stone vase.

Her fingers glided over the strings of her guitar, trying first one note and then another, then striking an uncertain chord or two, as if she were trying to catch a melody. Presently the chords were struck more firmly, and she sang:

"All day long the bright sun loves me,

Woos me with his glowing light;

But I better love the gentle

Stars of night.

From the boundless deep above me

Come their calm and tender beams,

Bringing to my wayward fancy

Sweetest dreams.

Sweetest dreams of love unending,

Bitter tears for love undone;

For the dearest, for the fairest,

Only one.

Falsest-hearted, only chosen--

Soon the short-lived dream was o'er--

He is gone, and I am lonely

Evermore."

The last words were sung in a broken voice, and she now leaned her head against the casement-frame, and I heard her sobbing. My agitation was so great that I forgot the precaution which my situation demanded, and a stone which I had dislodged from the crumbling edge of the terrace rolled down the slope. Constance started, and called with an unsteady voice, "Who is there?" I judged it more prudent to discover myself, and approached her, saying that it was I.

"I entreat you to forgive me. The music of your guitar attracted me. I know I ought not to have come: pray forgive me."

I stood near her; the light from the room fell brightly upon her face and her eyes, which were lifted to mine.

"How kind you are," she said in a soft voice; "or are you not dealing truly with me?"

I could not trust myself to answer, but she knew how to interpret my silence aright.

"Yes," she said, "you are my trusty squire, my faithful George. If I were to say to you: watch this terrace tonight until the break of day, you would do it, would you not?"

She looked in my face and smiled. "How sweet it is--how sweet to know that there is one creature upon earth that is true to us!"

"But I do not ask anything of the kind," she said; "only this one thing, that you will not go away except by your own determination, and not without my permission. You promise? That is so kind of you! And now go; good-night!"

She lightly pressed my hand before letting it go, and then re-entered her room. As I turned away I heard the casement close.

I stood under one of the great trees of the park and looked back towards the house. The moon had risen above the trees, and the great mass of buildings stood out in bolder relief against the dark background; a faint light occasionally appeared and vanished in one of the windows of the upper story. The light from Constance's window came towards me with that magic lustre which shines upon us once in our lives, and only once.

The lawn before me lay in deep shadow; but just as the first rays of the moon began to illuminate it, I thought I perceived a figure, which, coming from the other side, was slowly approaching Constance's window. In this there was nothing to excite suspicion, for it might be one of the laborers; but it is the duty of a faithful squire to make sure in any case; so without a moment's hesitation I started across the lawn to meet the figure. Unluckily I stepped upon a dry twig and it snapped. The figure stopped instantly, and began to retreat with swift, stealthy steps. He had but little start of me, but the thick coppice which closed in the lawn on that side, and was the limit of the park, was so near that he reached it a few moments before me. I distinctly heard some one pushing through the branches, but with my utmost exertions I could not reach him. I began to think that my ear had led me in a wrong direction, when suddenly a loud crashing and clattering close at hand proved that I was on the right track. The man was evidently clambering over the rotten paling which fenced in the park on this side. Now I knew he could not escape me. On the other side lay a wide open space, and I had never yet met the man whom I could not overtake in a fair race. But at the instant that I reached the paling, I heard a horse's feet, and looking up saw a rider galloping across the open in the clear moonlight. The horse was evidently one of great power and speed. At each stride he cleared such a stretch of ground, that in less than half a minute horse and rider were lost to sight; for a brief space I still heard the sound of the hoofs, and then that also ceased. The whole adventure passed in so little time, that I might have fancied I had dreamed it all, but for the evidence of my heart beating violently with excitement and the exertion of the chase, and the smarting of my hands, which were torn by the thorns and briers.

Who could the audacious intruder be? Certainly not an ordinary thief; doubtless some one who had been attracted by the light from Constance's window, and not to-night for the first time; it was plain that he had often followed that path in the dark.

That it was a favored lover, I did not for a moment suppose. Such a surmise would have seemed to me an outrage, and upon one, too, whose dreamy eyes, whose melancholy song, and whose tears rather told of an unhappy than of a requited attachment. But they surely told of love. Not that I was presumptuous enough to indulge in any hope, or even wish; how could I dare to lift my eyes to her? I could only live and die for her, and perhaps another time break the neck of the rash mortal who had dared under cover of the night to approach her sanctuary.

This idea somewhat solaced my dejection, but my former happiness had departed never to return. It was with a heavy sense of anxiety and apprehension that I re-entered the room where the gentlemen were still at the card-table.

They had commenced with whist, but were now engaged at faro. Von Zehren held the bank, and seemed to have been winning largely. In a plate before him lay a great heap of silver, with some gold, and this plate lay on another which was filled with crumpled treasury notes. The two guests had already lost their ready money, and from time to time they handed over bills, which went to swell the pile of notes, and received in exchange larger or smaller sums, which evinced a strong proclivity to return to the source from which they sprang. Herr von Trantow appeared to bear his ill-luck with great equanimity. His good-natured handsome face was as passionless as before, only perhaps a shade or two deeper in color, and his great blue eyes rather more staring. But this might very well be the effect of the wine he had been drinking, of which they had already emptied at least half-a-dozen bottles. Herr von Granow's nerves were less fitted to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He would at times start up from his chair, then fall back into it; swore sometimes aloud, sometimes softly to himself, and was plainly in the very worst of humors, to the secret delight, as I thought, of Herr von Zehren, whose brown eyes twinkled with amusement as he politely expressed his regret whenever he was compelled to gather in the little man's money.

I had taken my seat near the players, in order better to watch the chances of the game, of which I had sufficient knowledge from furtive school-boy experiences, when Herr von Zehren pushed over to me a pile of bank-notes which he had just won, saying, "You must join us."

"Why so punctilious about a trifle?" he asked. "There is no need for you to go to your room for money; here is enough."

He knew that my whole stock of cash did not amount to quite a thaler, for I had told him so the previous evening. I blushed crimson, but had not the courage to contradict my kind host's generous falsehood. I drew up my chair with the air of a man who has no wish to spoil sport, and began to play.

Cautiously at first, with small stakes, and with the firm determination to remain perfectly cool; but before long the fever of gaming began to fire my brain. My heart beat ever quicker and quicker, my head and my eyes seemed burning. While the cards were dealing I poured down glass after glass of wine to moisten my parched throat, and it was with a shaking hand that I gathered up my winnings. And I won almost incessantly; if a card was turned against me, the next few turns brought me in a three-fold or a five-fold gain. My agitation almost suffocated me as the money before me increased to a larger sum than I had ever before seen in a heap--two or three hundred thalers, as I estimated it in my mind.

Presently my luck came to a pause. I ceased winning, but did not lose; and then I began to lose slowly at first, then faster and faster. Cold chills ran over me, as one after another of the large notes passed into the banker's hands; but I took care not to imitate the behavior of Herr von Granow, which had struck me so repulsively. Like Herr von Trantow, I lost without the slightest change of countenance, and my calmness was praised by my host, who continued encouraging me. My stock of money had melted away to one-half, when Hans von Trantow declared with a yawn that he was too tired to play any longer. Von Granow said it was not late; but the candles burnt to the sockets, and the great clock on the wall, which pointed to three, told a different story. The two guests lighted fresh cigars, and drove off in their carriages, which had long been waiting at the door, after having arranged a shooting expedition, in which I was to join, for the following day.

My host and I returned to the room, which reeked with the fumes of wine and the smoke of cigars, where old Christian, for whom the difference between night and day seemed to have no existence, was busy clearing up. Von Zehren threw open the window and looked out. I joined him; he laid his hand upon my shoulder and said: "How gloriously the stars are shining, and how delicious the air is! And there"--he pointed back into the room, "how horrible--disgusting--stifling! Why cannot one play faro by starlight, inhaling the perfume of wall-flowers and mignonette? And why, after every merry night, must repentance come in the form of an old man shaking his head as he counts the emptied bottles and sweeps up the ashes? How stupid it is; but we must not give ourselves gray hairs fretting about it--they will come soon enough of themselves. And now do you go to bed. I see you have a hundred things on your mind, but to-morrow is a new day, and if not--so much the better. Good-night, and pleasant rest."

But it was long ere my host's kind wish was accomplished. A real witch-sabbath of beautiful and hideous figures danced in the wildest gyrations before my feverish, half-sleeping, half-waking eyes: Constance, her father, his guests, the dark form in the park, my father, Professor Lederer, and Smith Pinnow--and all appealing to me to save them from some danger or other;--Professor Lederer especially from two thick lexicons, which were really two great oysters that gaped with open shells at the lean professor, while the commerzienrath stood in the background, nearly dying with laughter:--and all whirling and swarming together, and caressing and threatening, and charming and terrifying me, until at last, as the gray dawn began to light the ragged hangings of the chamber, a profound slumber dispersed the phantoms.

CHAPTER IX.

If, according to the unanimous report of travellers by that route, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I am convinced that several square rods of it are my work, and that the greater part of it was laid down in the first fortnight of my stay at Zehrendorf. There could, indeed, scarcely have been a place where everything essential to this easy and pleasant occupation was provided in ampler abundance. Wherever one went, or stood, or turned the eyes, there lay the materials ready to hand; and I was too young, too inexperienced, and I will venture to add, too good-hearted, not to fall to work with all my energy. Of what unspeakable folly I was guilty in undertaking to set right the disordered and disjointed world in which I was now moving, after I had already shown that I could not adjust myself to the correct and orderly world from which I came--this thought did not seize me till long afterwards.

No; I was thoroughly convinced of my sublime mission; and I thanked my propitious star that had so gloriously brought me from the harsh slavery of the school and of my father's house, where I was pining away; from the oppressive bonds of Philistine associations which hampered the free flight of my heroic soul, into this freedom of the desert which seemed to have no bounds, and behind which must lie a Canaan which I was gallantly resolved to conquer--a land flowing with the milk of friendship and with the honey of love.

True, the letter which soon arrived, with a great box containing my personal chattels, from my father to Herr von Zehren, for a while gave me pause. The letter comprised but very few lines, to the effect that he--my father--was fully convinced of the impossibility of ever leading me by his road to any good end, and that he was compelled to give me over, for weal or woe, to my own devices; only hoping that my disobedience and my obstinacy might not be visited upon me too heavily. Herr von Zehren showed me the letter, and as he observed my grave look upon reading it, asked me, "Do you wish to go back?" adding immediately, "Do not do it. That is no place for you. The old gentleman wanted to make a draught-horse out of you, but, tall and strong as you are, that is not your vocation. You are a hunter, for whom no ditch is too wide, and no hedge too high. Come along! I saw a covey of some two dozen over in the croft; we will have them before dinner."

He was right, I thought. I felt that my father had given me up too soon, that he might have allowed me one chance more, and that, as it was, he had forfeited the right to threaten me in addition with the retribution of heaven. And yet it pained me, when an hour or so later Herr von Zehren, who had used up all his wads, took my father's letter from his pocket, and tearing it up, rammed it down both barrels of his gun, with the jesting phrase that necessity knows no law. I could not help feeling as if some misfortune would happen. But the gun did not burst, the birds dropped, and nothing remained of the letter but a smouldering scrap which fell in some dry stubble, and upon which Herr von Zehren set his foot as he thrust the birds into his game-bag.

If I had any doubt left whether I was right in setting myself upon my own feet, as I phrased it, a letter which I received from Arthur was only too well adapted to confirm me in my notions of my finally-won liberty.

"A lucky dog you always were," he wrote. "You run away from school, and they let you go, as if it was a matter of course; while me they catch as if I were a runaway slave, cram me in the dungeon for three days, every hour cast up to me my disgraceful conduct, and in every way make my life a perfect misery to me. Even my father carries on as if I was guilty of heaven knows what; only mamma is sensible, and says I mustn't take it too much to heart, and that papa will have to come round, or the professor will not let me go into the upper class, and there will be more botherations. It is really a shame that I, just because my uncle, the commerzienrath, wills it so, must go through the final examination, while Albert von Zitzewitz, no older than I, is at the cadets' school, and has a pair of colors already. What has my uncle to do with me, anyhow? Papa says that he will not be able to support me during my lieutenancy without the help he expects from my uncle; and that is likely too, for things get tighter with us every day, and papa went quite wild yesterday when he had to pay sixteen thalers for a glove-bill of mine. If mamma did not help me now and then, I don't know what I should do; but she has nothing, and said to me only yesterday that she did not know what would happen at New Year, when all the bills came in.

"Now you might help me out of all this trouble. Papa says that Uncle Malte never looks at money when he happens to have any, and anybody that would hit the lucky moment might get as much from him as they pleased. You, lucky fellow, are now with him all the time, and you might watch your chance, for the sake of an old friend, and slip in a good word for me. Or better, tell him that you have some old debts that you are worried about, and wouldn't he lend you fifty or a hundred thalers, and then do you send it to me, for you can't want it, you know. You'll never come back here, whatever happens, for you cannot imagine the way people here talk about you. Lederer prays an extra five minutes every day for the strayed lamb--that's what he calls you, you old sinner. Justizrath Heckepfennig said that if ever it was written in a mortal's face that he would die in his shoes, it is in yours. In Emilie's coterie it was resolved to tear out of all their albums the leaves on which you had immortalized yourself; and at my uncle's, day before yesterday, there was a regular scene about you. Uncle said at the table that you must take powerfully long strides if you meant to outrun the ---- and here he made a sign, you understand, at which Hermine began to cry terribly, and Fräulein Duff said it was a shame to talk that way before a child. So you see you have a pair of firm friends among the females. You always did have, and have still, the most unaccountable luck in that quarter. Don't break my pretty cousin's heart, you lucky dog!

"P. S.--Papa once told me that Constance gets a small sum of money every year from an old Spanish aunt of hers. She certainly has no use for it. Maybe you could coax something from her--at all events, you might look into the matter a little."

As soon as I had read this letter, which offered me such an opportunity of heaping coals of fire on the head of my still-loved friend, I resolved to help him out of his difficulties with a part of the money I had won on that first evening; but this intention, which I cannot maintain to have been in any sense a good one, was destined never to be carried into execution. For the same evening Herr von Zehren gave his guests their revenge at Hans von Trantow's, and I lost not only all the money I had won with such palpitations, to the very last thaler, but a considerable sum besides, which my obliging host, who was again the winner, had forced upon me. This ill fortune, which I might have foreseen if I had had a grain more sense, struck me as a heavy blow. In spite of my frivolity, I had always been scrupulously conscientious in my small money-matters; had always paid my insignificant debts cheerfully and as promptly as possible; and as we were driving home at daybreak after this unlucky evening, I felt more wretched than I had ever done before. How could I ever be in a position to pay such a sum--especially now that I had resolved never again to touch a card? How could I venture in broad daylight to look into the face of the man to whom I was already under so many obligations?

Herr von Zehren, who was in the best of humors, laughed aloud when, after some urging on his part, I confessed to him my trouble. "My dear George," said he--he had taken to calling me George altogether--"don't take it amiss, but you really are too absurd. Why, man, do you really think that I would for one instant hold you responsible for what you did at my express request? Whoever lends money to minors, does it, as everybody knows, at his own risk, and you certainly remember that I forced the money upon you. And why did I do it? Simply because it gave me pleasure, and because I liked to see your honest, glowing face across the table, and to compare it with Granow's hang-dog look and Trantow's stony stare. And when a young fellow that is my valued guest, to please me, accompanies me out shooting, or to the faro-table, and he has no money and no gun, it is right and fair and a matter of course that I should place my gun-room and purse at his disposal. And now say no more about the trifle, and give me a cigar if we have any left."

I gave him his cigar-case, which he had handed over to my keeping, and murmured that his kindness crushed me to the earth, and that my only consolation was in the trust that an opportunity might yet offer of my repaying the obligation in some way or other. He laughed again at this, and said I was as proud as Lucifer, but he liked me all the better for it; and as for the possibility of my repaying the obligation, as I called it, he was a man in whose life accidents and lucky hits and mishaps and chances of all kinds had played so important a part, that it would be a wonder if, among all the rest, the chance I so longed for did not turn up. So until then we would let the matter rest.

In this airy way he tried to quiet the twinges of my conscience, but he only succeeded in part; and I went to sleep, and awaked a couple of hours later, with the resolution to set decisively about the execution of another resolution, namely, in my capacity of pupil to devote myself to the neglected estate; to acquire, with the utmost possible dispatch, a complete insight into all matters of rural economy, and by the help of this knowledge and of untiring diligence, and the exertion of all my faculties, to change this ruined place in the shortest possible time--say one or two years--into a paradise, and so relieve my kind host from the necessity of winning at the card-table the resources which he could not win from his fields.

I at once devoted my attention to the forlorn-looking stables, to the cattle-sheds, only tenanted by a few wretched specimens of the bovine genus, and to a score of melancholy sheep; so that Herr von Zehren, who had an acute sense of the comic, could never get done laughing at me, until an incident occurred which gave him an opportunity of speaking a serious word with me, which to a certain extent damped the ardor of my economical studies.

That old man whom I met in the park on the first day after my arrival (whose real name was Christian Halterman, though he always went by the name of Old Christian), in his capacity of under-bailiff, and in default of a master who paid any attention to the management, and of a head-bailiff, a post that was not filled--was the wretched chief of the whole wretched establishment. Such orders as were given emanated from him; though it required no extraordinary perspicuity of vision to see that of the whole bandit-looking gang that called themselves laborers, every man did just what pleased him. When the old man, as I had once or twice seen, fell into an impotent rage, and more to relieve his wrath than in the hope of any effectual result, scolded and stormed in his singular, creaking, parrot-like voice, they laughed in his wrinkled face and kept on their own way, or sometimes even openly insulted him. Their ringleader in this insolence was a certain John Swart, commonly called "Long Jock," a great, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, with long arms like an ape's, whose physiognomy would probably have appeared to Justizrath Heckepfennig more unprepossessing even than mine, and of whose matchless strength the others told all sorts of wonderful stories.

I came one morning upon this man, quarrelling again with Old Christian. The subject of dispute was a load of corn which the old man wanted thrown off, and which the other refused to touch. The scene was the straw-littered space before the barn-door, and the spectators a half-dozen fellows who openly sided with Long Jock, and applauded every coarse jeer of his with whinnying laughter.

I had observed the whole affair from a distance, and my blood was already boiling with indignation when I reached the spot. Thrusting a couple of the laughers roughly aside, I confronted Long Jock and asked him if he intended to obey Old Christian's order or not. Jock answered me with an insolent laugh and a coarse word. In a moment we were both rolling in the trampled straw, and in the next I was kneeling upon the breast of my vanquished antagonist, and made the unpleasantness of his position so apparent, that he first cried aloud for help, and then, seeing that the rest stood scared and motionless, and that none could deliver him out of my hand, begged for mercy like a craven.

I had just allowed him to rise, badly bruised and half strangled, when Herr von Zehren, who from his chamber-window had been a witness of the whole scene, came hurrying up. He told Long Jock that he had got no more than he richly deserved, and that he would do well to take a lesson from it for the future; reproved the others, but as I thought by no means so severely as their conduct demanded, then took my arm and led me a little aside, until we were out of hearing of the men, when he said, "It is all very well, George, that these fellows should know how strong you are; but I do not want to turn them against me by any repetition of the proof."

"Yes," he went on, "you would have to repeat the process on a thousand other occasions, and not even your strength would suffice for such Herculean labor."

"But the whole estate is going to ruin in this way," I cried, still under excitement. Herr von Zehren shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Well, it has not very far to go--two or three steps at the farthest. And now you understand, George, the word is, Things as they are! As for the men, they are no bees in point of industry, but they have this much of bees about them, that when they are meddled with they are very apt to sting. So be a little more cautious in future."

He said it with a smile, but I perceived very clearly that he was thoroughly in earnest, and that the paradise I had been planning must be renounced. A paradise in which these brigand-looking malingerers slouched about at their pleasure, presented too glaring a contradiction to escape even my inexperienced eyes.

I cannot say that it cost me much to give up my plans of radical reformation. I had chiefly thrown myself into them because I hoped thus to free myself of my load of obligation to my host. If he did not choose to be paid in this way, it was clearly no fault of mine; and when he reiterated to me every day that he wanted nothing of me but myself, that my company was inexpressibly delightful to him, and, so to speak, a godsend, whose value he could not sufficiently prize--how could I help believing assurances that were so flattering to me, and how could I withstand the allurements of a life that so exactly corresponded with my inclinations?

Fishing and bird-catching--there is associated with these words an ominous warning, whose justice I was destined to have a long time and a desperately serious occasion to verify; but even now I cannot condemn the fascination that clings to those occupations at which the proverb is aimed. Fish cannot be caught without gazing at the water, nor birds without gazing into the sky; and then the gliding waves and the flying clouds get a mysterious hold of us--or at all events did of me, from my very earliest youth. How often as a boy, coming home from school, did I go out of my way to sit for half an hour on the outermost end of the pier, and yield to the lulling influence of the light lapping of the waves at my feet. How often at my garret-window have I stood gazing over my wearisome books at the blue sky, where our neighbor's white pigeons were wheeling in ethereal circles. And I had always longed just for once to be able to listen to my fill to the plashing waves, and gaze my fill at the drifting clouds. Then as I grew older, and could extend the range of my excursions, I enjoyed many a happy hour, many a boating-trip, many a ramble into the forest, many an expedition after water-fowl on the beach with one of Smith Pinnow's rusty fowling-pieces; but these at best were only for a few hours at a time, which were far from sufficient for the exuberant energies of youth, and were bought at the price of too much incarceration at home and at school, too much care, trouble, vexation, and anger.

Now for the first time in my life I enjoyed in full measure all that I had longed for all my life: forest and field and sea-shore, unlimited space, and freedom to wander through all these at my pleasure from the earliest dawn until far in the night, and a companion besides than whom no fitter could be desired by a youth whose ambition it was to excel in these profitless, ruinous arts. The "Wild Zehren's" eye was perhaps not so keen nor his hand so steady as they had been ten or twenty years before, but he was still an excellent shot, and a master in everything belonging to field-sports. No one knew better than he where to find the game; no one had such well-trained dogs, or could handle them so well as he; no one could so skilfully take advantage of all the chances of the chase; and above all, no one was so delightful a companion. If his ardor during the sport carried all away with him, no one could so happily choose the resting-place in the cool edge of the forest or under the thin shade of a little copse by the side of a brook, or so charmingly entertain the tired party with mirth and jest and the most capitally-told stories. But he always seemed most charming to me when we two together were on a long tramp. If in a large company of sportsmen he could not conceal a certain imperious manner, and the better success of another filled him with envy which found vent in acrid sarcasms, there was no trace of all this when he was with me. He taught me all the arts, adroit expedients, and minor dexterities of woodcraft, in which he was so well skilled, and was delighted to find me so apt a scholar; indeed he often laughed heartily when I brought down a bird which he had marked for his own gun.

And then his talk, to which I always listened with new delight! It was the strangest mingling of excellently-told sporting stories and anecdotes, acute observations of nature, and biting satire upon mankind, especially the fairer half of it. In the life of the Wild Zehren, women had played an important and disastrous part. Like so many men of ardent passions and fierce desires, he had probably never sought for true love, and now he charged it as a crime upon the sex, that he had never found it; not even with that unhappy lady whom he had carried off from her home under such terrible circumstances, and who brought him nothing but her parents' curse, beauty which faded but too soon, and a narrow, bigoted spirit, uncultured and perhaps incapable of culture, which already bore in itself the germs of madness.

That he, at that time in his fortieth year, who had seen so much of the world, and had such wide experience, should perceive and acknowledge that the whole was his own fault, that he had to attribute to himself all the misery and misfortune ensuing upon so wicked and insensate a union--all this never occurred to him for a moment. He was the man more sinned against than sinning; he was the victim of his generosity; he had been cheated out of his life's happiness. How could a man have domestic habits who never had any enjoyment in his home? How could he learn the charm of a calm and peaceful life at the side of a woman restlessly tormented night and day by madness and superstition?

"Yes, yes, my dear George, I once had fine plans of my own: I meant to restore the old castle, laid waste in the time of the French invasion, to its ancient splendor; I thought to regain all the possessions that once belonged to the Zehrens; but it was not to be. It could not be, in the years when I was still young and full of hope; and do you think now to make a careful, economical proprietor of me, now that I am grown old and half savage? You buoyant, hopeful young---- See! there he goes! That comes of talking. No; don't shoot now, he is too far. To heel, Diana, old girl! So frivolous in your old days? Be ashamed of yourself! Yes; what I was going to say to you, George, was--beware of the women. They are the cause of every man's misfortunes, just as they have been of mine. Take my brothers, for instance. There is the steuerrath, whom you know: the man was predestined to a fine career, for he is as fond of the shining things of this world as any thievish magpie, cunning as a fox, smooth as an eel, and being a man without passions of any sort, unpretentious, and so could easily hold his own. If he absolutely must marry, then, at a time when he made no pretensions, it should have been some plain sensible girl, who would have helped him make his way. Instead of this, when he was a mere penniless barrister, he lets himself be caught by a Baroness Kippenreiter, the oldest of two surviving daughters of an army-contractor, made a baron, I believe, by the King of Sweden, who wasted in speculation the fortune that had ennobled him, to the last farthing, and finally blew out his brains. And now the steuerrath must take the consequences. A Baroness Kippenreiter will not seal her letters with a coat-of-arms twenty years old, and have the richest man in the province for a brother-in-law, for nothing. If such a thorough plebeian could rise to such distinction and to the dignity of commerzienrath, her husband, sprung from the oldest family in the province, must die prime minister at the very least. The lithe fox with no pretensions would have found his way into the poultry-house; but when with hunger and debt he is changed into a howling and ravenous wolf, he is hunted off with kicks, clubs, and stones. One of these days they will put him off with a pension, to be rid of him once for all.

"Then there is my younger brother Ernest. He is a genius; and like all geniuses, modest, magnanimous as Don Quixote, full of philanthropic crotchets, unpractical to the last degree, and helpless as a child. He should have taken a wife of strong mind, who would have brought order into his genial confusion, and had the ambition to make something out of him. He had the stuff in him, no doubt; it only wanted fashioning. And what does he do? When a first lieutenant, twenty years old--for already, when he was little more than a boy, he had distinguished himself in the war for freedom, and came back covered with orders, so that attention was drawn to him, and he had a fine career before him--what does he do? He falls in love with an orphan, the daughter of a painter, I believe, or something of that sort, who had served as a volunteer in his battalion, and on his death-bed left her in his charge--the generous soul! He marries her; farewell promotion! They give our lieutenant, who is bent on a mésalliance, an honorable discharge, with the rank of captain; make him superintendent of the prison; and there he sits now, for these twenty-five years, in Z., with a half-blind wife and a swarm of children, old and gray before his time, a wretched invalid--and all this for the sake of a stupid young goose, whom the first tailor or cobbler would have suited just as well. Women! women! Dear George, beware of women!"

Had Herr von Zehren, when he talked to me in this way, any special object in view? I do not think he had. I was now so much with him, we often set out so early, so seldom returned at noon, and usually came home so late at night--as a consequence I saw so little of Constance, and that almost invariably in his presence, when I felt so embarrassed and ill at ease on account of the constant hostilities between father and daughter, that I scarcely ventured to raise my eyes to her face--it was not possible that he could know how I admired the beautiful maiden, how I found her more lovely every time I saw her, and how my heart beat when I merely heard the rustle of her dress.

Then there was another reason which contributed to his unsuspiciousness on this point. Fond as he was of having me with him, and sincerely as he admired my aptness for everything connected with sport, and my remarkable bodily strength, which I liked to display before him, still he scarcely looked upon me as a creature of his own kind. Poor as he was, leading a problematical existence as he had done for many years, he could never forget that he sprang from a most ancient race of nobles, who had once held sway over the island before the princes of Prora-Wiek had been heard of, and when Uselin, my native place, afterwards an important Hanseatic town, was a mere collection of fishers' huts. I am convinced that he, like a dethroned king, had in his heart never renounced his pretensions to the power and wealth which had once been his ancestors'; that he considered that Trantow, Granow, and a score of other titled or untitled gentlemen who held estates in the neighborhood that had once belonged to the Zehrens, had come to their so-called possession of these estates by some absurd whimsy of fortune, but had no genuine title which he recognized, and that wherever he hunted, it was still upon his own ground. This mystical cultus of a long-vanished splendor, of which he still fancied himself the upholder, gave his eye the haughty look, his bearing the dignity, his speech the graciousness, which belong to sovereign princes whose political impotence is so absolute, and whose legitimacy is so unassailable, that they can allow themselves to be perfectly amiable.

Herr von Zehren was an enthusiastic defender of the right of primogeniture, and found it highly unreasonable that younger brothers should bear and transmit the nobility that they were not permitted to represent. "I have nothing to say against a councillor of excise, nothing against a prison superintendent," he said, "only they ought to be called Müller or Schultze, and not Zehren." For the nobility of the court, the public offices, or the army, he cherished the profoundest contempt. They were only servants, in or out of livery, he maintained; and he drew a sharp distinction between the genuine old and the "new-baked" nobility, to the former class of which, for example, the Trantows belonged, who could trace back an unbroken pedigree to the middle of the fourteenth century; while Herr von Granow had had a shepherd for great-grandfather, small tenant-farmer for grandfather, and a land-owner, who had purchased a patent of nobility, for his father. "And the man often behaves as if he was of the same caste with myself! The honor of being permitted to lose his contemptible money to me, seems to have mounted into his foolish brain. I think before long he will ask me if I am not willing to be the father-in-law of a shepherd-boy. Thank heaven, in that point at least I can rely upon Constance; she had rather fling herself into the sea than marry the little puffed-up oaf. But it is foolish in her to treat poor Hans so cavalierly. Trantow is a fellow that can show himself anywhere. He might be put under a glass-case for exhibition, and nobody could find a fault in him. You laugh, you young popinjay! You mean that he was not the man that invented gunpowder, and that if he keeps on as he is going, he will soon have drunk away what little brains he has. Bah! The first fact qualifies him for a good husband; and as for the second, I know of a certainty that it is pure desperation that makes him look into the glass so much with those staring eyes of his. Poor devil: it makes one right heartily sorry for him; but that, you see, is the way with every man that has anything to do with women. Beware of the women, George; beware of the women!"

Was it possible that the man who held these views and talked with me in this way, could have the least suspicion of my feelings? It could not be. I was in his eyes a young fellow who had fallen in his way, and whom he had picked up as a resource against ennui, whom he kept with him and talked to, because he did not like to be alone and liked to talk. Could I complain of this? Could I make any higher pretensions? Was I, or did I desire to be, anything else than one of my knight's retinue, even if for the time I happened to be the only one? Could I have any other concern than for the fact that I could not at the same time devote the same reverential service to my knight's lovely daughter?

CHAPTER X.

Since that memorable walk with her through the wood to the ruins on the promontory, I had not again been alone with Constance for a long time. During the three rainy days I saw her at the dinner table, and perhaps about as often at supper when we returned from shooting; but always in the presence of her father, and usually of Herren von Trantow and Granow, our companions of the field and the card-table. On these occasions she scarcely lifted her lovely eyes from her untouched plate, while the tall Hans stared at her after his fashion, the short Granow chattered away as usual, undisturbed by her chilling silence, and Herr von Zehren, who in his daughter's presence always seemed in a singularly irritated mood, loosed at her more than one of his keen sarcastic shafts. These were for me sad and bitter hours, and all the bitterer as I, with all my desire to be of service, felt myself so utterly helpless, and what was worst of all, thought I observed that she no longer excepted me from the aversion which she openly manifested towards her father's friends. In the first days of my stay at the castle it was entirely different. In those days she had always for me a ready friendly glance, a kind word occasionally whispered, a cordial if hasty pressure of the hand. This was all now at an end. She spoke to me no more, she looked at me no more, except at times with a look in which indignation seemed mingled with contempt, and which cut me to the heart.

And had I been short-sighted enough to mistake the meaning of these looks, a word dropped by old Pahlen would have opened my eyes.

I hit upon the idea of asking permission to occupy, instead of my present room in the front of the house, one of the empty apartments looking on the park. Into this I carried from time to time various articles of furniture, most of them still valuable, which were lying about in the dilapidated regions of the upper story, until I had brought together an accumulation which presented a very singular appearance. Herr von Zehren laughed heartily when one day coming to call me to dinner, as I in my new occupation had forgotten the hour, he caught me hard at work arranging my worm-eaten and tarnished treasures.

"Your furniture does not lack variety, at all events," he said; "for an antiquary the rubbish would not be without interest. Really, it is like a chapter out of one of Scott's novels. There, in that high-backed chair, Dr. Dryasdust might have sat; you must set that here, if the old fellow does not tumble over as soon as you take him from the wall. So! a little nearer to the window. Isn't that a splendid piece! It comes down from my great-grandfather's time. He was ambassador at the court of Augustus the Strong, and the only one of our family, so far as I know, who as head of the house ever entered public service. He brought from Dresden the handsome vases of which you see a potsherd there, and a decided taste for Moorish servants, parrots, and ladies. But de mortuis--Really the old chair is still right comfortable. And what a magnificent view of the park, just from this place! I shall often come to see you, for it is really charming."

In fact he did come once or twice in the next few days, while a heavy rain kept us all in the house, to smoke his cigar and have a chat; but when the weather cleared up, he thought no more about it, and I was careful enough, on my part, not to recall my museum to his recollection. For I had only arranged it in order to be nearer to Constance, and to have a view of the park, about whose neglected walks she loved to wander. I could also see a strip of the terrace that lay under her windows, but unfortunately only the outer margin, as the part of the castle in which she lived fell back from the main-building about the breadth of the terrace. But still it was something: the faint light which in the evening fell upon the balustrade came from her room, and once or twice I caught an indistinct glimpse of her form, as she paced up and down the terrace, or leaning upon the balustrade gazed into the park, over which night had already spread her dusky veil. And when I did not see her, I heard her music and her songs, among which there was none I loved better than that which I had heard the first evening, and now knew by heart:

"All day long the bright sun loves me,

Woos me with his glowing light;

But I better love the gentle

Stars of night."

In truth I also loved them well, the stars of night, for often and often when the pale light had vanished from the balustrade, and the song I so loved had long ceased, I still sat at my open window gazing at the stars, which shone in all the splendor of a September night, and listening to the solemn music of the wind in the ancient trees of the park.

In the meantime the happiness which only young hearts, or such as have long retained their youth, can appreciate, was, as I have said, but of brief duration. The singular change in Constance's manner towards me, plucked me from my heaven; and I tortured my brain in the effort to discover what cause had brought me into her disfavor. But think as I might, I could find no key to the mystery; and at last I resolved--though a foreboding of evil warned me against it--to have recourse to Pahlen, who, if any one, could solve me the enigma that weighed so heavily upon my foolish head.

This ugly old woman had lately been rather more obliging. I had soon discovered that she was extremely fond of money, and I did not hesitate now and then, under one pretence or another, to slip into her wrinkled brown hands two or three of the thalers that I won at the card-table--for naturally enough I had abandoned my resolution to play no more. The glitter of the silver softened her stony old heart; she no longer growled and grumbled when I ventured to speak to her, and once or twice actually brought coffee to my room with her own hands. When I thought that the taming process was sufficiently advanced, I ventured to ask her about the subject nearest my heart--her young mistress. She threw me one of her suspicious looks, and finally, as I repeated my question, puckered her ugly old face into a repulsive grin, and said:

"Yes; catch mice with cheese; but you need not try that game; old Pahlen is too sharp for you."

As I could not find a satisfactory answer to this question, I asked the old woman on the following day.

"You need not make as if you did not know," she said, with a kind of respect, inspired probably by my innocent manner, which she naturally took for a masterpiece of deception; "I am not going to betray my young lady for a couple of thalers. I have been sorry enough, I can tell you, that I helped to clear up this room for you, and she has complained bitterly enough about it."

"But, good heaven," I said, "I will cheerfully go back to my old room if the young lady wishes it. I never thought it would be so extremely disagreeable to her if I caught a sight of her now and then. I could not have supposed it."

I did not answer. I was half desperate to think that--heaven knows how involuntarily--I had offended her whom I so deeply loved; and yet I was glad to learn at last what my offence was. Like the young fool I was, I strode up and down the great room, and cried:

"I will quit this room this very day; I will not sleep another night in it; tell your young lady that; and tell her that I would leave the castle this very hour, only that I do not know what to say to Herr von Zehren."

And I threw myself into the old worm-eaten, high-backed chair, at imminent risk of its destruction, with the deepest distress evident in my features.

The tone of my voice, the expression of my countenance, probably joined with my words to convince the old woman of my sincerity.

"Yes, yes," she said, "what could you say to him? He certainly would not let you go, although for my part I do not know what he really wants with you. Do you stay here, and I will speak with my young lady."

"Do, dear, good Mrs. Pahlen!" I cried, springing up and seizing one of the old woman's bony hands. "Speak with her, tell her--" I turned suddenly red, stammered out some awkward phrase or other, and once more adjured her to speak with her young lady.

The old woman, who had been watching me all the while with a curious, piercing look, remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said curtly she would see what could be done, and left me.

I remained, much disturbed. The consciousness that the old woman had penetrated my secret, was very painful to me; but I consoled myself with the reflection that if she was really, as she seemed to be, Constance's confidante, I certainly need feel no shame to take her into my confidence also; and finally, what was done was done, and if Constance now learned for the first time that I loved her, that I was ready to do or to suffer anything for her sake, she would certainly forgive me what I had done. What had I done, then? How could she, who at first received me so kindly, who in jest which seemed earnest chose me for her service, who on that evening exacted of me the promise not to go until she gave me permission--how could she feel offence at what at the very worst she could but regard as a token of my love and admiration?

Thus, under my inexperienced hands, the threads of my destiny were wound into an evermore inextricable clue; and with violent beatings of the heart I entered an hour later the dining-room, where to-day, besides our usual guests, three or four others were assembled. They were waiting for the young lady's appearance to take their places at the table. After dinner they were to go out for a little shooting.

As was usual with her, Constance subjected her father's impatience to a severe trial; but at last she appeared.

I do not know how it happened that this time I, who always, when guests were present, took my seat at the foot of the table, happened to be placed next to her. It was certainly not intentional on my part, for in the frame of mind in which I was, I would have done anything rather than obtrude my presence upon my fair enemy. So I scarcely dared to raise my eyes, and in my excessive confusion loaded my plate with viands of which every morsel seemed about to choke me. How joyfully then was I surprised, when Constance, after sitting for a few minutes in her accustomed silence, suddenly asked me, in a low friendly tone, if I had not time to fill her a glass of wine.

"Why did you not ask me, meine Gnädigste?"^[3] cried Herr von Granow, who sat on the other side of her.

"I prefer to be served in my own way," answered Constance, almost turning her back upon the little man, and continuing to speak with me. I answered as well as I could, and as she continued speaking in a low tone, I imitated her example, and leaned towards her in order better to catch her words; and thus, as I looked into her dark eyes, I forgot what she had asked me, or answered at a venture, at which she laughed; and because she laughed I laughed also, and all this together made up the most charming little confidential tête-à-tête, although we were speaking of the most indifferent things in the world. I took no notice of anything else that was passing; only once I observed that Hans von Trantow, who sat opposite us, was staring at us with wide-open eyes; but I thought nothing of it, for the good fellow's eyes usually wore that expression.

Much sooner than I could have wished, Herr von Zehren rose from the table. Before the house were waiting a lot of barefooted, bareheaded boys, with creels on their backs; the dogs were barking and leaping about the men, who were arranging their accoutrements and loading their guns. Constance came out with us, which she had never before done, and called to me as we were about starting, "I cannot wish them good luck, and would not wish you bad." Then, after including the rest in a general salutation, she gave me a friendly wave of the hand and re-entered the house.

"Which way are we going to-day?" I asked Herr von Zehren, as I came to his side.

"It was long enough discussed at dinner. Your attention seems to have been wandering."

It was the first time that he had ever spoken to me in an unfriendly tone, and my countenance probably expressed the surprise that I felt, for he quickly added:

We had reached a stubble-field, and the shooting began. Herr von Zehren posted me on the left wing, while he kept upon the right; thus I was separated from him and did not once come near him during the rest of the day. This also had never before occurred. He had hitherto always kept me by him, and was delighted when, as often happened, more game fell to our two guns than to those of all the rest. My shooting was this day poor enough. The happiness which Constance's unexpected friendliness had given me, was embittered by her father's unexpected unkindness. The birds which my dog Caro put up--Herr von Zehren had given me one of his best dogs--flew off untouched while I was pondering over the unhappy relations between father and daughter, and how I could not show my affection for the one without offending the other, and what was to become of my favorite scheme of reconciling the two.

I was quite lost in these melancholy reflections when Herr von Granow joined me. It was already growing dusk, and the day's sport was virtually over, only now and then we heard a distant shot among the bushes of the heath. No order was now kept, and I soon found myself alone with the little man as we ascended a slight hill.

"What has happened between you and the old man?" he asked, hanging his gun across his shoulders and coming to my side.

"Well, it struck me in that light, and not me only; the others noticed it too. I can assure you that he looked once or twice across the table at you as if he would eat you."

"That I can well believe," continued the little man. "And this afternoon he scarcely spoke a word with you."

"Yes, yes," pursued my companion; "but do not hurry so, nobody can keep up with you. You are in an ugly position."

Herr von Granow was so convinced of his superior acuteness, that it never occurred to him that my ignorance might be feigned in order to draw him out.

"Yes, yes," he said. "You are still young, and at your years one is often deaf and blind to things which we who know the world seize at the first glance. The old man and the young lady live together like cat and dog; but really, when one thinks of it, neither has such great cause to love the other. She leads a wretched life through his fault. He would gladly be rid of her, but who is going to take her off his hands? I have considered the matter from all sides; but it can't be managed--it really can't."

I was in doubt, when my companion began to talk in this way, whether I should strike him to the earth for his impudence, or burst into loud laughter. I took a side-look at him; the little man with his short trotting legs, his foolish face scarlet from his exertions, and his half-open mouth--I could not resist, but fairly shook with laughter.

"I do not see what you are laughing about," he said, rather surprised than offended. "The little comedy which she played for you and the rest of us this afternoon, can hardly have turned your brain, if I may so express myself. And it is just upon that subject that I would like to give you some information.

My merriment was at an end, and I was serious enough now. A comedy which she had played for me? "What can you mean?" I asked again more urgently than before.

Herr von Granow, who had been walking at a little distance from me, trotted up close to my side, and said in a confidential tone:

"After all, I cannot think hard of you about it. You are still so young; and I often do not know myself on what footing I am standing with the girl. But this much is clear: out of pure obstinacy against her father, and perhaps a little calculation to raise her own value, and perhaps, too, because she thinks it will make no difference anyhow, but mainly out of mere stubbornness and self-will, has she put on these airs of a princess, and behaves as if for her I and the rest had no existence. If she suddenly began to coquet with you in my--I should say in our presence, that really signifies nothing; it is but a little pleasantry that she allows herself with you, and which has no further consequences; but it must provoke the old man, and it did provoke him. You did not observe it, you say, but I can assure you he bit his lip and stroked his beard as he always does when anything vexes him."

The little man had no notion what a tumult he was stirring up in my breast; he took my silence for acquiescence and for acknowledgement of his superior wisdom, and so proceeded, in delight at being able to speak of such interesting topics and to have secured such an attentive listener.

"I fancy that the whole conduct of the young lady puts a spoke in his wheel. Do you know how much I have lost to him during the six months that I have been here? Over eight hundred thalers. And Trantow nearly twice as much; and all the rest are cursing their ill-fortune. He has had a wonderful run of luck, it is true; it is not always so; but then when he loses one must take it out in his wine and his cognac, and you can imagine the prices he rates them at. Well, one wants something at least for one's money; for the sake of such a pretty girl one lets a couple of hundreds go, and does not watch the old man's hands too closely. But it used to be all quite different; she used to join in the play, and smoke cigars with the gentlemen, and go out shooting and riding--the wilder the horses the better she liked it. It used to be a heathenish life, Sylow says, and he ought to know. But since last summer, and that affair with the prince----"

"What affair was that?" I asked. I was consumed with the desire to hear everything that Herr von Granow had to tell. I no longer felt the contumely which this man was heaping upon my kind host and upon the maiden I adored; or if I did, I thought that the reckoning should come afterwards, but first I must hear all.

"You don't know that?" he inquired, eagerly. "But, to be sure, who could have told you? Trantow is mute as a fish, and the others don't know what to think of you. I hold you for an honest fellow, and do not believe that you are a spy, or leagued with the old man; his looks at dinner were too queer for that. You won't tell him what I have been saying to you, will you?"

"Well then, this is the story. Last summer the old man was at D----, and she was with him. At a watering-place people are not so particular; any one who chose might go about with him. The young Prince Prora was there too; he had persuaded his physicians that he was unwell and needed sea-bathing, so he was sent there with his tutor. The old prince was at the Residence, just as he is now, and the young one made good use of his liberty. I had just bought my place here, was no sooner on it than I caught a devilish rheumatism on these infernal moors; and so I went there for a week or so and saw something of it, but the most was told me by others. Naturally enough there was high play; but the highest was in private circles, for at the Spielsaal they only allow moderate stakes. The prince kept constantly in the old man's company, some said for the sake of the play, others, to pay his court to the young lady; and probably both were right. I have often enough seen them sitting and walking together in the park of an evening; and they were gay enough, I can testify. Now they say that the old man had bad luck, and lost twenty thousand thalers to the prince, which he had to pay in two days. Where was he to get the money? So, as they say, he offered the prince his daughter instead. Others say he asked fifty thousand, and others again a hundred thousand for the bargain. Well, for any one who had the money, it may be that was not too much; but unluckily the young prince did not have the money. It will be two years before he is of age, and then, if the old prince is still alive, he will only get the property of his deceased mother, of which not much is ready cash, I take it. In a word, the affair hung fire; and one fine day here comes the old prince, who had got some wind of the matter, tearing over from the Residence, read the youngster a terrible lecture, and offered Zehren a handsome sum to go out of the country with Constance until the young prince was married. Now the thing might have been all arranged, for all that Zehren wanted was to make a good hit of it, if he and the prince could have kept from personally appearing in the business. But Zehren, who, when he takes the notion, can be as proud as Lucifer, insisted upon arranging the affair with the prince in person, and so the scandal broke out. There was a terrible scene, they say, and the prince was carried for dead to his hotel. What happened, nobody exactly knows. But this much is certain: the late princess, who was born Countess Sylow--I have the facts from young Sylow, who is related to the count--fell in love with Zehren when he was a young man staying with the prince at the Residence and attending the court balls, and only married the prince because she was compelled to it. The prince either knew it then, or found it out soon afterwards, and they led a miserable life together. It is probable that Zehren and he, in their dispute, raked up some of these old stories; one word led to another, as always happens. Zehren is like a madman when he gets into a rage, and the prince has none of the coolest of tempers--in a word, the thing came to an explosion. Zehren left the place; and the prince a day or two later, with a pair of blue marks on his throat left there by Zehren's fingers, they said."

"What did he care? All pretty girls are the same to him; he knows how to enjoy life. I wonder if he holds fast this time. He has already been over three weeks at Rossow. I should feel rather queer about staying in this part of the country after what has happened. I would not for my life meet Herr von Zehren if I knew that my father had given him deadly offence."

"Oh, he is a handsome young fellow; very slender, elegant, and amiable. I fancy Fräulein von Zehren owes her father small thanks for having broken off the affair, for I will say for her honor that she does not know what the scheme really was. True, others say that she knew it very well, and was perfectly satisfied with the arrangement."

I listened with intensest interest to this narrative of my companion's, as if my life depended upon its result. This then was the mystery: it was the young Prince of Prora who was the "chosen one" of her song. Now I remembered how she blushed when Granow that evening alluded to the prince, and at the same time I recalled the dark figure in the park. Had I only got him in my hands!

"You are tired," said the little man, "and besides I see we have strayed considerably out of our way. We must keep to the right; but there are two or three ugly places in the moor, and in the dusk I am afraid we shall not be able to get through. Let us rather go round a little. Heaven knows how little you big fellows can stand; there was a Herr von Westen-Taschen in my regiment, a fellow, if anything, bigger than you, only perhaps not quite so broad across the shoulders. 'Westen,' I said to him one day, 'I'll bet you that I can run'--but, good heavens, what is that?"

It was a man who suddenly arose out of a little hollow, in which we had not noticed him--probably could not have seen him in the dusk--about twenty paces from us, and disappeared again instantly.

"For heaven's sake no," whispered my companion, holding me fast by my game-pouch.

"God forbid," said the little man. "But we might, if we did not keep out of his way. I beg you come along."

Herr von Granow was so urgent, and evinced so much anxiety, that I did as he entreated me; but after we had gone a short distance I could not refrain from stopping and looking round as I heard a low whistle behind me. The man was going across the heath with long strides, another rose from the same spot and followed him, then another and another, until I had counted eight. They had all great packs upon their backs, but went, notwithstanding, at a rapid pace, keeping accurate distance. In a few minutes their dark figures had vanished, as if the black moor over which they were striding had swallowed them up.

Herr von Granow drew a deep breath. "Do you see?" said he, "I was right. Infernal rascals that run like rats over places where any honest Christian would sink. I'll wager they were some of Zehren's men."

"Oh, well," he went on, "we all dabble in it a little about here, or at least make our profit of it. In the short time that I have been here, I have found out that there is no help for it, and that the rascals would burn the house over your head if you did not look through your fingers and stand by them in every way. Only the day before yesterday, as I was standing by my garden-wall, a fellow comes running across the lawn and says that I must hide him, the patrol is after him. I give you my word I made him creep into the oven, as there was no other hiding-place handy, and with my own hands heaped a pile of straw before the door; and when the patrol came up, five minutes later, said I had seen the fellow making for the wood. Upon my honor I was ashamed of myself; but what is one to do? And so I would not say anything against the old man, if he only would not carry things to such extremes. But he drives it too far, I tell you, he drives it too far; it must take a bad turn; there is but one opinion about that."

"But," said I, taking the greatest pains to speak as calmly as possible, "I have been already about three weeks here, and I give you my honor" (this phrase I had lately caught) "that as yet I have not seen the slightest thing to confirm the evil repute in which, as I hear to my great uneasiness, Herr von Zehren stands, even with his friends. Yes, I will admit that when I first came here, some such fancies came into my head, I cannot tell how, but I have long driven so disgraceful a suspicion from my mind."

"Suspicion!" said the old man, speaking with even greater vivacity, and taking shorter and quicker steps; "who talks of suspicion? The thing is as clear as amen in the church. If you have observed nothing--which really surprises me, but your word of course is sufficient--the reason is because the weather has been so bad. Still, the business is not altogether at a stand-still, as you have yourself just now seen. I declare, one feels very queer to think one is sitting in the very middle of it all. And last Thursday I had to take a lot of wine and cognac from him, and Trantow as much more a couple of days before, and Sylow still more, but he, I believe, divides with somebody else."

"And why should not Herr von Zehren dispose of his surplus stock to his friends?" I asked, incredulously.

"His surplus stock?" cried Herr von Granow. "Yes, to be sure there was a great deal left over from the last vintage; he has enough in his cellars, they say, to supply half the island. And that is a heavy load for him to carry; for he has to pay the smuggler captains in cash, and the market at Uselin has grown very poor, as I hear. Lately they have got very shy there. Since so many have taken to dabbling in the business, no one thoroughly trusts another. Formerly, I am told, the whole trade was in the hands of a pair of respectable firms. But all that you must know much better than I; your father is an officer of the customs."

"True," I answered, "and I am so much the more surprised that, among so many, I have never heard Herr von Zehren's name mentioned--supposing your suspicion to be founded on fact."

"But don't keep always talking about 'suspicion,'" cried the little man, peevishly. "It is there just as it is everywhere else, they hang the little thieves and let the big ones go. The gentlemen of the custom-house know what they are about. A couple of thalers or louis-d'ors at the right time will make many things smooth; and when one has, like the old man, a brother councillor of excise, Mr. Inspector will probably not be so impolite as to interfere with the councillor's brother."

"That is an insult, Herr von Granow," I cried in a fury; "I have already told you that my own father is an officer in the customs."

"Well, but then I thought that you and your father were not on the best terms," said Herr von Granow. "And if your father has driven you off, why----"

"That concerns nobody!" I exclaimed, "unless it be Herr von Zehren, who has received me into his house, and been kind and friendly to me always. If my father has sent me away, or driven me off, as you call it, I gave him cause enough; but that has nothing to do with his integrity, and I will strike any man dead, like a dog, who asperses my father's honor."

As Herr von Granow did not and could not know in how many ways all that he had said had lacerated my tenderest feelings, my sudden wrath, which had been only waiting an opportunity to burst forth, must have appeared to him terrible and incomprehensible. A young man, who had probably always appeared to him suspicious, and now doubly so, of whose bodily strength he had seen more than one surprising proof, speaking in such a voice of striking dead--and then the desolate heath, the growing darkness--the little man muttered some unintelligible words, while he cautiously widened the distance between us, and then, probably in fear of my loaded gun, came up again and very meekly declared that he had not the slightest intention to offend me; that it was not to be supposed that a respectable officer like my father had knowingly placed his son with a notorious smuggler. And that, on the other side, the suspicion that I was a spy in the pay of the authorities, could not possibly be reconciled with my honest face and my straightforward conduct, and was indeed perfectly ridiculous; that he would with all his heart admit that everything that was said about Herr von Zehren was pure fabrication--people talked so much just for the sake of talking. Besides, he, who had only recently come into the neighborhood, could least of all judge what there might be in it; and he would be extremely delighted, and account it an especial honor, to receive me as a guest at his house, there where we could now see the lights shining, and where the others must have arrived long ago, and to drown all unpleasantness in a bottle of wine.

I scarcely comprehended what he said, my agitation was so extreme. I replied curtly that it was all right, that I did not believe he intended to offend me. Then asking him to excuse me to Herr von Zehren, I strode across the heath towards the road which I knew so well, which led from Melchow, Granow's estate, to Zehrendorf.

CHAPTER XI.

The following morning was so fine that it might well have cheered even a gloomier spirit than mine. And in my fatigue I had fallen so promptly asleep when I laid my tired head upon the pillow, and had slept so soundly, that it required some consideration upon awaking to recall the circumstances that had caused me so much agitation the previous evening. Gradually they recurred to my memory, and once more my cheeks burned, and I felt, as I always did when under excitement, that I must rush out into the free air and under the blue sky; so I hurried down the steep back-stair into the park.

Here I wandered about under the tall trees, which waved their light sprays in the morning breeze, along the wild paths, and among the bushes brightened with the sunlight, at intervals listening to some bird piping incessantly his monotonous autumn song, or marking some caterpillar swinging by a fathom-long filament from a twig overhead, while I bent my thoughts to the task, so difficult for a young man, of obtaining a clear view of my situation.

I had told Granow the evening before but the simple truth: so long as I had been upon the estate nothing had occurred to confirm his suspicion. During the whole of this time I had scarcely left the side of Herr von Zehren. No strangers had come about the place; there had been no suspicious meetings; no goods had been received, and none sent out, except a barrel or two of wine to the neighbors. To be sure, the people on the estate looked as if they were accustomed to anything rather than honest industry, and especially my tall friend Jock could not possibly have a clear conscience; but the cotters on the various estates around were all a rough, uncouth, piratical-looking crew, as indeed many of them had been fishermen and sailors, and were so still when occasion offered. That the gang which we had seen crossing the heath did not belong to our people, I was convinced when I passed the laborer's cottages, and saw Jock with two or three others lounging about the doors as usual.

And then, granting that Herr von Zehren was really all that evil tongues called him, still he did nothing more or worse than his neighbors. They all dabbled a little in it, Granow had said; and if all these aristocratic gentlemen made no scruple of filling their cellars with wine that they knew to be smuggled, the receiver was as bad as the thief, and Herr von Zehren was here, as always and everywhere, only the bolder man who had the courage to do what the others would willingly have done if they dared.

And, after all, I was bound to him by the firmest ties of gratitude. Should I go away for a mere suspicion, the silly gossip of a prating tongue, and abandon him who had always been so kind, so friendly to me?--who had given me his best--no, his second-best gun and dog; whose purse and cigar-case--and ah, what exquisite cigars he had!--were at all times at my service? Never! And even if he really were a smuggler, a professional smuggler--but how could I find out once for all whether he was or not?

Most simply, by going directly to himself. I had justification for doing so. My honesty was questioned by his friends; they did not know what to think of me. I could not allow this to go on unnoticed. Herr von Zehren could not expect that I should, on his account, incur the dishonoring suspicion of being either a spy or an accomplice. But suppose he were to say: "Very well; then go. I do not detain you."

I seated myself upon a stone-bench under a spreading maple at the edge of the park, and resting my elbow upon the half-fallen table, and leaning my head upon my hand, gazed at the castle which threw its shadow far over the lawn, now golden in the morning sun.

Never had the ruinous old pile seemed so dear to me. How well I knew each tall chimney, each tuft of grass growing upon the gray moss-covered roof of tiles, the three balconies, two small ones to the right and left, and in the middle the great one upon which the three glass doors opened from the upper hall, resting upon its massive pillars with the fantastic voluted capitals. How well I knew each window, with the weather-beaten wooden shutters that were never closed, and the most of which, indeed, were past closing. Some were hanging by a single hinge, and one belonging to the third window to the right always slammed at night when the wind was from the west. I had a dozen times resolved to secure it, but always forgot it again. The two windows at the corner to the left were those of my room, my poetic room with the precious old furniture, which to my eye had such an imposing effect that I felt like a young prince in the midst of all this magnificence. What happy hours had I already passed in this room! Early mornings, when, joyous in the anticipation of the day's sport, I sang as I dressed myself and arranged my ammunition; late evenings when I returned home with my friend, heated with wine and play and jovial discourse, and sitting at the window, inhaled the fragrant aroma of my cigar, or drank in large draughts the pure, cool night-air, while thoughts crowded one another in my mind, foolish and sentimental thoughts, all turning to the fair maiden who doubtless had been slumbering for hours in her chamber by the terrace.

What was it that the shameless slanderer had said of her? I scarcely dared to recall his words to my mind. I could not comprehend how I could have borne to listen to them, or how it was that I let him escape unchastized after so desecrating the object of my idolatry. The miserable creature! The conceited, upstart, envious little oaf! Little blame to her that she would have nothing to do with such a lover as he, or the rest of her country squires. And for this they now breathed their venomous slanders against her: said that she would have sold herself--she, the lovely, the noble, the pure, for whom a king's throne would have been too low! Was there any head more worthy of a diadem--any form more fit to be folded in the mantle of purple? Oh, I desired nothing for myself; it was enough for me if I might touch the hem of her vesture. But the others should honor her as well as I. No one, not if he were prince or king, should dare to approach her without her permission. If she would only, as she had jestingly said that night, let me keep watch at her threshold!

Thus humbly I thought of her in my full, young heart, that was breaking with love and longing. And I did it in the most assured conviction, in the firmest faith, of the nobility and purity of her I loved so dearly. I can truly say there was no drop of blood in my veins that did not belong to her. I would have given my life for her had she asked it of me, had she taken me for the true heart that I was, had she dealt honestly with me. Was it a presentiment of the brief space of time that I was still to cherish the simple faith that there is a spark of virtue in every human breast that nothing can entirely extinguish, that made me now bow my head upon my hands and shed hot tears?

I suddenly lifted my head, for I fancied I heard a rustling close behind me, and I was not mistaken. It was Constance, who came through the bushes hedging the path to the beech-wood. I sprang suddenly in confusion to my feet, and stood before her, ere I had time to wipe the traces of my tears from my cheeks.

"My good George," she said, offering me her hand with a gentle smile, "you are my true friend, are you not?"

"Let me sit here by you a little while," she said; "I feel somewhat tired; I have been up so long. Do you know where I have been? In the forest by the tarn, and afterwards up at the ruin. Do you know that we have never again gone there together? I was thinking of it this morning, and was sorry; it is so beautiful up on the cliffs, and walking with you is so pleasant. Why do you never come there to bring me home? Don't you remember what you promised me: to be my faithful George, and kill all the dragons in my path? How many have you killed?"

She glanced at me from under her long lashes with her unfathomable brown eyes, and abashed I looked upon the ground. "Why do you not answer?" she asked. "Has my father forbidden you?"

"No," I replied, "but I do not know whether you are not mocking me. You have shown me lately so little kindness, that at last I have hardly dared to speak to you or even to look at you."

"No," I answered, and added softly, "unless it be because I am so much attached to your father; and how can I be otherwise?"

Her looks darkened, "And if that were the reason," she said, "could you blame me? My father does not love me; he has given me too many proofs of that. How can any one love me who is 'so much attached to my father?'"--she spoke the last words with bitterness--"who perhaps reports to him every word that I say, and to the watchers and tale-bearers by whom I am surrounded adds another, so much the more dangerous as I should have expected from him anything but treachery."

"Yes, treachery," she answered, speaking in a lower tone, but more rapidly and passionately. "I know that Sophie, my maid, is bribed; I know that old Christian, who skulks about, day and night, watches me like a prisoner. I am not at all sure that old Pahlen, who shows some devotion to me, would not sell me for a handful of thalers. Yes, I am betrayed, betrayed on all sides. Whether by you--no; I will trust your honest blue eyes, although I had really good reason for suspecting you."

I was half distracted to hear Constance speaking thus; and I implored her, I adjured her, to tell me what horrible delusion had deceived her, for that it was a delusion I was ready to prove. She should, she must tell me all.

"Well then," she said, "is it delusion or truth that on the very first evening of your stay here, by order of my father, who brought you here for that purpose, you kept watch under my window, when afterwards you pretended to me that it was my music that had attracted you?"

I started at these last words, which were accompanied with a dark suspicious look. That dark figure then had really been stealing to a rendezvous; and he had been there since, else how could she know what had happened?

"You need make no further confession," said Constance, bitterly. "You have not yet sufficiently learned your lesson of dissimulation. And I, good-natured fool, believed that you were my faithful George."

"For heaven's sake," I cried, "do not condemn me without a hearing. I went into the park without any special intention; without an idea that I should meet him--any one. If I had known that the man whom I saw from this point come out of the shrubbery yonder, came with your permission, I should never have intercepted him, but would have let him go unmolested where, as it seems, he was expected."

"Yourself," I promptly answered. "The fact that you are informed of what none but he and I could know."

Constance glanced at me, and a smile passed across her features. "Indeed!" she said, "how skilful we are at combinations! Who would have believed it of us? But you are mistaken. I know of it from him, that is true; but I did not expect him, nor had he my permission. More than this: I solemnly assure you that I had no idea that he was so near. 'And now?' your look seems to inquire. Now he is as far as he ever was. He wrote to me by a medium--no matter how--that he made an attempt to see me on that evening, in order to communicate something which he did not wish me to learn from another. I answered him by the same way that I had already learned it through another, and that for the sake both of his peace and my own, I entreated him to make no attempt to approach me. This is all, nor will there ever be more. It is not my custom to ask of those that love me, to sacrifice for me their futures and their lives. And that would be the case here. That person can enter into no engagements without his father's consent, and my father has taken care that this consent shall never be given. He will only be free after his father's death. Before this happens years may pass. He shall not sacrifice those years to me."

"And he consents to this," I cried, indignantly; "he does not rather renounce his title and inheritance than give you up? He does not rather allow himself to be torn to pieces than renounce you? And this man possesses millions, and calls himself a prince."

"You know, then, who it was?" asked Constance, apparently alarmed, adding with bitterness: "To be sure, why should you not? Of course you are my father's confidant, and told him the whole adventure at once, as in duty bound."

"I never breathed a word of it to any living creature," I answered, "nor has Herr von Zehren ever in my presence uttered the name of the prince."

"What need of the name?" she retorted. "Things can be plainly told without mentioning names. But, whatever he may have told you, he never told you that Carl is my betrothed; that our union was prevented by his fault alone; that he has ruthlessly sacrificed my happiness to a haughty caprice, to revenge himself upon the father of my betrothed at the cost of us both; and that far from offering me an at least tolerable existence in requital for the brilliant future out of which he has cheated me, makes my life a daily and hourly torment. He killed my mother, and he will kill me."

"This life is no life; it is death--worse than death," she murmured, letting her head sink upon the table.

"No," she replied, raising her head; "no! I have already told you that as it is, so it must remain. I have freely and entirely renounced him. I am too proud to give my heart--which is all I have to give--to one who does not give me all in return. And, George, can one give more than his heart?"

I would have answered, "Then, Constance, you have my all;" but my voice failed me. I could but gaze at her with a look in which lay my whole heart--the full heart of a youth, overflowing with foolish, faithful love.

She pressed my hand, and said, "My good George, I will--yes, I must believe that you are true to me. And now that we have had our talk out, and are good friends again, let us go to the house, where old Pahlen will be expecting me to breakfast."

She had fallen at once into the tone in which we had commenced the conversation, and continued:

"Do you go shooting to-day? Are you fond of shooting? I used to go sometimes; but that is long ago--so long ago! I used to be a good rider, and now I think I could not keep my seat in the saddle. I have unlearned everything; but chiefly how to be gay. Are you always cheerful, George? I often hear you singing in the morning such charming merry songs; you have a fine voice. You should teach me your songs; I know none but sad ones."

How enchanting this prattle was to me! But as her recent unkindness had made me silent and reserved, so now the unlooked-for kindness she showed me produced the same effect. I went by her side, with a half confused, half happy smile upon my face, across the wide lawn to the house, where, on reaching her terrace, we separated, after exchanging another pressure of the hand.

In three bounds I had ascended the steep stair, flung open violently the door of my room, but stopped upon the threshold with some surprise, as I saw Herr von Zehren sitting in the great high-backed chair at the window.

This did not tend to restore my composure; from his chair one could see across the lawn directly to the seat under the maple. If Herr von Zehren had been sitting here an hour, he had certainly seen with his keen eyes much more than I could have wished. I returned his salutation with great embarrassment, which certainly did not diminish when he said, with a gesture towards the seat: "Mary Stuart, George, eh? Sir Paulet the cruel jailor with the great bunch of keys? Enthusiastic Mortimer--'Life is but a moment, and death but another'--eh? Faithless Lord Leicester, who has the convenient habit of taking ship for France as soon as heads are in danger!"

He filliped the ash from his cigar, and then with one of those instantaneous changes of humor to which I had grown accustomed, began to laugh aloud, and said:

"No, my dear George, you must not turn such a look of indignation upon me. I am really your friend; and, as I said to you yesterday, it is no fault of yours, and I frankly ask you to forgive me if I yesterday for a moment made you suffer for what you are entirely innocent of. She has to play her comedies; she has done it from a child. I have indeed often feared that she gets it from her unhappy mother. Many a one has suffered from it, and I not the least; but you I would willingly save. I have often enough warned you indirectly, and now do it plainly. What are you about?"

I had, at his last words, hurried across the room and seized my hat, which hung by the door. "What are you about?" he cried again, springing from his chair, and catching me by the arm.

"I am going," I stammered, while my eyes filled with tears that I vainly endeavored to repress, "away from here. I cannot bear to hear Fräulein Constance thus spoken of."

"And then it would be such a happy opportunity to get away from me too," said he, fixing his large dark eyes upon mine with a piercing look; "is it not so?"

I moved towards the door, and was feeling for the latch, for my eyes were blinded with tears.

"No; I cannot do it. You have been so good to me; I cannot leave you of my own will."

Herr von Zehren led me gently to the great chair, and paced several times up and down the room, while I buried my head in my hands. Then he stood before me and said:

"What did Granow say to you yesterday? Did he slander me to you as he has slandered you to me? Did he warn you against me, as he has warned me against you? No; do not answer; I do not want to know. It is just as if I had been there and heard it all. Every one knows how double-tongued old women talk."

"Then it is not true?" I exclaimed, starting from the chair. "Certainly, certainly, it is not true; I never believed it. I did not believe that miserable creature yesterday--not for one moment."

"And now only, for the first time?" said he, turning his piercing look again upon me. But I did not again lower my eyes; I met his gaze firmly, and calmly answered:

"Then I will implore you to have nothing more to do with it. It cannot end well, and it fills me with horror to think that it might end terribly."

"You think," he said, and a bitter smile contracted his features, "that it would not be a pleasant thing to read in the papers: 'To-day Malte von Zehren of Zehrendorf was condemned to twenty years' hard labor, and in pursuance of his sentence was conveyed to the penitentiary at S., the director of which, as is well known, is the brother of the criminal?' Well, it would not be the first time that a Zehren was an inmate of a prison."

He laughed, and began to speak with vehemence, sometimes pacing the room, and then stopping before me.

"Not the first time. When I was young--it may now be thirty years ago, or more--there stood in their cursed nest, in a waste place between the town wall and the ramparts, an old half-rotten gallows, and on the gallows were nailed two rusty iron plates, upon which there stood half-defaced names, and one of these names was Malte von Zehren, with the date 1436. I recognized it by the date; and one night, with the friend of my youth, Hans von Trantow--the father of our Hans--I wrenched it off, cut down the gallows, and pitched it over the rampart into the fosse. Do you know how my ancestor's name came there? He had a feud with the Peppersacks there in the town, and they had sworn, if they caught him, to hang him on the gallows. And though he heard of it, and knew that there would be no mercy for him, he slipped into the town in disguise, during the carnival, for the love of a townsman's pretty daughter. You see, my dear George, the women--they are at the bottom of all mischief. And they caught him too, early next morning, as he was stealing away, flung him into the dungeon, and the next day he was to be hanged, to the delight of all the good townsfolk. But a page who accompanied him, and who had escaped, carried the news to Hans von Trantow, and Hans sent off a score of riders to all cousins and kinsfolk over the whole island, and that night they crossed over in twenty boats, two hundred of them, with Hans at their head, forced their way into the town, broke into the dungeon and rescued my ancestor, the good fellows, and then set the old nest on fire at its four corners and burned it down. So as the townsmen had lost Malte von Zehren, they contented themselves with nailing his name upon the gallows.

"And what was the origin of the feud? The Sound-dues, which the Lords of Zehren had levied for centuries, and which the Peppersacks now laid claim to. By what right? I ask you now, by what right? At a time when their pedlars' nest was a mere cluster of hovels inhabited by wretched fishermen, the Zehrens were living as lords and masters in a block-house surrounded by a rampart, as men used to do in the earliest times; then in a castle of stone, with towers and battlements, and as far as the eye can reach from up yonder over forests and coves into the island, no hearth smoked in house or hut at which vassals and retainers of the castle did not warm themselves; and as far as the eye can reach from up there over the sea, no sail swelled and no pennon flew that did not pay tribute to the castle. Do you think, young man, that things like these can be forgotten? Do you suppose that I can learn to feel myself under one law with a crew that crawled before my ancestors in the dust? or to acknowledge any master over me? By the grace of God--and what is that? Where were these fellows 'by the grace of God' four or five hundred years ago? I could sit where they sit now, with just as good a right; my escutcheon instead of theirs would flaunt on every gate and guard-house, and in my name would tolls and taxes be levied. And now 'sdeath! here I sit, a Lord Lack-all, in this box of stone, which before long will fall in over my head, and not a foot of the soil on which I tread can I call my own. See there--" he stepped to the open window, and pointed out with a hand trembling with emotion--"you once asked me why I did not turn those into money. There are thousands upon thousands in the forest, and I answered that I had not the heart to have the old trees hewn down. It was the truth; I could not do it; and the only right that I have over them is that I can keep them from being cut down as long as I live. Not a tree belongs to me--not a sapling--not enough to serve for my coffin; every twig belongs to that mountebank, your Crœsus, who calls himself commerzienrath, and is well named Streber [Striver.] I see the stockfish still, distorting his crooked mouth as he counted down the pittance on the table and crammed the contract into his pocket. He thought: 'It will not last him long, and then he will blow out his brains.' It has not lasted long; and he may have been as correct in his other anticipation.

"But I cannot imagine what talkative demon possesses me this morning; I believe that I have been infected by that old washerwoman, Granow. Or perhaps it is because I have to make up for yesterday evening. In truth, George, I missed you exceedingly. Trantow, the good fellow, brought me home out of pure compassion, because he saw what a trial it would be to me to smoke my last cigar alone. And I tell you it cost me dearly that you were not with me. It went hard with me, George, terribly hard. Old hawk as I am, they plucked me until the feathers flew; but we will pay them back this evening. We shall meet at Trantow's, where I have always been lucky; but you are not to quit my side. And now drink your coffee, and come down in half an hour; I have a letter or two to write; the steuerrath wants to be once more delivered from his thousand-and-one embarrassments; but this time I cannot help him, at all events not today; he must wait awhile yet. In half an hour then, and afterwards we will go down to the beach. I feel a little feverish to-day, and the sea-breeze will do me good."

He went, and left me in a singular frame of mind. I felt as if he had told me everything, and yet, when I thought it over, it was no more than what he had often said to me before. I felt as if I had bound myself to him body and soul, and yet he had taken no promise from me. But this was just the thing which made me feel more than ever attached to this singular man. If he was magnanimous enough not to take me with him upon his ship, which he saw was driving to destruction, could I stand calmly on the safe shore and watch him struggling and sinking in the waves?

My youthful fancy kindled at his romantic story of the knight who had been at feud with my native town. I wished that I had been there; I fancied myself playing the part of the page who made his way out at risk of his life to bring help and rescue to his beloved lord. Should my thoughts be more mean, my actions more craven than those of that boy? And were we not in similar circumstances? Was not my knight at the last extremity? Had not the Peppersacks taken his all?--left him nothing of all the heritage of his ancestors--him, that kingly man? How he had stood before me, the tall noble form with flashing eyes, and anguish imprinted in his pale, deeply-furrowed face with its flowing beard. This man to have planned to sell his daughter! And a creature like the commerzienrath should one day be lord here in his stead! The creature with his close-shaven fox-face, his blinking, thievish eyes, and his clumsy, greedy hands; the man who had foredoomed me to the gallows. Yes, they had dealt with me no better than with my knight. They had driven me out of the town, and now, thank heaven, I had a right to hate them as I had always despised.

Thus my foolish brain was heated more and more. The charm of adventure, the inward delight in this uncontrolled life, which I called liberty, a monstrous confusion of the conceptions of right and duty, gratitude, hot blood of youth, passionate first-love--all held me spell-bound in this charmed circle, which was a world to me. All drew me with irresistible force to the man who seemed to me the perfect ideal of a knight and a hero, to the lovely maiden who so far exceeded my wildest dreams. And the fact that these two, to whom I clung with equal love, stood opposed to each other, only tended to confirm the dream of my own indispensability. In their several ways, each had been equally kind to me, had shown me equal confidence. The fulfilment of my most ardent wish, that of seeing them reconciled, had never appeared so near as this morning, when I paced my room and looked out of the windows at the blue sky, in which great white motionless clouds were standing, and upon the park whose majestic groups of trees and broad expanses of grass were magically lighted by the splendor of the sun.

How could I have believed that these white clouds would so soon spread into a sable pall and obscure that sun--that I had seen my paradise in its magic radiance for the last time?

CHAPTER XII.

The confidence with which Herr von Zehren had looked forward to that evening, which at the very least was to repair his former ill-fortune, was after all a deceitful one. It may be that an incident which occurred just previously, deprived him of that coolness which this evening he more than ever needed. For on our way up from the beach, where we had shot a brace of rabbits among the dunes, as crossing the heath we drew near to Trantowitz, a cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen, attended by a couple of liveried servants, came galloping by. My attention was entirely attracted by a slender young man riding a superb English horse, who, at the moment he passed me, was leaning over to one of the ladies with a charming smile on his pale face, on which a downy moustache just darkened the upper lip. The lady gave her horse a sudden cut with the whip, and they shot on in advance. I gazed for a moment after the company, and was turning to Herr von Zehren with the question: "Who are they?" when I checked myself in surprise at the change in his countenance. We had just been chatting pleasantly together, and there now lay in his looks an expression of the blackest wrath, and he had unslung his gun and half raised it to his shoulder, as if he would send a shot after the retreating party. Then he flung it hastily over his shoulder again, and walked a short distance silent at my side, until he suddenly broke out into the most furious execrations, which I had never before heard from him, though he could be angry enough upon occasion. "The hound!" he exclaimed, "he dares to come here upon the soil that belongs to my friend Trantow! And I stand quietly here and do not drive a charge of shot through him! Do you know who that was, George? The villain who will one day be lord of a hundred manors which by right are all mine, whose ancestors were my ancestors' vassals, and whose scoundrelly father came to me to tell me in my own apartment that he desired to marry his son according to his rank, and that he trusted we could come to some satisfactory arrangement. I clutched him by his accursed throat, and would have strangled him if others had not come between us. The thing has been gnawing at my heart incessantly, ever since I heard that the villain was going about the neighborhood here. And now you know why Constance and I are upon so unfortunate a footing. Heaven knows what fancies she is nursing; and it drives me mad to see that her thoughts still cling to the miscreant who has offered her the grossest insult that man can offer to woman; who has tarnished my ancestral escutcheon, and should fight me to the death, but for----"

He checked himself suddenly, and walked silently by my side, gnawing his lip. Not noticing the irregularities of the wretched road, he stumbled once or twice, and this stumbling, combined with the expression of his face, in which the wrinkles deepened to furrows whenever he was under strong emotion, gave him the appearance of a broken old man consumed by impotent anger. Never before had he appeared so much in need of help, so worthy of compassion, and never before had I pitied him so, or so yearned to assist him. At the same time I thought that so favorable an opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding that evidently existed between father and daughter in reference to their relations with the prince, would not easily again occur. So I plucked up a heart and asked:

I told him what I had been speaking of with Constance that morning; how little suspicion she seemed to have of the outrage that had been offered her; that on the contrary she had expressly told me that she had been betrothed to the prince, that their predetermined union had been prevented by Herr von Zehren's fault alone, and that she had renounced freely and utterly all thought of the possibility of their marriage. But the audacity with which he had attempted to approach her, the correspondence which had taken place between them, I kept to myself, feeling that this would only awaken anew the wrath of the Wild Zehren, and render him deaf to all reason.

But it was all to no purpose. He listened to me with every sign of impatience, and when I paused for breath in my eagerness, he broke out:

"Does she say that? What will she not say? And that too now, after I have told her not once, but a hundred times, what was asked of me, how my honor and my name were trampled in the mire! She will next asseverate that the Emperor of China has been a suitor for her hand, and that it is my fault that she is not now enthroned in Pekin! Why not? Turandot is as pretty a part as Mary Stuart. Prepare yourself soon to see her in Chinese attire."

It was easy to perceive how little mirth lay in these mocking words, and I did not venture to press further so painful a theme. We came, besides, in a few minutes to Trantowitz, where Hans received us at the door with his good-natured laugh, and led us into his living-room, (which, besides his chamber, was the sole habitable apartment in the great house,) where the other guests were assembled.

The evening passed like so many others. Play began before supper, and was resumed after that meal, during which the bottle had circulated freely. I had resolved not to play, and could the more easily keep this resolution, as all the rest, with the exception of our host, whom nothing could move from his accustomed equanimity, were entirely absorbed by the unusually high play, and had not time to pay any attention to me.

So there I sat, in the recess of a window, at a little distance from the table, and watched the company, whose behavior now, when I was not a participant in it, seemed strange enough. The fiery eyes in the flushed faces; the silence only broken by the monotonous phrases of the banker, or a hoarse laugh or muttered curse from the players; the avidity with which they poured down the flasks of wine; the whole scene wrapped in a gray cloud of cigar-smoke which grew denser every moment;--it was far from a pleasant sight, and strange, confused, painful thoughts whirled through my weary brain, as I sat watching the fortunes of the play, and listening at intervals to the rustling of the night-wind that bent the old poplars before the house, and drove a few rain-drops against the windows. Suddenly I was aroused from a half doze by a loud uproar that broke out among the players. They sprang from their chairs and vociferated at each other with wild looks and threatening gestures; but the tumult subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and they sat again bending in silence over their cards, and once more I listened to the wind in the poplars, and the dashing of the rain against the panes, until at last I fell asleep.

A hand upon my shoulder aroused me. It was Herr von Zehren. The first look at his pale face, from which his eyes were flashing wildly, told me that he had been losing again, and he confirmed it as we walked back the short distance to Zehrendorf through the black tempestuous night.

"It is all over with me," he said; "my old luck has abandoned me; the sooner I blow out my brains the better. To be sure, I have a week yet. Sylow, who is a good fellow, has given me so much time. In a week perhaps all may be managed; only to-morrow the draft falls due, and of course my brother cannot pay it. I must see about it, I must see about it."

He spoke more to himself than to me. Suddenly he stopped, looked up at the black lowering clouds, then walked on, muttering between his teeth:

"I knew it, I knew it, as soon as I saw the villain. It could not but bring me ill-luck; his accursed face has always brought me misfortune. And now to have to see how they quaff the foam from the beaker of life, while they leave us the bitter dregs! And I cannot have revenge--cannot take his life!"

We had reached a piece of woods near the house, which was really a projecting corner of the forest, but was considered as part of the park. The road here divided; the broader fork led along the edge of the wood; and the narrower, which was only a foot-path, ran directly through the trees. This was the nearer way, but also the rougher and darker, and Herr von Zehren, who in his present ill-humor had more than once grumbled at the darkness and the bad road, proposed that we should not take our usual path through the park.

"I should like to find out," I said, "if the buck whose tracks we saw day before yesterday, is belling in the south forest again. We cannot hear it from here, but in there we ought to hear it."

It was not so dark in the woods as I had feared; at times the moon shone pretty bright through the scudding clouds. I reproached myself for leaving Herr von Zehren alone at this hour, and had thoughts of turning back; but, impelled by the hunter's ardor, I pushed on, slowly and cautiously, often stopping and listening, while I held my breath, to see if I could catch any sound of the buck in the woods. Once I thought I heard a faint bellow, but I was not quite sure. If so, it must be very distant, and in a different quarter from where we expected the buck to be at this hour. It might be another. I was anxious to find out, and stood still again to listen. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me like the trot of a horse coming along the path in which I was. My heart stopped for an instant, and then began to beat violently. Who could be the rider, in the dead of night, upon a path lying alongside the main road to the castle?

The sound of the horse's hoofs, at first faint, had grown louder, and then suddenly ceased. In its place I now distinctly heard the steps of a man coming through the woods towards the place where I was standing, a little out of the path, in the dark shadow of some high trees. It could be no one but he. My heart, that was violently beating, cried to me that it could be no one but he. I tore the gun from my shoulder, as Herr von Zehren had done at the sight of the man he hated. Then, as he had done, I threw it back over my shoulder, so that I had both arms free. What did I need for such a fellow but those two arms of mine?

And just then I saw him plainly before me, as the moon slipped from behind a black cloud, and threw through the trees a clear light exactly upon the place where he was passing: the same slender form, and even in the same riding-dress--a low-crowned hat, close-fitting coat, trimmed with fur, and boots of soft leather reaching half-way up the thigh--one bound, one clutch--I had him in my hands!

The surprise must have paralyzed him at the moment, for he uttered no cry, and scarcely made a movement. But this was only for a moment, and then with an exertion of strength for which I had not given him credit, he strove to free himself from my grasp. So might a leopard, caught in the hunter's net, struggle frantically, leap, rend with his claws, and waste his strength in convulsive efforts. The struggle lasted perhaps a minute, during which time no word was spoken on either side, nor was any sound audible but our panting. At last his struggles grew weaker and weaker, his breath began to fail, and finally, yielding, he panted:

"In my breast pocket is a pocket-book, with probably a hundred thalers in it; take them, but let me go!"

"Not for a million!" I said, forcing him, as his strength was utterly exhausted, down to his knees.

"Only to give you a lesson," I said, and picked up his riding-whip, which had fallen while we were struggling, the silver handle of which caught my eye as it glittered in the moonlight.

"For God's sake, do not do that," he said, grasping convulsively the hand in which I held the whip. "Kill me on the spot; I will not move nor utter a cry; but do not strike me!"

Such a request in such a tone could not fail to make a powerful impression upon a heart like mine. I no longer beheld in my antagonist the enemy of the Wild Zehren his daughter's lover. I saw in him only a boy who was in my power, and who would rather die than undergo disgrace. Involuntarily the hand with which I grasped him by the breast unclosed; indeed I believe I lifted him to his feet.

Scarcely did he feel himself free, when he hastily stepped back a few paces, and in a tone the lightness of which was in strong contrast with the terror he had first felt, said:

"If you were a nobleman, you should give me satisfaction; but as you are not, I warn you to be on your guard: I do not always travel without arms."

He slightly touched his hat, turned upon his heel, and walked back by the way he had come.

I stood as if rooted to the spot, and gazed after the slender figure, which soon vanished in the dark shadows of the forest. I knew that with a bound or two I could overtake him, but I felt not the slightest impulse to attempt it. The young prince had rightly judged the young plebeian. I would as lief have hewn off my hand as to raise it again against a man whom I had in a manner pardoned. And then I thought of what Granow had said, that were he the prince, he would not like to meet Herr von Zehren, and how very nearly this meeting had taken place, and that too at a moment when it would have given the Wild Zehren delight to shed his enemy's blood, and his own afterwards.

"Thank heaven!" I cried, drawing a deep breath, "it is better so, and it will be a lesson to him."

I thought no more of the buck. I scarcely listened when he began to bellow, at no great distance from me. I hurried on at a run to make up for the time I had lost, and in deep anxiety lest Herr von Zehren should have heard the gallop of the horse, for it was not possible that he could have heard anything that had happened in the wood.

But my anxiety was without cause. The Wild Zehren was too safely plunged in reflections over his misfortune for his senses to be as acute as they usually were. He did not even ask me about the buck; and I was glad that I was under no necessity of speaking. Thus we walked silently on until we reached the castle.

In the hall we were met as usual by the sleepless old Christian. Letters had come by express: he had laid them on his master's writing-table.

We entered. "This one is for you, and so is this," he said, handing me two of the letters from the table.

"You have not sent me the money I asked you for; but that is the way: when we have anything, our friends may look out for themselves. I only write to you now, in order through you to entreat my uncle to do something to help papa. Our affairs must be in an awful state, for the merchant G.--you know whom I mean--from whom I borrowed twenty-five, saw papa about it to-day, and I did not get the smallest scolding. Mamma howls all day long. I wish I was a thousand miles away.

"P. S.--Papa has just come from Uncle Commerzienrath with a terribly long face. It is plain that the old Philistine will do nothing for us. I tell you Uncle Malte must help us, for we are in a terrible strait."

"My Son:--In renouncing your filial obedience to me, you compelled me to abandon all control over you. I have vowed not to restore you to your place as my son, until you acknowledge your misconduct and entreat me to do so; and this vow I will keep. To the choice that you have made for yourself, I have offered no opposition, have allowed you perfect freedom of action, for which you have always hankered, and am resolved to do this for the future. But all this cannot prevent me from wishing, with all my heart, that it may be well with you in the path that you have chosen for yourself, though I doubt it much; nor can it keep me from warning you where warning seems necessary. And this is now the case. Things have reached my ears concerning Herr von Zehren, which I trust in heaven may be founded upon error, but which are of such a nature that I think with horror of my son being in the house of a man under such suspicions, even if false. What I have heard I cannot reveal to you, as the information has reached me in the line of my official duties.

"I know that notwithstanding your disobedience, you are incapable of a base action, and that therefore you are so far safe, even if those suspicions are true, which God forbid. Still I entreat you, if you have any regard left for my peace, to leave the house of Herr von Zehren at once. I add what is scarcely necessary, that for the obedient son I shall be, what I have always been, his strict but just father."

I had read this letter twice through, and sat still gazing at the writing, incapable of clear reflection, when Herr von Zehren aroused me by asking: "Well, George, and what have you there?" I handed him both letters. He read them, paced the room a while, and then stopping before me said:

"The opportunity is a good one," he went on, seeing that I hesitated to answer. "I have a letter from the steuerrath which compels me to start for the town within the hour. I will take you with me; it is now twelve o'clock, and in three hours we can be there; you can ring up the old gentleman; sleep an hour or two in the garret of which you have so often told me; thank God to-morrow morning that you are clear of the Wild Zehren, and--go back again to school."

He spoke the last words with a slight contempt, which galled the most sensitive part in the heart of a young man, that of false pride.

"I will go with you wherever you go!" I exclaimed, starting up. "I said so this morning, and I now repeat it. Tell me what I shall do."

Herr von Zehren again paced the room for a few moments, and then paused before me and said in an agitated voice:

"Remain here--for a day or two at all events, until I return. You will do me a service."

"If you return now to-day," he continued, "that will only have the effect of confirming the rumors of which your father writes. The rats are leaving the house, they will say, and justly. And just now it is of importance to me that people shall say nothing, that as little attention as possible shall be directed to me. Do you understand, George?"

I looked fixedly at him; he bore the scrutiny, and after a while answered, speaking slowly and in a low voice:

"Ask no further, George. Perhaps I would tell you if you could help me; perhaps I would not. They say of me that I use men and then throw them away when they can be of no further service to me. It may be so; I do not know that the most deserve any better treatment. With you, at all events, I would not thus deal, for I like you. And now go to bed, and let the Wild Zehren play out the game. Perhaps he will break the bank, and then I promise you it will be the last of his playing."

At this moment the wagon drove up; while reading my father's letter, I had not heard the order to old Christian to have the horses put to. Herr von Zehren looked through his papers, put some in his pocket, and locked others in his cabinet. Then old Christian helped him on with his furred cloak, he put on his hat, and stepping up to me, offered me his hand.

"No," he replied, "or only by waiting quietly here until I return. Your hand is cold as ice; go to bed."

I accompanied him to the door. His hunting-wagon was waiting, and long Jock, who usually filled the office of coachman, was on the front seat.

"The wagon will only take me to the ferry, and then return," said Herr von Zehren.

"It cannot be," he repeated. "We have not a minute to spare. Good-night! Drive on!"

The wagon drove off; the dogs yelped and barked, and then all was still again. Old Christian hobbled across the yard with his lantern, and vanished into one of the old buildings. I stood alone before the house, under the trees, in which the wind roared. The rain began to fall in torrents; shivering I returned to the house and carefully secured the door.

The light was still burning in Herr von Zehren's room. I went to get it and also my letters that were lying upon his table. As I took them I espied a paper on the floor, and picked it up to see what it was. A few words were written upon it, and I had read them before I thought what I was doing. The words were these:

"I am ruined if you do not save me. G. will give me no more time; St. is immovable; the draft will be protested. I put myself in your hands. You have held me above water too long to let me drown now. The moment, too, is as favorable as possible for the matter you know of. I can and will take care that no one sees our cards. But whatever is done, must be done at once. I have not always the game in my hand. Come at once, I adjure you, by what is most sacred to you--by our ancient name! Burn this at once."

The paper was not signed, but I recognized the writing immediately. I had seen it often enough in the documents on my father's table, and I could at once have affixed the signature with its pretentious flourish, which I had often enough tried to imitate.

This paper Herr von Zehren must have dropped while hastily thrusting it with the others into his pocket.

I looked at it again, and was once more trying to unriddle its enigmatical contents, when the candle, already burned to the socket, gave signs of going out. "Burn this at once!"--it was as if a voice had uttered this command close to my ear. I held the paper in the flame; it blazed up; the candle went out at the same moment; a glowing scrap of tinder fluttered to my feet, and then all around me was thickest darkness.

I groped my way from the room, through the dining-room to the hall, up the narrow stairway to my chamber, and after searching in vain for a match, threw myself dressed upon my bed.

But in vain did I, tossing restlessly upon my couch, endeavor to sleep. Every moment I started up in terror, fancying in my excitement that I heard a voice calling for help, or a step hurrying towards my door, while I kept racking my brain in the vain attempt to devise some plan for rescuing the two so dear to me from the ruin which I had a presentiment was impending over them, whose coming the elements themselves seemed to announce in thunder; and execrated my cowardice, my indecision, my helplessness.

A terrible storm had arisen; the wind raved about the old pile, which shook to its foundations. The tiles came clattering down from the roofs; the rusted weather-cocks groaned and creaked; the shutters banged, and the third shutter to the right made frantic efforts now or never to get loose from the single hinge by which it had hung for years. The screech-owls in the crevices of the walls hooted dismally, and the dogs howled, while the gusts of wind dashed torrents of rain against the windows.

It seemed as if the ancient mansion of Zehrendorf knew what fate was awaiting its possessor and itself.

CHAPTER XIII.

My first sensation, as I awaked late, was a feeling of thankfulness that it was day; my second was one of shame at having been so powerfully affected by the terrors of the night. When but a small boy, I used to think that I cast the most odious reproach upon an adversary when I termed him a coward, and this morning I felt that the same stigma might be justly affixed to myself. But that comes, I said to myself while dressing, from not looking things in the face and telling people the truth. Why did I not frankly say to Herr von Zehren, I know the object of your journey? He would then have taken me with him, and I should not have to sit here like a child that is kept in the house when it rains.

I opened a window and looked out, in a gloomy frame of mind, and the scene that met my eyes was far from cheerful. The wind, which blew from the west, drove swirling masses of gray mist through the gigantic trees, which tossed their mighty arms about, as if in torment, above the wide lawn which had so often charmed me with its long waving grass, and which now was a mere morass. A flock of crows flew up with harsh cawings into the stormy air, which hurled them about at its pleasure. At this moment the wind flung to a shutter with so much violence that fragments of the rotten wood flew about my head. I tore away from the hinge what was left of it, and threw it down. "I'll not be troubled by you tonight, at all events," I said, fastening the window again, and then I determined to take the rest in hand. Leaving my own room, I made the round of the upper story. As I opened the door of the room where the pile of books lay, a dozen rats sprang down from the window-sills and dived into their hiding-places. The rain had driven in through some broken panes, and the gray rascals had been enjoying the welcome refreshment. "You have not quitted the house yet, it seems," I said, recalling Herr von Zehren's words; "should I be more cowardly than you, you thievish crew?"

I climbed over the pile of books to the nearest door, and wandered through the empty rooms, securing all the shutters that had any fastenings left, and lifting from their hinges and throwing down those that were past securing. The one belonging to the third window, which had been the principal object of my expedition, had terminated its afflicted existence in the night.

On my way back I entered the hall with the great staircase, where in the dim light that fell through the dull panes covered with dust and cobwebs, it looked more ghostly than ever. A suit of armor which was fastened to the wall at some height from the floor, it required no great stretch of fancy to turn into the corpse of a hanged man. I wondered if it was the armor of that Malte von Zehren whose name, in default of himself, the honest burghers of my native town had affixed to their gallows.

I do not know what put it into my head to descend the staircase and wander about the narrow passages of the lower story. My footsteps sounded eerily hollow in the vacant corridors; and the chilly damp from the bare walls, like those of a vault, seemed to strike doubly cold to my feverish frame. Perhaps I had an idea of punishing myself for my terrors of the past night, and of demonstrating to myself the childishness of my apprehensions. Still it was not without a start and a decidedly uncomfortable feeling that I suddenly came upon an opening in the wall at a spot which I had often before passed without perceiving any sign of a door, through which opening I caught sight of a yawning black chasm, at the bottom of which a faint glimmer of light was perceptible. Peering more closely into it, I could make out the commencement of a flight of steps. Without a moment's hesitation I began, at peril of my neck, to descend a narrow and very steep stair, slowly groping my way with both hands touching the wall on each side of me, until the faint glimmer at the bottom suddenly disappeared. As I reached the floor of the cellar it became visible again, but not now an uncertain glimmer, but a distinct light moving about a short distance from me, and apparently proceeding from a lantern in the hand of a man who was exploring the cellar. As I moved faster than the man, whose shuffling footsteps probably covered the sound of mine, I speedily overtook him, and laid my hand upon the shoulder of--old Christian, for he it was. He stopped with a half cry, luckily without dropping his lantern, and looked round at me with the utmost terror in his old wrinkled face.

He still stared at me in silence. "You need not be afraid of me," I said: "you know I am your friend."

"It is not for myself," the old man answered at last. "I dare not bring any one down here; he would kill me."

Christian, whose feeble old limbs were yet trembling from his first fright, now sat down upon a chest, and placed the lantern by him. While he was recovering himself, I took a survey of the cellar. It had a low vaulted ceiling, supported at various points by strong columns, and was evidently of considerable extent, though how considerable I could not determine, as the extremities were lost in darkness.

Against one of these columns not far off stood a desk with a great lantern over it, and on the desk lay a large thick book, like a merchant's "blotter." Near this were chests of tea, with Chinese figures marked on them--evidently original packages--piled up to a great height, and everywhere that I looked were empty boxes and casks, piled in a certain business-like order. Many a year must have passed ere all these boxes were emptied and all these casks drained; many a dollar must have been lost and won in the process, and many a human life must have been risked, and probably lost too. At that time not a year passed that the smuggling in this region by land and water did not cost more than one life; and how many did it cost whose loss was not known? Peter, for instance, who was shot by the coastguard in the woods, and dragged himself, mortally wounded, to his hut; or Claas, who, flying hastily across the morass, missed his footing and sank; whose kindred found it prudent to say as little about the matter as possible.

Many things of this sort I had heard from my father and his colleagues, and they recurred to my mind as I looked around this vast cellar, which wore in the pale light from the old man's lantern much the appearance of a gigantic church-vault, in which mouldering coffins that had done their service were piled up around, and the damp chilly vapor in which might be fancied to proceed from fresh graves dug in lightless space beyond the columns.

This then was the foundation of the house of the Von Zehrens. That high-born race had dwelt over this vault, and lived upon these heaps of decay. No wonder the fields lay fallow, and the barns were tumbling to ruin. Here was the sowing and the harvest--an evil sowing, which could bring no other than an evil harvest.

I will not maintain that precisely these thoughts passed through my mind in precisely this order, while I stood by the old man and let my gaze wander through the recesses of the cellar. I only know that my old feeling of horror for that traffic into whose secret adyta I had penetrated, returned upon me with full force, and with the clearly defined sensation that I now pertained to it and was one of the initiated, and that it was foolish and to a certain extent offensive in the old man to wish to make any secret to me of matters and relations which I so thoroughly fathomed and so well understood.

"Well, Christian," said I, taking a seat opposite the old man, and lighting a cigar at his lantern as a mark of my perfect composure, "what will we get this time?"

"Tea or silk," muttered he; "if it were wine, brandy, or salt, he would have ordered the wagons."

"To be sure, he would then have ordered the wagons," I repeated, as if this were a mere matter of course. "And when do you expect him back? He told me to-night that he could not possibly determine."

"Most likely to-morrow; but I will open the great door anyhow, as we cannot be certain."

"Of course we cannot be certain," I said. The old man had arisen and taken up his lantern, and I arose also.

We kept on, and came into another space filled with the scent of wine, where casks were piled on casks, as the old man showed me by holding up his lantern as high as he could reach.

"Yes," I answered, repeating what Granow had said; "the business is bad just now; the people in Uselin have grown shy since so many have taken to dabbling in it."

The old man, who was taciturnity itself, did not answer, but it seemed that I had attained my aim of gaining his confidence. He nodded and muttered an assent to my words, as he shuffled along.

The cellar seemed to have no end; but at last Christian stopped and placed the lantern upon the ground. Before us was a broad staircase, above which was an apparatus of strong beams, such as is used for lowering casks and heavy boxes. The staircase was closed above by a large and massive trap-door, covered with plates of iron, and secured by immense bolts. These the old man pushed back with my help.

We returned silently by the way we had come, and ascended the steep stair at the entrance. The old man pressed a spring, and the opening in the wall was closed by a sliding door which was fitted so artistically, and was so exactly of the same tint of dirty gray, that none but one of the initiated could have discovered its existence, to say nothing of opening it.

Old Christian extinguished his lantern, and went before me to the end of the corridor, after which we separated in the smaller court-yard. He passed through a small gate into the main court; I remained behind and looked cautiously around to see if any one was observing me; but there were only the crows, who, perched upon one of the low roofs, with heads on one side, were scrutinizing all my movements. This little court had looked poorly enough in the sunshine, but now in the rain its appearance was inexpressibly forlorn. The buildings huddled together as if trying to shelter themselves as well as they could from the wind and the rain, and yet seemed every moment in danger of tumbling down from sheer dilapidation. Who would look here for the entrance to the secret cellar? And yet here somewhere it must be. I had noticed the direction and extent of the subterranean space, for I wanted to know all, since I already knew so much. I wished to be no longer kept in the dark as to what was going on around me.

My conclusion was verified: in the miserable old servant's kitchen, from which a wide door led to the inclosed space with the heaps of refuse, under a pile of old barrels, boards, half-rotten straw, heaped together, as I now perceived, with a careful imitation of carelessness, I detected the same trap-door which the old man had bolted in the cellar. Here upon the outside it was secured with a massive iron bar, and a lock, the key of which doubtless Herr von Zehren carried about him. I replaced the rubbish, and stole away as furtively as a thief, for the proverb says truly that "the concealer is as bad as the stealer," not only before the law, but even more surely before his own conscience.

I turned into the park and strolled about the walks. A heavy drizzle was still falling, but the fog had lifted a little, and was rolling away in heavy gray masses over the tops of the trees. I stood at the stone table under the maple whose spreading boughs afforded me some shelter, and gazed steadfastly at the great melancholy house, that to-day, since it had disclosed to me its secret, wore quite another look in my eyes. Could she know what I now knew? Impossible! It was a thought not to be harbored for a moment. But she must learn it as soon as possible--or no! she must rather leave this place, where ruin was threatening her. Away--but whither? to whom? with whom? What a wretched, pitiful creature was I, who could offer her nothing but this heart that beat for her, these arms which were strong enough to bear her away as easily as a child, and with which I could do nothing but fold them over my breast in impotent despair. Happen what might, she must, must be saved. Her father might sacrifice me to his vengeance, but she must escape free!

Some one came from the terrace--it was old Pahlen. She appeared to be looking for me, for she beckoned to me from a distance with her bony hands, while her gray hair, flying loose in the wind from under her dirty cap, would have given her to any one else the appearance of the witch that had brewed the bad weather. But to me she was a most welcome apparition, for from whom could she come but from her? I ran to meet her, and scarcely gave her time to deliver her message. A few moments later, with a heart beating high, I entered Constance's apartment through the casement-door.

It was the first, and was to be the last time that I entered it, and I can scarcely give an accurate description of its appearance. I have only a very dim recollection of large-leaved plants, an open piano, music, books, articles of dress, all scattered about, of two or three portraits on the walls, and that the entire floor was covered with a carpet. This last feature particularly struck me. Carpets covering an entire room were a rarity at that time, especially in the good town of Uselin. I had only heard of such luxury by report, and I hardly knew where to place my foot, although the carpet, I believe, was extremely threadbare, and in places even torn and worn into holes.

But these, as I have said, are but dim recollections, from which stands out, clearly and ineffaceably, the picture of Constance. She sat upon a divan near the window, and at my entrance dropped a piece of embroidery into her lap, at the same time extending her hand with her peculiar sweet melancholy smile.

"You are not angry that I sent for you?" she asked, motioning me to take my place by her side--thereby placing me in no slight embarrassment, for the divan was low, and my boots not as clean as a young man could wish who is for the first time received in a carpeted chamber by the lady of his heart. "I wished to make a request of you. Pahlen, you can go; I have something to speak of with Herr George alone."

The old woman gave me one of her suspicious looks, lingered, and only went after Constance had repeated her order in a sharper tone.

"See, this is the reason I sent for you," Constance began, with a gesture of the hand towards the door by which the old woman had departed. "I know how good you are, and how true a friend to me; since yesterday I have new proof of it, though for a while I was weak enough to hold you no better than the others. But these others! They do not know, and cannot, and must not know. Such treasures must be kept secret; they are too precious for the coarse world. Do you not think so?"

As I had no idea on what it was that she desired my opinion, I contented myself with fixing my eyes upon her with a look of respectful inquiry. She dropped her eyes again to her work, and continued in a voice not quite so steady: "My father has gone away, I am told; do you know whither, and for how long a time? But even if he had told you, it would make no difference; my father is not accustomed to bind himself by any such announcements. He will go for a stay of three weeks and be back in three days; he will start to be gone three days, and I will look for him in vain for as many weeks. There is no probability that he will this time make any exception to his rule; and whether he really makes a long or short stay, we must take measures accordingly. It is not cheerful to be all alone in this desolate and comfortless house, especially when there is such a terrible storm as there was last night. It is so pleasant to know that there is some one near at hand in whose faith and strong arm--they say you are so very strong, George--we can always trust; but still, so it must be. You feel that as well as I do, do you not, George?"

This time I knew what she meant: I must go away from here, must leave her alone, just now, at the very time when I was tormenting myself to devise some plan to get her away; at the very time when my mind, not yet recovered from the effects of the terrible night and the adventures of the morning, was filled with a gloomy presentiment that calamity was impending over both the house and its inhabitants. I neither knew how nor what to answer, and looked at Constance in helpless confusion.

"You think it very unfriendly, very inhospitable of me," she said, after a pause, as if awaiting my answer; "it would be both more hospitable and more friendly if I myself went away for the time to visit some female friend; and I admit that any other lady would do so; but I am so poor as to have no female friend. My father has taken good care of that. So long as you have been here, has a solitary lady entered this house? Have you ever heard me speak of a friend, of an acquaintance of my own sex? 'Constance von Zehren only associates with men;' that is the way I am spoken of; but heaven knows how entirely without fault of mine. Do you wish, my good faithful George, to give evil tongues the opportunity to make my reputation worse than it already is? Or do you think, with the others, that it cannot be worse? No; sit still. Why should not friends, as we are, speak calmly of such things, and calmly consider what is to be done on such an occasion? Now, what I have thought, is this: You have friends. There is Herr von Granow, who regularly pays court to you; there is Herr von Trantow, our good neighbor, who would be so glad to have you with him for a few days. And then you are quite near me; I can send for you if I want you; and you know that if ever I need a friend I will turn to no one sooner that to the only friend I have."

She offered me her hand with an enchanting smile, as if to say: "So that matter is settled, is it not?"

Her smile and the touch of her dear hand completed the confusion into which her words had thrown me; but I collected myself with a desperate effort and stammered:

"I do not know what you will think of me for allowing you to speak so long on a subject which of course I could not but understand at once; but I cannot tell you how hard it is for me just now to go away from you--to leave you just now. Herr von Zehern expressly charged me to remain here and wait his return, which would happen in a few days, perhaps to-morrow. He no doubt did that--even though he did not say as much--with the best intentions; that you might have some one near you, and might not be left alone in the desolate old house; that----"

I did not know how to continue, Constance fixed her eyes upon me with so peculiar an expression, and my talent for fiction having always been of the poorest.

"My father has never shown this tender consideration before," she said. "Perhaps he thinks that the older I grow, the more I need watching. You understand me. Or can you have forgotten our discourse of yesterday?"

"I have not forgotten it," I cried, springing hastily from the divan. "I will not again become an object of your suspicion. I now leave you, and forever, if you wish it; but others who are assuredly no worthier than I, shall not enjoy an advantage over me; and if they still venture to thrust themselves into your neighborhood, or lurk around like a fox around a dove-cot, they do it at their own peril. I shall not be so considerate as I was that evening."

"What do you mean? Of whom are you speaking?" exclaimed Constance, who had also arisen at my last words. She had turned quite pale, and her features had assumed a new expression.

"Of whom am I speaking?" I said; "of him who, on that evening when I kept watch at your window, ran from me like a craven; and who last night, as I was coming with your father from Trantowitz, and took the way through the woods alone, tried to conceal himself under the trees; whom I spared out of pity, for I knew that had I betrayed the pitiful wretch, Herr von Zehren would have shot him dead like a dog. Let him take care I do not meet him again in the night or by day either: he will see how much I respect his princeship!"

Constance had turned away while I thus gave vent in anger to the despair I felt at leaving the beloved maiden forever. Suddenly she turned her pale face again upon me, with eyes flashing with a strange light, and exclaimed, holding out her hands as if in supplication:

"That I should hear this from you!--from you! How can I help it if that man--supposing you were not mistaken, which yet is quite possible--is driven restlessly about by his evil conscience? It is unhappy enough for him, if it be so; but how does that concern me? And how can any danger from that quarter threaten me? And were he now--or at any time and anywhere--to come before me, what would I, what could I say, but 'We can be nothing to each other, you and I, now nor at any future time.' I thought, George, you knew all this without my telling you. How can I wonder that the others so misjudge me, when your judgment of me is so false, so cruelly false?"

She resumed her seat upon the divan and buried her face in her hands. I lost all control of myself, paced the room in agitation, and finally, seeing her bosom heaving with her emotion, threw myself in despair at her feet.

"My dear, good George," she said, laying her hands on my shoulders. "I know well that you love me; and I, too, am very fond of you."

The tears rolled down my cheeks. I hid my face in her dress, and covered her hands with kisses.

I sprang up. In truth the door opened slowly--I think it had never been entirely closed--and the ugly old woman looked in and asked if she had been called.

Yes, she had been called. Herr George, who was going to visit Herr von Trantow for a day or two, had probably some orders to give.

"Farewell," she said, turning to me, "farewell, then, for a few days." And then bringing her face nearer to mine, and sending me a kiss by the movement of her lips, she softly whispered, "Farewell, beloved."

I was standing outside the house; the rain, that had re-commenced, was beating into my burning face; I did not feel it. Rain and storm, driving clouds and roaring trees, how lovely it all was! How could it be possible that the world should be so fair--that mortal could be so happy that she loved me!

When I reached my own room, I gave vent to my rapture in a thousand idiotic ways. I danced and sang, I threw myself into the old high-backed chair and wept, then sprang up again, and at last remembered that I had all that I should need for a stay of but a day or two, ready packed in my game-bag, and that she would expect that her orders would be promptly obeyed. Yes; now--now I was ready to go.

And throwing my gun over my shoulder, and calling my dog Caro, who lay moping under the table, I left the castle.

CHAPTER XIV.

Striding along the road to Trantowitz, under the rustling willows, scarcely seeing the way before me in my excitement, I several times barely escaped falling from the slippery path into the deep ditch in which the rain-water was now running in a torrent. More than once I stopped to look back to the castle where she was. Caro, who was moodily trotting after me, also stopped on these occasions and looked at me. I told him that she loved me, that we were all going to be happy, that all would turn out well, and that when I was a great man I would lead a joyous life, and would take good care of him as long as he lived. Caro gave me to understand, by a slight wag of his tail, that he was fully satisfied of my good intentions, and even to a certain extent moved; but his brown eyes looked very melancholy, as if on so dismal a day he could not form a very clear picture of a joyous future. "You are a stupid brute, Caro," I said; "a good, stupid brute; and you have no notion of what has happened to me." Caro made a desperate attempt to look at the matter from its brightest side, wagging his tail more violently, and showing his white teeth; then suddenly, as if to show that his well-trained mind, usually occupied with hunting matters alone, felt this to be a day when all discipline was relaxed, ran, furiously barking, at a man who was just approaching around a plantation of willows on the left of the road.

It was a man who had partly the appearance of a sailor, and partly that of a working-man of the town, and whose innocent broad face beamed with so friendly a smile as he caught sight of me, that Caro became at once conscious of the impropriety of his behavior, and came to heel ashamed, with drooping ears, while I, who had recognized the traveller, hastened towards him with extended hand.

"Yes, I thought I should surprise you," answered Klaus, giving me a cordial grasp of his great hard hand, and showing, as Caro had before done, two rows of teeth which rivalled the dog's in whiteness.

"Of course I was coming to see you," Klaus answered. "I arrived in the cutter an hour ago. Christel is with me. Our old grandmother is dead; we buried her yesterday morning. She has gone to a better place, I hope. She was a good old woman, although she had grown very infirm of late, and gave poor Christel a great deal of trouble. But that is all over now. What I was going to say is this: my father has been so good as to bring me over here himself, and Christel is with me too; she has come with me to Zanowitz to take leave of Aunt Julchen [Julie], father's sister, you know. My father is from Zanowitz, you know."

"You have been there once or twice yourself," Klaus went on. "Aunt Julchen always saw you, but you never took notice of her. I suppose you did not recollect her; she used often to come to my father's. And then you have become such a great man now"--and the honest fellow's admiring looks wandered over my hunting-dress, my high boots, and Caro, who pretended not to hear a word of this conversation, and with pricked-up ears was staring into the ditch as if he had never seen a water-rat dart into its hole before in all the days of his life.

"Never mind about that, Klaus," I said, shifting the sling of my gun a little higher on the shoulder. "So you are going away? And where are you going, then?"

"I have got a place as locksmith in the machine-shops of the Herr Commerzienrath at Berlin," said Klaus. "Herr Schultz, the engineer on the Penguin, you know, has given me a first-rate recommendation, and I hope to do no discredit to it."

"That I am sure you will not," I said in a cordial, friendly, but rather patronizing tone, while I considered with some embarrassment what I should do. Here was Klaus had come to see me, and I could not keep him standing in the open road, under the dripping willow. How the good fellow would have stared if I had taken him into my poetical room!--but that was not possible now. My embarrassment was increasing, and it was a great relief when Klaus, taking both my hands, said:

"And now, good-by; I must go back to Zanowitz. Karl Peters, who has been loading corn for the Herr Commerzienrath, sails in half an hour, and takes me with him. I would have liked to stay a little while with you, but you have something else on hand, and so I will not keep you any longer."

"I have nothing whatever on hand, Klaus," I answered, "and if you have no objection I will go with you to Zanowitz, and take the opportunity to say good-day to Christel. When is the wedding to be, Klaus?"

Klaus shook his head as we walked on together. "The prospect is but a poor one," he said. "We are too young yet, the old man thinks, although the proverb says: 'Early wooed was never rued.' Don't you think so?"

"Decidedly I do!" I cried, with an earnestness that extremely delighted Klaus; "I am two years younger than you, I believe, but I can tell you this: I would marry, if I could, upon the spot; but it all depends upon the circumstances, Klaus, upon the circumstances."

"Yes, of course;" answered he, with a sigh; "I could very well support her now, for I shall work upon a fixed contract, and can do well if I please, and Christel would not sit with her hands in her lap; but what good is all that if the old man will not consent? He is Christel's guardian, and she owes him everything, even her life, for she would have perished miserably on the beach, poor little creature, had father not sent mother down to the strand to gather drift-wood, and had mother not found her there and brought her home. And you see all this has to be taken into account; and although he is not at all kind to her, and I cannot tell why he has treated me so badly all these years, yet still it is written: Honor thy father and thy mother. And as I have no mother any more, I must honor my father doubly. Don't you think so?"

I did not answer him this time. In my coat-pocket lay the letter of my father, in which he commanded me to leave Herr von Zehren at once and return home. I had not obeyed his orders, because I could not leave until Herr von Zehren's return; but now I could go--oh yes, I could go now! I cast a glance back at the castle, which loomed darkly through its dark masses of trees, over the heath, and sighed deeply.

Klaus crossed the wet road to my side, and said to me in a low mysterious tone, although over the whole heath, as far as the eye could reach, there was no human being in sight:

"For you see," he continued, "I know that you and your father are not on good terms, but he is such an excellent man, that he certainly wishes no harm to any human creature, and least of all to his own son; and as for what people say about you, that you are leading so wild a life here, and--and--I don't believe a word of it. I know you better. Oh yes, you might be a little wild, of course, you always were that; but wicked? God forbid! I would sooner believe them if they said I was wicked myself."

"That is hard to say," he answered, with some hesitation. "If I must tell you honestly, they all say so, my Christel of course excepted, who is your fast friend; but the rest don't leave a good hair on your head."

It was some time before I could get it out of the good fellow. It was quite terrible for him to be compelled to admit that in my native town, where everybody knew everybody else, and took the greatest interest in his fortunes, I was unanimously considered a castaway. The firemen on board the Penguin had spoken of it, and the old pensioned-off captains leaning over the parapet of the pier, and meditatively chewing their quids, talked the matter over. Wherever Klaus, whom all knew to be a great friend of mine, came, everybody asked him if he had not heard what had become of George Hartwig, how he was going about in the very worst region of the whole island, and playing the buffoon for noblemen with whom he was leading the most shameless life; that he would lose more money in gambling in a single night, than his poor father made in a whole year, and heaven only knew how he came by it. But the worst of all was something which Klaus only mentioned after again solemnly assuring me that he did not believe a word of it. He had been the evening before to take leave of Justizrath Heckepfennig, who was Christel's godfather, and at whose house he was a frequent visitor. The family were just at tea. Elise Kohl, Emilie's dearest friend, was there too, and they had done Klaus the honor to offer him a cup of tea, after he had said that next day he was going to Zanowitz and meant to look me up. The justizrath urgently dissuaded him from doing so, adding that his long-fixed conviction that I would die in my shoes, had recently received a confirmation, which, however, he was not free to disclose. That then the girls had sat in judgment upon me, and decided that they could forgive me everything else, but could never forgive me for being the lover of Fräulein von Zehren. They had heard of it from Arthur, who of course knew; and Arthur had told such things about his cousin that a girl of any self-respect could hardly listen to them, and which it was quite impossible to repeat.

Klaus was terrified at the effect which his account produced upon me. In vain did he repeat that he did not believe a word of it, and had told the girls so at the time. I vowed that I renounced now and forever so faithless and treacherous a friend, and that I would sooner or later be most bitterly avenged upon him. I gave vent to the most terrible threats and maledictions. Never would I again, with my own consent, set foot in my native town; I would rather cause an earthquake to swallow it, if it stood in my power. Up to this time I had felt twinges of conscience as to whether I had not acted too rashly in leaving my father for so trifling a cause; but now should my father a hundred times command me to return, I would not do it. And as for Herr von Zehren and Fräulein von Zehren I valued a hair of either of their heads more than the whole town of Uselin, and I was ready to die for both of them here on the spot in these water-boots of mine, and the devil might afterwards beat the boots about the justizrath's old mop of a head.

The good Klaus was stricken dumb with horror when he heard me utter these frightful imprecations. It is quite probable that the idea struck him that my soul was in a more perilous state than he had hitherto supposed. He did not say this, however, but presently remarked, in his simple way, that disobedience to a father was a very serious thing; that I well knew how much he had always thought of me, in spite of all that people said, and that he had always been disposed, and was still disposed to agree with me in everything; but that here I was clearly in the wrong; and that if my father had really ordered me to return home, he could not see, for his part, what should prevent me from obeying him; that he must confess to me that my disobedience to my father had been troubling him ever since he heard of it, and that he could go away with an easier mind, now that he had frankly told me this.

I made him no answer, and Klaus did not venture to continue a conversation that had taken so unpleasant a turn. He walked silently by my side, giving me a sorrowful look from time to time, like Caro, who trotted with drooping ears by my other side; for the rain was falling still more heavily, and my aimless wandering in such weather over the wet dunes, was a mystery to Caro which grew darker the more he pondered over it.

Thus we arrived at Zanowitz, where the poor mud-hovels were scattered about over the undulating sandy dunes, as if they were playing hide-and-seek. Between the dunes the open sea was visible. This had always been a sight that I loved, when the sun shone brightly on the white sand and the blue water, and the white gulls wheeled in joyous circles over the calm sea. But now all was of a uniform gray, the sand, and the sky, and the sea that came rolling in in heavy waves. Even the gulls, sweeping with harsh cries over the stormy waters, seemed gray like the rest. It was a dreary picture, the coloring of which harmonized with the frame of mind in which my conversation with Klaus had left me.

"I see Peters is getting ready to sail," said Klaus, pointing to one of the larger vessels that were rocking at anchor a short distance from the beach. "I think we had better go down; father and Christel will be down there waiting for me."

So we went down to the strand, where they were about pushing off one of the numerous smaller boats drawn up upon the sand. A crowd of persons were standing by, and among them old Pinnow, Christel, and Klaus's Aunt Julchen, a well-to-do fisherman's widow, whom I remembered very well.

Poor Klaus was scarcely allowed a minute to say good-by. Skipper Peters, who had to deliver in Uselin the same day the corn he had shipped for the commerzienrath's account, swore at the foolish waste of time; Pinnow growled that the stupid dolt would never have common sense; Christel kept her tearful eyes riveted on her Klaus, whom she was to lose for so long a time; Aunt Julchen wiped the tears and the rain from her good fat face with her apron; and the deaf and dumb apprentice Jacob, who was among the rest, stared uninterruptedly at his master as if he now saw his red nose and blue spectacles for the first time. Klaus, looking very confused and very unhappy, said not a single word, but taking in his left hand a bundle which Christel had given him, he offered his right to each in turn, and then springing into the boat, seized one of the two oars. A couple of fishermen waded out and pushed the boat off; the oars were laid in the rowlocks, and the skiff danced over the waves to the cutter, on which the mainsail was already hoisted.

When I turned again, Christel had gone, and the fat aunt was just about following her. The poor thing no doubt wished to shed her long pent-up tears in quiet, and I thought that I should be doing her a kindness if I detained her father awhile upon the beach. But Herr Pinnow was in no haste to leave, as it seemed. With his blue spectacles over his eyes, which I knew to be sharp as a hawk's, he gazed into the foaming waters, and exchanged with the Zanowitz sailors and fishermen such remarks as naturally fall from old sea-rats on the beach watching the departure of a vessel.

These were in truth faces by no means adapted to inspire confidence, these high-boned, lean, weather-beaten, sunburnt visages, with light-blue blinking eyes, of the men of Zanowitz; but I had to say to myself, as I stood by and observed them one by one, that the face of my old friend was the most unprepossessing of all. The wicked, cruel expression of his wide mouth, with thick close-shut lips, that even when he spoke scarcely moved, had never so struck me before; perhaps I saw him to-day with different eyes. For indeed, since yesterday evening, the suspicion which had repeatedly entered my mind, that old Pinnow was deeply implicated in Herr von Zehren's hazardous undertakings, had been aroused anew. In fact I had come to an almost positive conclusion that he would take an active part in the expedition on hand; and I had been much surprised to hear Klaus say that his father had ferried Christel and himself over. So, whatever his connection with Herr von Zehren might be, he was not with him this time, and that fact partially relieved my uneasiness.

The smith seemed not to have forgotten our quarrel on that evening. He steadily pretended not to see me, or turned his broad back upon me while he told the others what a quick passage he had made, and that he would not have ventured out in such weather, and with his weak eyes that grew weaker every day, had not Klaus been in such haste. And even though it should blow less hard this evening, he would rather not take back Christel with him; she could stay at his sister's, and in her place he would take some active young fellow from here on board to help him, for as for that stupid blockhead, Jacob, he could not be relied on.

The tobacco-chewing men of Zanowitz listened to him and assented, or said nothing, and did their part in thinking.

To remain on the beach with the wind driving the rain and spray into one's face, was by no means comfortable, so I turned away from the group and walked up the shore. I knew where Aunt Julchen's cottage stood, and I thought I would look in and say a few friendly words to Christel if I could. But as if he suspected my intention and was determined to thwart it, old Pinnow, with a pair of fellows of much the look of gallows-birds, came after me; so I gave up my design for the time and went through the town, and ascended the dunes, intending to cross the heath to Trantow.

I had just crossed the summit of the highest dune, which was called the white one from the peculiar brilliancy of its sand, and from which one commanded an extensive prospect up and down the shore, when I heard my name called. I turned and perceived a female figure crouching in a little hollow under the sharp ridge of the dune, upon the side that looked away from the village and the sea, and beckoning eagerly to me. To my no little surprise I recognized Christel, and at once hastened to her. When I came up, she drew me into the hollow, and intimated to me with gestures rather than words that I must sit still and keep the dog quiet.

"There is no time to be lost," she answered, "and I must tell you in two minutes. At three o'clock this morning Herr von Zehren came to see 'him;' they thought I was asleep, but I was not, because I had been crying about grandmother, and I heard everything. This evening a Mecklenburg yacht laden with silk will arrive. Herr von Zehren has gone by extra-post to R. to tell the captain, who is waiting for him there, to set sail. He will return himself with him on the yacht. Then they planned how to get the goods off the yacht; and 'he' offered, as the coast was clear, to take them off himself with his boat. Always before, the goods have been concealed in Zanowitz, and he took off such as were intended for Uselin from Zehrendorf, later, as opportunity offered. When Herr von Zehren objected that it might attract notice if he had his boat out without any apparent reason, and in such bad weather, 'he' said that Klaus had been wanting to go see his aunt before he went away, so he would take him over, and carry me along too, that there might be no possibility of suspicion. Then they called in Jock Swart, who had been waiting in the forge, and told him to come over here at once and have ready for to-night twelve of the surest men from Zehrendorf and Zanowitz, to accompany him on board--as carriers you know. Jock went, and after about a quarter of an hour Herr von Zehren went too, and then after another quarter of an hour, Jock came back again. I wondered at this, for Herr von Zehren had told him expressly and several times over, not to lose a minute, but to set out at once; but 'he' must have given him a sign, or had some previous understanding with him. Then they put their heads together and talked so softly that I could not make out what they said, but it must have been something bad, for 'he' got up once or twice and came and listened at my door to see if I was awake. Then he went away, but Jock stayed. About an hour later, just as day was beginning to break, he came back with another man--the customs-inspector Blanck. He had not his uniform on, but I knew him at once, and would have known him anyhow by his voice. So now the three whispered together, and after a little while went away. About six 'he' came back alone, and knocked at my door, for I had been afraid to come out, and asked if I was not going to get up to-day? Klaus would soon be there, he said, and we were to come over here together, and I was to bring some things with me, as very likely he would leave me here with my aunt."

While Christel was telling me this, she looked cautiously from time to time over the ridge of the dune to see if the coast was clear.

"I did not know what to do," she went on, "for I could not tell Klaus; he is like a child, and knows nothing about it all, and must not know; and I thank God he is away. I put it into his head to go and see you, for I thought very likely you would come down with him, as you did, and I wanted to tell you, if possible, to see if you could do anything. Herr von Zehren has always been so good to me, and the last time he was here said he would take care of Klaus and me, and that I need not be afraid of 'him,' for 'he' knew very well, and he had moreover told 'him,' that if he did me any harm he would shoot him dead. And since then 'he' has left me in peace; but he swears horribly at Herr von Zehren, and vows that he will be even with him, and now his plan is to bring him to the gallows."

"I can do nothing more. See if you can do anything; and do not be uneasy on my account, even if 'he' learns that it was my doing."

Her face suddenly flushed to a deep crimson; but the brave girl was determined to say all that she had to say, and she added:

"I have been talking with my aunt, and my aunt will keep me with her, and as she has a great number of friends here, he will not venture to give her any trouble. And now I must go back; run quickly down the dune; they cannot see you below there; and good-by!"

I pressed her hand and hurried down the high bare dune, which was surrounded by a number of other lesser ones confusedly heaped together and overgrown with beach-grass and broom, between which I was tolerably safe from observation. Still I kept on in a crouching attitude, and did not raise myself to an erect posture until I had gone a hundred paces or so over the heath, where concealment was no longer possible. When I looked back to the white dune, Christel was nowhere to be seen; she had evidently seized a favorable moment to slip back unobserved into the village.

CHAPTER XV.

Caro probably saw no reason, as I rather ran than walked along the narrow path leading over the heath to Trantowitz, to be more satisfied than before with his master's proceedings. I no longer spoke to him as I had been doing. I had no eye for the unfortunate hares which he routed out of their damp forms to relieve his extreme dullness of spirits, nor for the flocks of gulls that had been driven inland by the storm. I hurried on as if life and death depended upon my reaching Trantowitz five minutes earlier or later; and yet it was but too certain that Hans, when I had taken him into my confidence, would be as much at a loss as myself. But Hans von Trantow was a good fellow, and a devoted friend of Herr von Zehren, as I well knew. And then he loved Constance; for Constance's sake, even if he had no other reason, he must help me to save Constance's father, if any rescue was now possible.

And so I tore along. Under my steps jets of water sprang from the marshy soil into which I often sank to the ankles; the rain dashed into my face, and the gulls screamed as they wheeled above my head.

From Zanowitz to Trantow was a half-hour's journey, but it seemed to me an age before I reached the house, a bald and desolate-looking building even in the sunshine, and now doubly forlorn and cheerless in the rain. In front of the one-storied dwelling with its eight tall poplars, whose slender summits were wildly swaying in the storm, stood Granow's hunting-wagon and horses. That detestable fellow was there, then; but no matter for that; I must speak with Hans von Trantow alone, if I had first to pitch Herr von Granow out of the door.

Entering, I found the gentlemen at breakfast; a couple of empty bottles on the table showed that they had been sitting there some time already. Granow changed color at my entrance. It is probable that with my heated and agitated face, my clothes saturated with rain, and my hunting-boots covered with the sand of the dunes and the mud of the moor, I presented a rather startling appearance, and the little man had not, in reference to me, the clearest conscience in the world. Trantow, without rising at my entrance, reached a chair and drew it up to the table, then gave me his hand, and nodded his head towards the bottles and the dishes. His good-natured face was already very red, and his great blue eyes rather glassy; it was plain that the empty bottles were to be set chiefly to his account.

"You have certainly not been out shooting in this horrible weather?" asked Herr von Granow, with sudden friendliness, and politely placed bread, butter, and ham before me, which, in spite of all my anxiety, I attacked with energy, for I was nearly famished, and the hot air of the room had given me a sensation of faintness.

"We have been sitting here these two hours," he went on, "and were just deliberating how we should spend the day. I proposed cards, but Hans will not play; he says he means to give it up. Gambling is a vice, he says."

"Only when he wins, you understand," said Granow, laughing at his own wit. "He considers it vicious to take from other people the money which they very likely need. He has no need of money himself; have you Hans?"

"There, you hear him yourself; he has got no use for it. He must marry, that's the thing for him; then he will find out a use for his money. We were just now talking about it."

Hans's red face took a somewhat deeper shade, and he cast a shy look at me. It struck me that I had myself been one of the subjects of their conversation.

"I mean that this is what you told me yourself the day before yesterday," I answered. "You even mentioned names; but it can't be managed; it really can't, although Herr von Granow has considered the matter from every side."

I uttered the last words in an ironical tone, turning to Hans as I spoke. Hans, whose head was never particularly clear, could catch no glimpse of my meaning at all; but Herr von Granow understood me perfectly.

"A jest should not be taken more seriously than it is meant," he said, pouring himself out a glass of wine with a hand that visibly shook.

"Or better, one should not venture to jest upon certain subjects at all," I retorted, following his example.

"I am old enough not to need any admonitions from you," said the little man, with a pitiful attempt to assume an intimidating tone.

"And yet you have not yet learned to bridle your tongue," I replied, looking him steadily in the face.

"It seems you intend to insult me, young man," he cried, setting down hastily the glass of which he had only tasted.

"Enough!" exclaimed the little man, pushing back his chair and rising; "I will bear these insults no longer. I will have satisfaction, if this gentleman is entitled to be dealt with in that way."

"My father is a respectable officer in the customs," I answered; "my grandfather was a minister, and so was my great-grandfather. Yours was a shepherd, was he not?"

"We shall meet again," cried the little man, rushing out of the room, banging the door after him. In another moment we heard his carriage rattling over the pavement of the court.

CHAPTER XVI.

"Now, what is the meaning of all this?" asked Hans, who had never moved from his chair during the whole scene.

"It means," I replied, "that Herr von Granow is a blackguard who has had the audacity to defame a lady whom we both respect, in a manner which deserves far more serious treatment; but besides this, I wanted to get him away--I must speak to you. You must help me--you must help him----"

I did not know how to begin, and in my excitement I strode wildly up and down the room.

"Drink off half a bottle at once," said Hans, meditatively; "that is a specific for clearing the brain."

But without having recourse to this specific, I was presently calm enough to tell him what it was that so agitated me. I related to him everything from the beginning; my first suspicion of Herr von Zehren, which had been completely lulled until Granow's loquacity had aroused it again; then Herr von Zehren's half admission of the previous evening, and the circumstances of his departure--keeping silent, however, about the letter of the steuerrath, which was not my secret--and then my exploration in the cellar this morning, and finally Christel's disclosure. I wound up by saying: "Herr von Trantow, I do not know what you think of his conduct, but I know that you have a great regard for him, and that," I added, coloring, "you deeply respect Constance, Fräulein von Zehren. Help me if you can. I am resolved to risk everything rather than let him fall into the snare which clearly has been set for him."

Von Trantow's cigar had gone out while I was speaking, nor had he made the slightest attempt to re-kindle it--an evidence of the rapt attention with which he was listening to my statement. As soon as I paused, he stretched out his great hand to me over the table, and was about to say something, but perceived that both our glasses were empty, so replenished them instead, and leaning back in his chair, sank into the profoundest meditation.

"I do not think it probable," I proceeded, warmed by his speechless sympathy, "that they will capture him; for I am convinced that he will defend himself to the last extremity."

"But to think of their bringing him to trial, of their throwing him into prison? Herr von Trantow, shall we suffer that, if we can prevent it? Only yesterday he told me how one of his ancestors, also named Malte, when a prisoner in Uselin, was rescued by the strong arm, and at the sword's point, by one of yours, named Hans like yourself, upon a message brought by a faithful squire. The whole story has come round again. I am the faithful squire, and you and I will cut him out as they did then."

"That we will!" cried Hans, smiting the table with his heavy fist so that the bottles and glasses rang. "If they shut him up, we will blow up the prison."

"We must never let it get to that point," I said, smiling involuntarily, despite my anxiety at Hans's blind zeal. "We must warn him beforehand; we must get to him before anything happens; we must frustrate the whole plan founded upon Pinnow's and Jock's villainous treachery. But how? How can it be done?"

We--or rather I, for Hans contented himself with playing the attentive listener, and incessantly replenishing my glass, with the view, apparently, of assisting my invention--designed a hundred plans, of which each was less practicable than the previous one, until I hit upon the following scheme, which, like all the others, had the fullest and promptest adhesion of the good Hans.

If their plan was to seize Herr von Zehren flagrante delicto, as Christel's revelation indicated, it was most probable that, as was their usual plan of operations in similar cases, they had laid an ambush for him. This ambush could only be posted upon a road that he must of necessity take, or upon one to which he was purposely enticed. In the latter case we could form no conjectures of its disposition; but in the former we might assume with tolerable assurance that the ambush would be stationed in the neighborhood of the castle. In every event our aim must be to reach him as soon as possible. But to effect this but one plan was practicable; we must set out at once with Pinnow, and as he was not likely to take us voluntarily as passengers, we must be prepared to compel him to it. How this was precisely to be done, we could leave to chance; the all-important thing was that we should be in Zanowitz at the right time. Pinnow would certainly not sail before night-fall, as the smuggler-yacht would unquestionably come in under cover of the darkness, and then would approach as near the shore as possible. When we were once on board, it would be time to think about the rest.

We next took another point into consideration. That our scheme was not to be accomplished without force, both Hans and I were thoroughly aware. Nothing could be done with guns in the darkness, nor would cutlasses or hunting-knives be sufficient against Pinnow and his men, who all carried knives. We must trust to pistols.

Hans had a pair; but one pair was not sufficient. I remembered that there was another pair hanging in Herr von Zehren's chamber, and these we must get. I thought little of Constance's prohibition from entering the house before her father's return; here were heavier interests at stake; this was a matter of life and death. Indeed it was a question if it would not be judicious to give Fräulein von Zehren a hint at least of the state of affairs; but we concluded not to do so, as she could not possibly help us, and would only be alarmed to no purpose. But we thought it prudent to take into our counsel old Christian, who could be relied upon in any case. We could arrange a pre-concerted signal with him, a light in one of the gable windows, or something of that sort, by which he could let us know at a distance, in case we got back unmolested to Zehrendorf, whether the coast was clear about the castle.

By the time we had got so far with our deliberations, it I was two o'clock, and we had until dusk at least three hours, which were to be got through with with as much patience as we could muster--a hard task for me, who was in a burning fever of impatience. Hans showed himself the most amiable of hosts. He brought out his best cigars and his best wine; he was more talkative than I had ever known him; the prospect of an adventure of so serious a character as that which we had in view, seemed to have had the good effect of arousing him out of his usual apathy. He recounted the simple story of his life: how he had early lost his parents, how he had been sent to a boarding-school at the provincial capital, where he was prepared for the gymnasium, in which he remained until his seventeenth year and rose to the fourth class. Then he became a farmer; took his estate in hand as soon as he was of age, and had been living upon it six years--he was now in his thirtieth--quietly and placidly, using his weapons only against the creatures of the forest and the field, raising his wheat, shearing his sheep, smoking his cigars, drinking his wine, and playing his cards. There was but one romantic feature in all his prosaic life, and that was his love for Constance. It was in the year that he came to live upon his estate, that she came back to her father; and to see Constance, to love her, and to love her still more devotedly long after he had been convinced of the hopelessness of his passion, to drown this hopeless passion in wine, so far as was in his power--this was the poor fellow's fate. He accepted it with perfect resignation, convinced that he was not the man to make his own fortune, any more than he had been able, when at school, to do his own exercises. Why and for whom should he plague himself with work? He had all that he wanted in the present, and there was no future for him to look forward to. He was the last of his race, and had not even a kinsman in the world. When he died, his estate, as a lapsed fief, reverted to the crown. The crown then might see what was to be done with the ruined barns and stables and with the dilapidated house. He let decay and weather work their will. He only needed a room, and in this room we were now sitting, while Hans went on with his recital in his monotonous way, and the rain beating against the low windows kept up a melancholy accompaniment.

A conversation in which there was a continual reference to Constance, even if her name was not actually mentioned, had a strangely painful charm for me. Although Hans did not breathe a syllable of complaint against the fair girl, it was plain from his story that she had at first encouraged his bashful attentions, and only altered her behavior to him after her meeting with Prince Prora at the watering-place two years before. And Hans was evidently not the only one who had received encouragement. Karl von Sylow, Fritz von Zarrentin--in a word, almost every one of the young noblemen who formed Herr von Zehren's circle of acquaintance, had earlier or later, with greater or less right, held himself to be the favored one. Even Granow, although from the first he was made the butt of his companions, might boast that he was favorably looked upon by the young lady during the earlier months of his residence; indeed Hans still considered Granow's chance by no means desperate, for the little man was very rich, and she would only marry a rich man, he added, with a deep sigh, as he filled his glass once more.

At Hans's last words I sprang from the table and threw open the window. I felt as if I must suffocate, or as if the low ceiling with its bent beams would fall in upon me.

"Not at this moment," I said. But one of those thick fogs of which several had passed over in the course of the day, was drifting in from the sea.

"Real smugglers' weather," said Hans. "The old man ought to be ashamed of himself to drag his friends out on such a day. But that cannot be helped. Shall we not drink another bottle? It will be cursedly cold to-night."

I said I thought we had already drunk more than enough, and that it was high time to start.

"Then I will get ready," said Hans, and went into his chamber, where I for a long time heard him rummaging among his water-boots.

I had always considered myself pretty cool in moments of danger; but in Hans I had met my master. While he was overhauling the things in his room, I heard him through the half-open door whistling to himself as cheerily as if we were going out to shoot hares, instead of an adventure of life and death. To be sure, I said to myself, his is a case of hopeless love, and Herr von Zehren is merely a friend, neighbor, and equal, whom he feels it his duty to assist against the hated police. That Hans, in combating for a cause that did not really concern him, was doing much more, or at least acting far more disinterestedly than I, did not occur to me.

And now he came out of his room, if not the wildest of all wild warriors, yet in appearance one who would be very appropriately selected for an adventure that demanded a strong and bold man. His long legs were incased in immense boots; over a close-fitting jacket of silk he had put on a loose woollen overcoat, which he probably wore when hunting in winter, and which could be drawn close with a belt or allowed to hang loose, as at present, he having buckled the belt under it around the jacket, and thrust his pistols into the belt. With a jolly laugh he displayed his equipment and asked me if I would not have an overcoat also, as he had another; an offer which I gladly accepted.

"We look like two brothers," said Hans; and in fact we might easily have been mistaken for brothers, as we both had the same stature and breadth of shoulders, and were dressed almost precisely alike.

"A half-dozen to each of us, or so," I said, and laughed; but I was very far from a mirthful feeling as we closed the door after us, and Caro, whom we had left behind, broke out into a dismal howling and whining. Poor Caro, he was in the right that morning when he reminded me with his woebegone looks that we should never praise the day until the evening.

CHAPTER XVII.

It was four o'clock when we set out, and already it was growing dusk as we took the foot-path through the stubble-field to Zehrendorf. No clear judgment of the weather was to be drawn from the appearance of the sky and clouds, as the whole atmosphere was filled with watery mist, through which every object took a singularly strange and unnatural appearance. We pushed on rapidly, sometimes side by side and sometimes in single file, for the path was narrow and very slippery from the incessant rains. We were just deliberating what we should say to Constance, in case we should unfortunately meet her, when we saw upon the road bordered with willows, which was but a few hundred paces distant from the foot-path, a carriage drawn by two horses coming from the castle in such haste that in less than half a minute it had vanished in the mist, and we could only hear the trampling of the galloping horses and the rattling of the carriage over the broken causeway. Hans and I looked at each other in astonishment.

I did not answer. I could not tell Hans of the letter that proved the direct or indirect complicity of the steuerrath, nor explain how likely it was that he would attempt to warn his brother that the affair had taken a wrong turn. What information could he have brought? Might it still be of service to the unfortunate man whose movements were dogged by treachery?

"Let us hasten all we can," I cried, pressing on without waiting for Hans's answer, and Hans, who was a capital runner, followed closely upon my heels.

In a few minutes we had reached the gate which opened on this side into the court. At the gate was a stone-bench for the accommodation of persons waiting until the gate was opened, and upon this bench sat or rather lay old Christian, with blood trickling down his wrinkled face from a fresh wound in the forehead. As we came up he seemed to be recovering from a partial swoon, and stared at us with a confused look. We raised him up, and Hans caught some water in his hollow hand from a neighboring rain-spout and sprinkled it in his face. The wound was not deep, and seemed to have been inflicted with some blunt instrument.

"What has happened, Christian?" I had already asked half-a-dozen times, before the old man had recovered his senses sufficiently to answer feebly:

"What has happened? She is off; and he struck me over the head with the butt of his whip as I was trying to shut the gate."

I had heard enough. Like some furious animal I rushed to the house. The doors were all standing open: the front door, that of the dining-room, and that of Herr von Zehren's chamber. I ran in, as I heard hammering and rattling inside. Old Pahlen was kneeling before Herr von Zehren's escritoire, scolding furiously to herself while trying her best, with a hatchet and crowbar, to force the lock. She had not heard me enter. With one jerk I dragged her to her feet; and she started back and glared at me with looks flaming with impotent rage. Her gray hair hung in elf-locks from under her dirty cap, and in her right hand she still clutched the hatchet. The horrible old woman, whose vile nature was now openly shown, was a hideous object to behold; but I was not in a frame of mind to be checked by any sight, however repulsive.

"Where has she gone?" I thundered at her. "You must know, for you helped her off."

"Ay, that I did," screamed the old hag, "that I did; and may Satan fetch my soul for doing it! The thankless, worthless creature promised to take me with her, and now leaves me here with shame and abuse in this robber's den; but she'll live yet to come to it herself when he flings her out into the street, the----"

"Another word, woman, and I strike you to the floor," I cried, raising my fist threateningly.

The old woman burst into a screech of laughter. "Now he begins!" she cried. "And didn't they make a fine fool of him, the stupid blockhead! Thought he was the man, to be sure, while the other one was with her every night. Lets himself be sent out of the way, for the other to come in his coach and carry off the pretty lady." And the old wretch burst again into a screech of horrible laughter.

"Be that as it may," I said, struggling to keep down the rage and anguish that were tearing my heart, "you have been rightly served, at all events; and if you do not want me to have you hounded off the place for a thief, as you are, you had better take yourself off at once."

"Oh, indeed!" screamed the hag, planting her arms a-kimbo, "he carries matters here with a high hand, to be sure! I a thief, indeed! I only want my money. I have had for this half-year no wages from the whole beggarly lot, the smuggling gang!"

She had received from me, during the two months of my stay at Zehrendorf, more than her whole year's service could amount to; and I had myself seen Herr von Zehren pay her wages but a few days before, and add a handsome present besides.

The old woman caught up the hatchet, but she well knew that she could not intimidate me. So she retreated before me out of the room, and out of the house, screaming out all the time the vilest abuse and the most furious threats against Herr von Zehren, Constance, and myself. I closed the great gate after her with my own hands, and then looked for Hans, who was just coming out of the lodge, into which he had been taking old Christian.

Hans was deathly pale, and did not look at me as he came to my side. He had heard enough from old Christian to make it unnecessary for him to seek from me any further particulars of Constance's abduction; and he probably did not care to let me see how hard the blow had struck him, which hurled into the mire the image of his idolatry, and so cruelly destroyed his solitary illusion, the last glimmer of poetry in his cheerless life. I seized his hand and wrung it hard.

"Excellent!" I replied, with a forced laugh; "if he had carried her off by force; but as it seems she went with him quite willingly--come on; the thing is not worth thinking over a moment longer."

"Then saddle Herr von Zehren's bay and ride after him," I said; "but we must come to a decision at once."

"Ride after the rascal and punish him, if you want to," I cried, "I am perfectly satisfied. But whatever is to be done must be done at once."

"Then I will!" said Hans, and went with long strides to the stable, where he knew Herr von Zehren's horse stood, a powerful hunter, but now past his prime, and much neglected of late since Herr von Zehren had given up riding.

There was on the place a half-grown youth who did odd jobs, and was much cuffed about by the others. He came up now and said that Jock had been there an hour before and taken with him Karl, who was cutting straw in the barn-loft, and Hanne, who was sitting in the lodge, and so he was left to do Karl's work. Of what else befell, he in his dark loft had seen and heard nothing.

To entrust to this simple, scarcely more than half-witted youth the part which Christian should have taken in our plan would have been folly; but as he was an honest fellow, we could trust him to take care of the old man and keep guard over the house. I ordered him to go the rounds from time to time with the dog, whom I unchained, and under no pretext whatever to let in the old hag whom I had driven off the place, and from whom I expected mischief. Fritz promised to observe my orders faithfully. Then I hastily caught down Herr von Zehren's pistols, which were hanging, loaded, against the wall.

When I came out into the court again, I saw Hans just galloping out of the gate. A wild jealousy seized me. Why could I not be at his side? The composure, the indifference, which I had just exhibited--all was mere sham; I had but a single desire, to revenge myself on him and on her; but I must leave it to Hans; he had loved her for six years!

Thus I raged in spirit as I hastened at a rapid rate through the fields and meadows, and finally across the heath to Zanowitz. Strive as I might to fix my thoughts upon the immediate exigency, they perpetually reverted to what had just taken place. A weight as of a mountain lay upon my heart. I remember more than once I stood still and shrieked aloud to the gray, cloudy sky. When I reached the dunes, however, the necessity of devising some definite plan of operations brought me back to my senses.

The weather had somewhat cleared up in the meantime, and the wind had hauled; the rain had ceased, and the fog had lifted; there was more light than an hour before, although the sun had set by this time. Looking down from the height of the dunes upon Zanowitz I saw the dark sea, where the waves were still tumbling, though not so heavily as in the morning, cutting with a sharp horizontal line against the bright sky. I could still distinguish, though with difficulty, the larger vessel in the roadstead, but could clearly make out the row of boats drawn up to the beach, as well as a little yawl that came rowing towards a group of men assembled on the strand. If these were the last of Pinnow's party I had not a minute to spare.

It was also possible that this group of dark figures might be functionaries of the custom-house; but I was satisfied that the probability of this being the case, was but small. Zanowitz was crowded with smugglers, and Pinnow could hardly venture upon open treachery. Not that any attempt would have been made to resist by violence an expedition of the officials conducted by him; but from the moment in which he appeared in that capacity, he would be marked out for vengeance, and his life would not be worth an hour's purchase. However the treachery might have been concocted, the traitors had assuredly taken care to conceal their own share in it from all other eyes.

But I had no time for much consideration on these points; and indeed did not pause to reflect, but ran down the dunes. As I neared the group a man came out from it and advanced to meet me. He had turned up the wide collar of his pea-jacket, and pulled the brim of his sou'-wester as far as possible over his face, but I recognized him at once.

"I am glad to have met you," I went on; "I heard this morning that it was possible you might sail for Uselin this evening, and I wanted to ask you to take me along with you."

"You will have to take me, whether you like it or not," I proceeded. "I have made every preparation for the trip. Look here," and I threw back my overcoat and drew one of my pistols half out of my belt, "they are both loaded."

"Shall I try them on you to see if they are loaded or not?" I asked, drawing one from my belt and cocking it.

I lowered the hammer of the pistol, replaced it in my belt, and then walked on Pinnow's right, keeping a little behind him. Presently I said:

"Do not expect to find any protection among the men down there. I will keep close to your side, and upon the first word you let fall, tending to raise them against me, you are a dead man. How many have you already on board?"

"Ten men," muttered Pinnow. "But I do not know what you want with me; go with us or stay behind as you please; what the devil do you suppose I care?"

We now joined the group, which consisted of my long friend Jock, the men Karl and Hanne, and the deaf and dumb Jacob who had rowed the yawl over.

"He is going with us," said Pinnow, laconically, to his men, as he lent a hand himself to push off the yawl.

I thought that I perceived a look of alarmed surprise pass over the brutal features of Jock at seeing us. He looked at his accomplice for an explanation of the mystery, but Pinnow was busy with the yawl. The two others were standing apart; they evidently did not know what to make of it all.

"Very good," I said. "You, Karl and Hanne, go home and keep perfectly quiet, do you hear?"

"One step from the spot," I cried, levelling the pistol at his head, "and you have stood on your long legs for the last time. Get on board!"

We had about twenty minutes rowing before we reached the cutter, for the surf was heavy, and the cutter was anchored pretty far out on account of her deep draught. This frustrated a plan which occurred to me at the last moment, namely, to put the whole party on shore, and go out to the yacht with Pinnow and Jock alone. But I saw that in the rowing back and forwards that would be necessary, at least an hour would be lost, and it was all-important to have speech of Herr von Zehren as speedily as possible. What might not happen in an hour?

We reached the cutter that was dancing at her anchor upon the waves, like an impatient horse tugging at his halter. We pulled alongside, and I sprang on board among the dark figures.

"Good evening, men," I said. "I am going along with you. Some of you know me, and know that I am a good friend of Herr von Zehren; and besides, Pinnow and Jock Swart will answer for me."

The two that I named accepted the sponsorship by their silence; but I believe that it was unnecessary. I had often been with Herr von Zehren in Zanowitz--indeed we had been there but the day before--and had probably occasionally spoken with every one of the men. They all knew my intimate association with him, and could see nothing remarkable that I should take part in an expedition made for the account of one who was to a certain extent my patron as he was theirs. No one answered me--these people were not in the habit of wasting speech--but they willingly received me among them. My impression that Pinnow and Jock Swart were the only traitors, was confirmed. So in every sense he was now in my power. If I told the men what I knew, the two accomplices would probably have flown overboard; for the Zanowitz men were not to be trifled with in these matters.

"Do what you please," he muttered, putting a quid of tobacco into his wide mouth.

Although Christel's information was so positive, a doubt came over me as I marked the imperturbable calmness of the man who knew that his life was every moment at risk. Had Christel's hearing deceived her in her excitement? Had the good Hans and I unnecessarily mixed ourselves up with this lawless crew, who were plying, in darkness and mist, their perilous trade?

By this time the cutter, a capital sailer, was flying through the waves. The sky had grown much clearer; there was still light enough to see pretty plainly at two or three hundred yards distance. But it was bitter cold, and the surf that dashed, often in heavy masses, over the deck, by no means added to the comfort of the situation. The small craft was crowded with the fourteen men that were on board. Wherever one looked, there lay or crouched a dark figure. Pinnow sat at the helm. As I kept my post at his side, and had thus an opportunity to watch him closely, I grew more dubious with every minute whether there was not some mistake in the whole affair. There sat the broad-shouldered man, moving not a muscle of his face, except when from time to time he slowly turned his quid from one cheek into the other, or fixed his sharp eyes upon the sails, or turned them out to sea. When we tacked, a manœuvre which was performed almost every minute, and he called "Luff!" for us to stoop and let the boom pass over our heads, his voice rang always firm and clear. Was it possible that a traitor could have so sure a hand, so sharp an eye, and could chew his tobacco with such equanimity?

"We may come up with her at any moment," Pinnow growled; "and very likely we may see nothing at all of her."

"If they should have caught sight of one of the coastguard boats, they would stand out to sea again."

"For the last time I tell you that I do not know what you want. The foolish wench Christel, I suppose, has made you believe that I am playing false; but she is more likely to have done it herself. I should be sorry if she gave up her old foster-father in order to get rid of him; but what will such a wench not do?"

These words, that the smith grumbled out in his surly way, made a strong impression upon me. Had I not but an hour before had proof what a girl would do to carry out her will? And Pinnow was only her foster-father. Could she have invented a plausible tale to set Herr von Zehren and myself against the old man? Could she have herself perpetrated the treachery that she ascribed to him, and have given the information to the officers, in order in this way to be rid of one whom she had good reason for wishing out of the way? And had her conscience smitten her at the last moment, when she reflected that his ruin would involve that of Herr von Zehren, to whom she owed a debt of gratitude? Was her story to me but an attempt to save him through my means?

I admit that a minute's calm reflection would have sufficed to convince me of the extreme improbability of this idea; but how could I calmly reflect in the situation and in the frame of mind in which I then was?

A wild merriment seized me, and I laughed aloud. Was it not a thing to laugh at, that of us two conspirators, Hans was galloping after the pretty pair over the wretched road through mist and drizzle, without the shadow of a reasonable ground for such a race; and was it not just as ridiculous, that I, who with such extravagant zeal and blindness, had been running from the morning until now, through storm and rain, tortured by countless anxieties, was a mere puppet, moved by a string whose end was held by two girls' hands, the one of which I, in my gratitude, had passionately kissed, and the other at least pressed cordially. Truly it would have been better if we had both stayed by our bottle in the warm room.

"Look there!" said Pinnow, touching my shoulder, while at the same moment he gave the word, "Luff!" in a peculiar, long-drawn, suppressed tone.

I perceived at but a few hundred yards distance a trimly-rigged schooner of moderate size, and I recognized at a glance one of the vessels of the coast-guard, named the Lightning. I had too often been on board her, and had sketched her too often under every possible arrangement of sails, to be deceived in her.

At the same moment that the cutter went about, the Lightning also altered her course and bore down on us.

My heart seemed to stop beating; my hand lay on the butt of my pistol. If Pinnow laid the cutter to, his treachery was proven.

"Boat ahoy!" came their hail for the third time, and almost in the same moment there was a flash on board the Lightning, and the report of a musket, deadened by the distance and the plashing of the waves, reached my ear.

I took my hand from the pistol. There was now no doubt that Pinnow was doing his utmost to escape the pursuing vessel. My heart leaped with joy; the man at my side, of whom I had once been so fond, though he had never deserved my affection, was at all events no traitor. What would I have done if I had known that this was all a carefully arranged plan, in carrying out which the cold-blooded old villain was not in the least disturbed by my clumsy interference; that this meeting with the schooner was preconcerted in order to lead the latter upon the right track? That the flight and pursuit were merely feigned, to conceal the treachery from the other smugglers, and that the three or four blank cartridges that were fired from the schooner had the same object? What would I have done if I had known all this? Well for me that I did not know it; at least no blood of a fellow-creature cleaves to my hand.

CHAPTER XVII.

The cutter now flew gallantly along under a press of canvass that laid her lee-bulwarks nearly under water, while the Lightning fell astern, and in brief time was lost to our sight.

A sort of life had come into the silent and almost motionless crew of the cutter. They raised their heads and exchanged remarks upon the incident, which to them was nothing so unusual. Every one of these men had at some time or other been brought into dangerous contact with the revenue service. The liberty, and possibly the life of every man there had at some time or other hung by a single thread. So no one exhibited any special excitement, but Smith Pinnow least of all. He sat at the helm just as before, casting keen glances at the sails and into the dusk, chewing his tobacco, and otherwise not moving a muscle. He did not say a word to me, as if it was not worth the while of an old sea dog to speak to so young a fellow about things which he did not understand. I felt a dryness in my throat that compelled me to cough once or twice, and I buttoned my overcoat closer over my pistols.

And now another vessel loomed through the dusk, and this time it was the long-looked-for yacht, a tolerably large craft, with but a single sail, but a full deck. In a few minutes we were alongside of her, and immediately the bales of goods, which were all in readiness, were lowered from the deck of the yacht, and taken on board by the crew of the cutter, who were now alert enough in their movements. The whole went on with extraordinary silence; hardly now and then could be heard a suppressed exclamation, or an order uttered half aloud in the gruff voice of the captain of the yacht.

I was one of the first to board the yacht, but I looked around in vain for Herr von Zehren. I was already congratulating myself that he was not on board, when he suddenly emerged from the hatchway that led to the cabin. His first glance fell upon me, and he came towards me with an unsteady gait, caused, as I supposed, by the motion of the vessel.

"And what in the devil's name has brought you here?" he cried with a hoarse voice; but I had no time to give him any explanation. The cutter had now all her lading on board, and the captain of the yacht coming up, said, "Now, be off with you!" He had just learned that a revenue schooner was about, and had no desire to risk his vessel and the rest of his cargo. "Be off!" he repeated, in a rough tone.

"We'll see about it," said the captain, and sprang to the helm, for the yacht, which had already weighed her anchor, and whose mainsail was now half-mast high, began to come round to the wind.

A scene of confusion followed. The yacht's manœuvre had been performed without any consideration for the cutter alongside, and came very near sinking our little craft. There was a burst of oaths on both sides, a tremendous grinding and cracking, a perilous leap from the deck of the yacht to that of the cutter, and we pushed off, while the yacht, which had already caught the wind, went on her course with full sails.

All this had taken place so rapidly, and, besides, the bustle and confusion of such a number of men on so small a craft, as they set the sails and stowed the cargo in the fore-hold, were so great, that some time passed ere I could get to Herr von Zehren's side.

He was still swearing at the villain of a captain, the coward who was running from a miserable revenue-schooner that he could run down and sink in five minutes. Catching sight of me he asked again, "What has brought you here?"

I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer this question. My suspicion of Pinnow had entirely vanished, and Pinnow sat close beside us at the helm and heard the question put in a loud tone. I contented myself with saying:

"Misfortune!" he cried. "Stupidity, cowardice, that is the only misfortune! The devil take the stupid poltroons!"

He sat down by Pinnow and talked with him in an undertone. Then turning to me, he said:

"You sent two of the men home; you should not have interfered with them. I need their services; every back is now worth a thousand thalers to me. Or did you propose to carry a pack yourself?"

He said this in an irritated tone that roused my indignation. If I had acted injudiciously, I had done all for the best; and to be rebuked for my faithful service in the presence of Pinnow, it was too much. I had a sharp answer at my tongue's end, but I gulped down my anger and went forward.

He did not call me back; he did not come after me to say a friendly word as he had always before done, whenever in his hastiness he had wounded my feelings. Presently I heard him rating two of the men in a shrill voice, for what, I could not understand; but this shrill tone which I had never before heard from him, told me at once that what I had feared was the truth; he was intoxicated.

A horrible feeling of disgust and wretchedness came over me. For the sake of this man, who was gesticulating there like a maniac, I had done what I had; for his sake I was here among this abandoned crew as accomplice of a crime which from boyhood had always seemed to me one of the most detestable; for his sake I had well-nigh become a murderer. And even now I had in my pocket my father's letter, in which the old man had given me such a solemn warning, and commanded me, if I had any regard for his peace, to return to him immediately.

I felt for the letter, and my hand came in contact with the pistols in my belt. I felt a strange impulse, here upon the spot, in the midst of the smuggler-gang, and before the eyes of their drunken leader, to blow out my brains. At this moment I thought of the good Hans who was risking himself for a cause that was not a whit better. And yet he may thank heaven, I said to myself, that he is not on this expedition.

"Boat ahoy!" suddenly rang over the water as before, and the Lightning again loomed out of the dusk, and a couple of shots were fired.

This was the signal for a chase which lasted probably an hour, during which the cutter, while seeming to make every effort, by countless dexterous and daring evolutions, to escape her pursuer, drew ever nearer and nearer to that part of the coast which had been agreed upon between Pinnow and the officers, about half a mile above Zanowitz, where the depth of the water would allow her to run almost immediately upon the beach. From here one could proceed to Zehrendorf by a wagon-road which ran along the strand to Zanowitz, and from there over the heath; or one could go directly across the heath; but in the latter case there was a large and very dangerous morass to be crossed, which could only be done by secret paths known to the smugglers alone. It was ten to one that Herr von Zehren would choose the way over the moor instead of that along the coast, from the spot to which the cutter had apparently been driven.

While the chase lasted, I did not move from the spot in which I was, fully determined to take no active part in the affair, happen what might. Herr von Zehren made my passive part an easy one; often as he came near me, he never once took any notice of me. During this hour of excitement his intoxication seemed to have increased; his behavior was that of a raging madman. He shrieked to Pinnow to run the schooner down; he returned the fire of the officers with one of Pinnow's old guns, which he had found in the cabin, although the Lightning prudently kept at a distance which would have been too great for even a rifle of long range; and as the cutter, after a long tack out to sea, on which she distanced the schooner, stood in again and reached the shore unmolested, he leaped out into the shallow water, and his men had all to follow him, after each had been loaded with one of the heavy packs which were made up for this purpose. There were eleven carriers in all, as Pinnow offered the services of the boatmen he had brought from Zanowitz, saying that he could get along with the deaf and dumb Jacob alone; and thus the place of one of the two men whom I had sent home was filled. But there still remained a twelfth pack, which lay upon the deck, and would have been left, as there was no one to carry it, had I not managed to get it on my shoulders by laying it on the gunwale of the boat, and then springing into the surf, which reached to my knees. I was resolved that if I parted from Herr von Zehren that night, he should not be able to say that I had caused him the loss of a twelfth part of his property, won with so much toil and care, with the risk of the liberty, and lives of so many men, and at the price of his own honor.

A boisterous laugh resounded behind me as I left the cutter. It came from Pinnow; he knew what he was laughing about. The cutter, lightened of her lading, was now afloat, and as I gained the beach and turned, she was slowly standing out to sea. He had done his shameful work.

At this moment it flashed upon me, "He is a traitor, after all!" I do not know whether it was his laugh of malicious triumph that again aroused my suspicion, or what suggested the thought, but I said to myself, as I closed the file which was headed by Herr von Zehren and Jock Swart, "Now it will soon be decided."

CHAPTER XVIII.

We had passed the dunes, and were marching in single file across the sandy waste land on the other side. No word was spoken; each man had enough to do in carrying his heavy pack; I perhaps the most of all, although none of the men, unless it might be Jock Swart, equalled me in strength; but in such things practice is everything. And then in addition to my pack, which probably weighed a hundred-weight, I bore another burden from which the others were free, and which pressed me far more heavily--the burden of shame that my father's son was bending under this bale of silk, of which the revenue was defrauded, because I would not cause a loss of property to the man whose bread I had been eating for two months. And then I thought with what happiness my heart beat high when I left Zehrendorf in the morning, and that I was now returning deceived by the daughter, insulted by the father, contaminated by the defilement of the base traffic to which I had lent myself, and that this was the end of my visionary splendors, of my adored liberty! But the end had not yet come.

Without a moment's rest we kept on, the wet sand crunching under our feet, when of a sudden a word was given at the head of the file and passed on in an under-tone from man to man until it came to me, who being the last could pass it no further--"Halt!"

We had reached the edge of the moor. It could be entered on this side only by a narrow strip which was passable; then came a stretch of dry land, a sort of island, surrounded by the morass on every side, which closed in again at its opposite extremity, perhaps two thousand paces distant, and there was again only a narrow path which a heavily laden man could pass without sinking into the morass. After this came the heath, which extended from the lands of Trantowitz and Zehrendorf on one side to the dunes of Zanowitz on the other, and which I had already crossed three times to-day.

The place where we halted was the same where I had stood with Granow three evenings before. I recognized it by two willows which grew on the edge of the hollow from which I had first seen the band of night-prowlers emerge. This hollow lay now a little to our left, at perhaps fifty paces distance; and I could not have distinguished the willows in the increased darkness, but for the extraordinary keenness of my sight. On account of this darkness the men had to close up in order not to deviate from the narrow path, and this was the reason that a momentary halt had been ordered.

But it was only for a moment, and again we struck into the moor upon the narrow causeway: to the right and left among the rushes gleamed a pale phosphorescent light from the stagnant water which lay around in great pools, and the ground on which we were treading oscillated in a singular manner, as we crossed it in a sort of trot.

The path had been safely passed, and the men were marching more slowly, when my ear caught a clicking sound like the cocking of a gun. The sound was behind me; that I had plainly heard; and I knew besides that none of our party was armed. I stopped to listen, and again I heard the same sound; and presently I distinguished upon the spot where we had just passed, a figure emerge between the tall rushes, followed immediately by a second and a third. Without thinking to throw the heavy pack from my shoulders, and indeed without being conscious of it, I ran to the head of the file and touched Herr von Zehren, who with Jock Swart was leading the march, upon the shoulder.

"Halt! halt!" it was repeated, and half-a-dozen shots were fired in quick succession, the bullets whistling over our heads.

In an instant our whole party was scattered, as is the custom of contrabandists when they are hotly pressed, and, as in the present instance, they are not prepared, or not disposed to offer resistance. On all sides, except in the direction of our pursuers, I saw the men, who had at once cast off their packs, stealthily slipping away, some even creeping off on all-fours. In the next moment Herr von Zehren and I were alone.

Behind us we heard the ring of iron ramrods in the barrels. They were re-loading the muskets that had been fired. This gave a brief pause.

Herr von Zehren and I were standing together. "How many are there?" he asked in a whisper.

"I cannot make out," I answered, in a similar tone; "I think more are coming up. There can hardly be less than a dozen."

"Halt! Who goes there!" came again from the pursuing party, who were not more than a hundred paces off, as well as could be judged in the darkness, and again a bullet or two whistled above our heads.

He let me fairly drag him a few steps. Then suddenly he seemed to awake as from a dream, and with his old voice and old manner said to me:

"How the devil did you come by this? Off with it!" and he flung down violently the pack from my shoulders.

"Shameful!" he muttered; "shameful! But it all comes from---- My poor boy! my poor boy!"

The effect of the spirits he had drunk, to deaden as far as possible his feelings of shame, had entirely passed away. He was again all that he could be at his best moments, and at once my old love for him returned. My heart began to throb with emotion. I was again ready to give my life for him.

"Let us make haste," I said, seizing his cold hand. "It is high time, by heaven!"

"They will not venture any further up here," he replied, "even if they have a guide. One man cannot guide them all. But there is treachery at work. Did you not say something of the sort to me?"

We thus spoke in short detached sentences, while we hurried almost at a run over the open space, where the darkness, which was now intense, offered the only security--but an ample one, it is true--against pursuit. A light rain began to fall; we literally could hardly see our hands before our faces. Nothing was to be seen or heard of our pursuers.

"The blundering dolts came too late," said Herr von Zehren; "they clearly planned to catch us on the narrow path. If our rascals had not run off, we might now go on comfortably."

"If Jock Swart has betrayed us, as I would take my oath he has, they will certainly search Zehrendorf."

"Let them try it once," cried the Wild Zehren; "I will send them home with broken heads. No, no; they will not venture that, or they would have tried it long ago. At Zehrendorf we are as safe as in Abraham's bosom."

Just as he said these words there was a sudden gleam of light in the distance ahead of us, like a faint flash of lightning. Before I could frame any conjecture as to its cause, it flashed out once more, this time more vividly, and not vanishing again. The light increased every moment, rising higher and higher against the black sky with a steadily widening glare.

It was not Trantowitz; it could not be Trantowitz, that lay further to the left and much lower. At Trantowitz there were not the lofty trees whose summits I could now distinguish in the glow which burned now red and now yellow, but ever brighter and brighter.

"By heaven it is my own house!" said Herr von Zehren, He rushed forward for a few paces, and then stopping, burst into a loud laugh. It was a hideous mirth.

"This is a good joke," he said; "they are burning the old nest down. That is smoking the old fox out of his den with a vengeance."

He seemed to think that this also was the work of his pursuers. But I recalled the threats which old Pahlen had uttered when I drove her off the place. I remembered that among the rest she had said something about "the red cock crowing from the roof."

But however the fire had originated in which the old castle was now rapidly consuming, it could not have occurred at a more critical moment for the castle's master. Although we were fully a mile distant, the flames, which now towered above the gigantic trees of the park, cast their light to our very feet; and as the awful glare was caught up and reflected by the black clouds, now changing to a lurid crimson, a strange and fearful light spread over the whole region. I could clearly see Herr von Zehren's features: they were, or appeared to me of the paleness of death.

The hunt had begun already. The pursuing party, who had beset the narrow pass, and had probably no other orders than to cut us off there, were now, by the strangest accident, enabled to continue the pursuit, and they made the best use of the opportunity. Spreading out like skirmishers, without venturing too dangerously near to the morass on either side, they pressed rapidly on, rousing from their hiding-places the fugitives, some of whom were stealing across the open space to the narrow outlet, and others crouching to the earth or lurking in hollows, in hope that the pursuit would be given over. Here and there a flash pierced the dusky glow, and the report of a musket rang out; and everywhere I saw the figures of pursuers and pursued flitting through the uncertain light, and heard wild cries of "Halt!" "Stand!" and a loud halloo and laughter when one was caught.

The blood seemed frozen in my veins. To be hunted down, and shot down in this fashion, like hares at a battue!

At a rapid run we had nearly reached the outlet-pass, distinguishable to those who knew the localities by a dead oak and a clump of hazels, when I caught the gleam of musket-barrels above the bushes. It was as I had dreaded: the outlet was beset.

"I know another way," whispered Herr von Zehren. "Perhaps it will bear us, and if not----"

We turned sharply to the right and entered the tall rushes that bordered the morass. But they had already caught sight of us; there was a cry of "Halt!" and shots were fired at us; and some came rapidly running towards us.

"It must be here," said Herr von Zehren, parting the high rushes and plunging into them. I followed closely behind him.

Slowly and cautiously, crouching almost to the earth, we crept forward. It was a desperate attempt. More than once I sank to the knees in the black morass. I had made up my mind, in case I stuck fast in it, to blow out my brains.

"We shall do it yet," said Herr von Zehren in a whisper to me over his shoulder. "We have passed the worst now. I know it well. I was here after snipe last spring, and the villain Jock was with me. So: now we are through."

He pushed through the rushes, and at the same moment three men, who had separated from the rest, and must have been lying for some minutes in ambush a few paces from the outlet, sprang upon us. The foremost man was long Jock Swart.

"Dog!" hissed Herr von Zehren through his clenched teeth. He raised his pistol, and long Jock fell to the ground a dead man.

At the same moment, I also fired, and one of the others reeled and fell with a loud cry. The third shot off his piece, and ran at full speed back to the morass. The wounded man then rose to his feet and limped off with considerable celerity, but with loud cries of pain.

Herr von Zehren, in the meantime, had stepped up to the fallen man. I sprang to his side, and seized the man, who was lying on his face, by the shoulders to raise him up. As I lifted him his head fell heavily forward. A cold shudder ran through me. "My God!" I exclaimed, "he is dead!"

The body of the dead man slipped from my hand. I arose, trembling in every limb; my brain began to swim. Here stood a man with a discharged pistol in his hand; there lay another like a log upon the ground, and a red glow, as if from the open gate of hell, fell upon them both; the smoke of powder filled the air, and the rushes of the morass gave a hissing sound as of a thousand serpents.

However deeply the fearful sight and the feeling of horror with which I gazed upon it, imprinted themselves upon my memory, I remained stupefied and aghast for but a single moment. Then all other feelings were lost in the one thought: He must be saved; he must never fall into their hands! I believe I could have caught up the unhappy man in my arms and borne him off, had he resisted; but he offered no resistance. I now know that he was not flying to save his life; I now know that he would not have stirred one step from the spot, had he known that I had the leather pouch with ammunition for the pistols in my pocket; but he supposed that he was weaponless, and he was resolved not to be taken alive.

CHAPTER XIX.

At the edge of the morass, where we now were, there was a hollow, in which, among the deeper marshy spots overgrown with long reed-grass, there were higher patches, like islands, covered with thick clumps of alders, hazels, and willows. For any other, who did not know every foot of this wild region, it would have been impossible to find any way here; but the old huntsman, who was now the fox upon whose track the hounds were following hard, was not for a moment at fault either in the direction to be taken, or the pathless way that was to lead us through this wilderness. I have never been able to comprehend how a man of his age, hard pressed as he had already been, and wounded besides, as I presently learned, was able to overcome such difficulties as nearly vanquished my youthful strength. Whenever, since, I have seen an old thoroughbred, broken down under the saddle or in harness, who still, when his generous blood is roused, by his fire, his strength, and endurance, puts his younger rivals to shame, my mind reverts to the Wild Zehren in this night of terror. He burst through almost impenetrable thickets as though they were standing grain, he bounded over wide chasms like a stag, and did not check his rapid course until we came out of the hollow upon the dunes.

Here we took breath, and held a brief consultation which way we should next pursue. To our right lay Zanowitz, and could we reach it safely, certainly some friend or other would help us across the sea, or at the worst I was sailor enough to handle a sail-boat alone; but it was only too probable that the village and its vicinity were already beset with soldiers sent to capture any of the fugitives who might seek refuge there. To attempt to cross the heath between Zehrendorf and Trantowitz and reach the house of some one of Herr von Zehren's friends, would have been mere madness now that the whole sky was reddened with the still increasing conflagration, and the heath illuminated with a light that almost equalled that of day. But one chance was left us; to keep to the left along the strand as far as the promontory, there ascend the chalk-cliff in the vicinity of the ruined tower, and so reach the beech-wood of the park, which was but the continuation of the forest which bordered the coast for about eight miles.

Now for the first time I learned that he was wounded in the arm. He had not known it himself at first, and then supposed he had only struck it against some sharp projecting bough, until the increasing pain showed what was really the matter. I asked him to let me examine the wound; but he said we had no time for anything of that sort, and I had to content myself with binding up the arm as firmly as I could with his handkerchief, which indeed did but little good.

Here among the dunes I remembered for the first time that I had ammunition in my pocket, and by his direction I reloaded the pistols. A shudder came over me when he handed me his, and I touched the cold wet steel. But it was not blood, though in the red light it looked like it: it was but the moisture from the damp atmosphere still heavy with rain.

We emerged from the dunes upon the strand, in order to proceed more rapidly over the hard sand. The light was now, when apparently all the buildings were involved in the conflagration, so strong that a dull crimson glow, reflected from the reddened clouds, was thrown far out to sea. Even the lofty and steep chalk-cliffs under which we were presently passing, looked down upon us strangely in the strange light. There seemed something unearthly and awful in it; despite the considerable distance at which we were, notwithstanding that hills and woods lay between, notwithstanding that we were passing under the shelter of cliffs more than a hundred feet high, the light still reached us and smote us, as if what had been done, had been told by the earth to the heavens, and by the heavens to the sea; and earth, sky, and sea called out to us--For you there is no escape?

CHAPTER XX.

Some feeling of this kind must have been in the breast of the unhappy man at my side, for he said once or twice, as we clambered up the ravine, up which a steep path led between thick bushes from the strand to the top of the cliffs, "Thank God, it is dark here at least!"

During the ascent he had several times complained of his arm, the pain of which had now grown intolerable, and at last he was scarcely able to move forward, although I supported him as well as I could. I hoped that when we reached the top, and he had rested a little, the strength of which he had already given such extraordinary proof, would return; but no sooner had we gained the plateau than he sank fainting into my arms. True, he instantly recovered and declared that it was but a momentary weakness, and that the attack was over; but still he could hardly stand, and I was glad when I succeeded at last in getting him to the ruin, where an excavation, half filled with rubbish, between the walls, offered at least some protection from the east wind, which blew sharp and bitter cold over the ridge.

Here I begged him to sit down, while I descended the ravine, where about half-way from the top there was a tolerably abundant spring, at which we had made a short pause in our ascent, to get him some water, as he complained of a burning thirst. Fortunately, on account of the rain, I had put on in the morning the oil-skin hat which I had on at my arrival at Zehrendorf, but had not since worn, as Constance expressed such a dislike to it. This hat now served me for a bucket, and I was glad when I succeeded with some difficulty in filling it to the brim. I hurried back as fast as I was able without spilling the precious fluid, full of anxiety for the man to whom my heart drew me all the more powerfully, as calamity smote him with such terrible blows. What would become of him if he were not able soon to continue the flight? After what had happened at the edge of the morass, no exertion would be spared to take us; and that an amply sufficient force could be employed, was but too certain. The second pass had been beset by soldiers; that I had plainly seen. How long a time would elapse ere they came up here? If we were to escape, we must be at least six or eight miles from here before morning, and I thought with a shudder how he had twice fainted in my arms, and the wild words in which he had asked for water "that was not burning: it must not be burning." Perhaps he might revive after quenching his thirst. I had so firm a faith in the inexhaustibility of his strength.

Thus I tried to encourage myself as I hastened carefully to the ruin with the water in my hat, and from dread of stumbling scarcely cast a glance in the direction of the beech-wood, over which the flames were still glowing. While still at some distance, I thought I heard Herr von Zehren's voice calling my name, then resounded a shrill laugh, and as I rushed up in terror, I saw the unhappy man standing at the entrance to the excavation, his face turned to the fire, gesticulating wildly with his uninjured arm, and now pouring out execrations, now bursting into frenzied laughter, or calling for water "that was not burning." I drew him in deeper between the walls, and made him a kind of bed of the heath that grew thickly around, over which I spread my coat. Upon recovering from a brief swoon into which he again fell, he drank deeply of the water, and then thanked me in a voice the gentle tone of which singularly contrasted with his previous shrill vociferations, and deeply moved me.

"I fancied," he said, "that you too had abandoned me, and I must perish miserably here like a wounded stag. Is it not strange that the last Zehren who is worthy of the name, here, from the ancient fortress of his ancestors, now a pile of ruins, must watch the house that later generations built, consumed by the flames? How did it take fire? What do you suppose? I have many other questions to ask you, but I feel so strangely--such strange fancies pass through my head. I never felt thus before; and my arm too is very painful. I think it is all over with the Wild Zehren--all over, all over! Let me lie here, George, and die quietly. How long will it be before the fire eats its way through the subterranean passage, and the old Zehrenburg flies into the air?"

Thus reason and madness contended in his fevered brain. Now he spoke connectedly and intelligently of what was next to be done, as soon as he had recovered his strength a little, and then he suddenly saw Jock Swart lying before him on the ground, and again it was not Jock but Alfonso, the brother of his wife, whose heart his sword had pierced. And yet--and I have often reflected upon this, while pondering over the singular character of this man--these terrible memories recurring in his delirium were accompanied with no words that indicated the slightest remorse. On the contrary, they had been rightly dealt with, and so should it be with all that ventured to resist his will. If they had burned his house, all castles and villages for leagues around should be ravaged by the flames. He would see if he could not punish his vassals as he thought fit, if they dared to rise in revolt. He would chastise them until they howled for mercy. Such utterances of his haughty spirit, exalted to madness by the fever that was raging in his veins, contrasted frightfully with the utter wretchedness of our position. While in fancy he was charging through burning towns that his wrath had given to the flames, his frame was shivering with ague, and his teeth chattered audibly. The cold, which grew ever keener towards daybreak, seemed to pierce to my marrow; and as often as the unhappy man, whose head rested upon my lap, ceased for a while his ravings, my head sank forwards or sideways to the cold wall against which I was leaning; and with ever more painful exertions I strove against the weariness which oppressed me with leaden weight. What would become of us if my strength gave way? Indeed what would become of us as it was? We could not remain thus. I was afraid that he would die in my arms if I could get no assistance. And yet how could I go for help without the risk of abandoning him to his pursuers? And how could I leave him now, when he was wanting to dash his head to pieces against the stones, and was craving to drink up the sea to assuage his consuming thirst?

During the night I had several times gone to the spring for water, and when I brought it he was always very grateful. Indeed, towards daybreak he grew much quieter, so that I indulged the hope that after all we should soon be able to get away. At last, overcome by exhaustion, I fell asleep, and must have slept some time, for the dawn was already glimmering when I was awakened by the touch of a hand on my shoulder. Herr von Zehren stood before me; I looked at him with horror. Now I saw what he had suffered in that fearful night. His healthy bronzed face was of a clayey pallor, his large brilliant eyes were dull and deeply sunk in their sockets, his beard dishevelled, his lips white, and his clothes torn and covered with dirt and blood. It was no longer the man that I had known, but more like a spectre.

A faint smile played about his pale lips, and there was a touch of the old vivacity in the tone of his voice, as he said: "I am sorry to have to awaken you, my poor boy, but it is high time."

I sprang to my feet and put on my coat, which he had carefully laid over my shoulders.

"I should not get far," he replied, with a sad smile; "I just now made a little trial; but it is impossible."

And he seated himself on a projecting piece of the wall, and leaned his head upon his hand.

"You are a generous fool," he said, with a melancholy smile; "one of those that remain anvils all their life long. What advantage in the world could it be to me, that they caught you with me here? And why should you give up, and let yourself be caught? Are you brought down to nothing, and less than nothing? Are you an old wounded fox, burnt out of his den and with the hounds on his track? Go, and do not make me entreat you any more, for it hurts me to talk. Good-by!"

He reached me an ice-cold, trembling hand, which I pressed with tears in my eyes, and said:

"How can you ask it of me? I were the vilest wretch alive to leave you thus. Happen what may, I remain."

"You cannot--you must yourself feel that you cannot. You cannot command me to cover myself with disgrace."

"Well then," said he, "I will make a confession to you. It is true that it so happens that I cannot get away; but were I in condition to escape, I would not and will not do it. I will not have a hue and cry raised after me, and placards posted as if I were a vagabond or common criminal to be hunted through the land. I will await their coming here--here where my ancestors beat back so many an attack of the shopkeepers. I will defend myself to the last; they shall not take me from this place alive. I do not know what I might do, if I were altogether alone in the world. Probably this would then not have happened. I have paid dearly for the folly of trying to help my brother in his distress. And then I have a daughter; I do not love her, nor she me; but for this very reason she shall not be able to say that her father was a coward, who did not know when it was time to die."

"Do not think of your daughter!" I cried, losing all my self-control. "She has rent the single tie by which you were still bound to her." And briefly and in hurried words I told him of Constance's flight.

My intention was to tear away at all costs every pretext that he might allege for not doing what he considered unworthy a Zehren. It was most inconsiderate in me to make such a disclosure to him at such a moment; but my knowledge of human nature was then very slight, and my faculties were confused by the anguish of the last thirty-six hours, and my fear and distress for the unhappy man at my side.

And it seemed that my design had succeeded. He arose, as soon as I had finished my hurried recital, and calmly said:

"Is it then so with me? Am I a vagabond, and my daughter dishonored? My daughter a harlot, who throws herself into the arms of the very man whose hand she cannot touch without dishonoring me? Then may I well do what others would do in my place. But before we set out, get me another draught of water, George. It will refresh me; and I must not fail soon again. Make haste!"

I caught up the hat, joyful that I had at last persuaded him. When I had gone a few paces he called me back again.

"How can you speak so?" I said. "Step back out of the cold wind; I shall be back in five minutes."

I started off at a run. There was no time to be lost; streak after streak of pale light was appearing in the east; in half an hour the sun would rise. I had hoped that by this time we would have been leagues away in the depth of the forest.

The spring in the ravine was soon reached, but it gave me some trouble to fill the hat. In the night I had trampled the earth around it, and stones had rolled in, which nearly blocked it up. While I was stooping over it and clearing away the obstructions, a dull report of fire-arms reached my ear. I started and felt involuntarily for the pistol which was still in my belt. The other I had left with him. Was it possible? Could it be? He had sent me away!

I could not wait for the water; I was irresistibly impelled to hasten back. Like a hunted stag I sprang up the side of the ravine, and bounded over the plateau to the ruin.

Upon the very spot where I had parted from him, where I had last pressed his hand, he had shot himself. The smoke of the powder was still floating in the excavation. The pistol lay beside him; his head had fallen sideways against the wall. He breathed no more--he was quite dead. The Wild Zehren knew where a bullet must strike if the wound was to be mortal.

CHAPTER XXI.

I was still sitting, stupefied and incapable of reflection, by the dead man, when the first rays of the sun, which rose with tremulous lustre over the sea, fell upon his pallid face. A shudder ran through me. I arose and stood trembling in every limb. Then I ran, as fast as my tottering feet would bear me, along the path that descended from the ruin to the beech-wood. I could not now say what my real intention was. Did I simply wish to flee from this place of terror, from the presence of the corpse whose glazed eyes were fixed upon the rising sun? Did I wish to get assistance? Did I design to carry out alone the plan of escape I had formed for both, and thus save myself? I do not now know.

I reached the park and the tarn, the water of which looked blackly through the yellow leaves that yesterday's storm had swept from the trees. In this water had drowned herself the wife of the man who had borne her from her far-off home over her brother's corpse, and who was now lying dead in the ruins of the castle of his forefathers. Their daughter had thrown herself into the arms of a profligate, after deceiving her father, and playing a shameful game with me. This all came at once into my mind like a hideous picture seen in the black mirror of the tarn. As if some pitiless god had rent away the veil from the pandemonium which to my blinded eyes had seemed a paradise, I saw at a glance the two last months of my life, and what they really were. I felt a nameless horror, less, I think, of myself, than of a world where such things had been, where such things could be. If it be true that nearly every man at some time in his life is led or driven by malignant demons to the verge of madness, this moment had come for me. I felt an almost irresistible impulse to throw myself into the black water which legend represented to be of unfathomable depth. I do not know what I might have done, had I not at this moment heard the voices of men who were coming down the path that led from the park. The instinct of self-preservation, which is not easily extinguished in a youth of nineteen, suddenly awaked within me. I would not fall into the hands of those whom I had been since the previous evening making such prodigious exertions to escape. In a bound I sprang up the bank that surrounded the tarn, leapt down on the other side, and then lay still, buried in the thick bushes and fallen leaves, to let them pass before recommencing my flight. In a minute more they were at the spot I had left. They stopped here, where the path branched off towards the ruin, and deliberated. "This must be the way," said one. "Of course; there is no other, you fool," said another. "Forward!" cried a third voice, apparently belonging to the leader of the party, "or the lieutenant will get there from the beach sooner than we. Forward!"

The patrol ascended the path towards the ruin, and I cautiously raised my head and saw them disappearing among the trees. When I thought them at a sufficient distance, I arose, and struck deeper into the wood. The impulse to self-destruction had passed; I had but one desire, to save myself; and the almost miraculous manner in which I had just avoided a peril from which there seemed no escape, filled me with new hope, as a losing player feels at the first lucky cast.

When we boys played "robbers and soldiers" in the fir-wood around my native town, I had always managed to be of the robber party, and they invariably chose me their captain. The duties of this office I had always so discharged that at last none were willing to take the part of soldiers. The boast that I had so often made in our merry sports, that no one could catch me unless I allowed myself to be caught, was now to be tested in deadly earnest. Unfortunately just now, when life and liberty were at stake, the most important thing of all was wanting, the fresh and inexhaustible strength that carried me through my boyish exploits, and which now by reason of the terrible mental emotions of the last twenty-four hours, and the excessive physical exertion I had undergone, was well-nigh broken down. To my other sufferings, I was tormented with gnawing hunger and burning thirst. Keeping always in the thickest of the forest, I came upon no spring nor pool of water. The loose soil had long since absorbed the rain of the previous day, and the slight moisture that I was able to suck from the dead leaves only increased my sufferings.

My intention had been to traverse the forest, which bordered the coast for about eight miles, in its whole length, in order to place as much distance as possible between me and my pursuers, before I made the attempt to leave the island at any point to which chance might conduct me. I had trusted that I should be able to accomplish this distance at the latest by noon; but I was compelled to admit to myself that in the condition in which I was, and which grew worse every minute, this was no longer to be thought of. I had also formed no just conception of the obstacles that impeded me. I had often before been in this forest, but only for short distances, and I had never been compelled to keep to a certain direction, and at the same time anxiously guard against every possibility of being seen. But now, unless I made long detours, I had to break through dense thickets scarcely penetrable even by the deer, or again take a circuit which took me far out of the way, to avoid some open space where there was no sufficient concealment. Then I had to bury myself in leaves and bushes while I listened to discover whether some sound that I heard really proceeded from human voices, and to wait thus until all was again silent. More than once I came upon forest-paths, where double caution was necessary; and with all I felt my strength constantly diminishing, and looked forward with terror to the moment when it should fail me altogether, and I should sink, probably to rise no more. And to lie here dead, with wide-open, glazed eyes, like what I had seen--by this time they had probably found him and carried him down, and then in some fashion or other they must bury him--but how long would I lie here in the depth of the forest before I was found, unless it were by the foxes?

But why did I fly, after all? What had I then done to deserve such extremity of punishment? What could they do to me worse than the torments I was now suffering? And what was this? Here was a path that in half an hour would bring me out of the forest. Possibly I might then at once come upon the soldiers. So much the better; then there would be an end of it.

And I really went some distance along the path, but suddenly I stopped again. My father! what would he say when he saw me led by soldiers through the town, and the street-boys shouting after me? No, no; I could never bring that upon him; better that the foxes should devour me than that!

I turned again into the forest, but ever more agonizing grew the strain upon my fast-failing powers. My knees tottered; the cold sweat ran from my face; more than once I had to stop and lean against a tree, because all became dark before my eyes, and I feared that I should faint. Thus I dragged myself for perhaps half an hour more--it was by my calculation about two in the afternoon--when my long agony found an end. In the edge of a small clearing which I had just reached, stood a little hut, lightly constructed of branches and mats of straw, looking almost like a dog-kennel, and which probably had been built by wood-cutters or poachers. I crawled in, buried myself in the straw and leaves with which the floor of the hut was deeply heaped, and which happily were tolerably dry, and fell at once into a sleep which was almost as heavy as death.

When I awaked it was quite dark, and it was some time ere I could recollect where I was and what had happened; but at last I recovered full consciousness of my desperate situation. I crept out of the hut with great difficulty, for my limbs felt as if they were broken, and the first steps I took gave me excruciating pain. This, however, presently passed off. My sleep had somewhat refreshed me; but my hunger, the cravings of which had aroused me, was now so torturing that I resolved to appease it at every hazard, especially as I felt that unless this was done, I must of necessity soon give way again. But how was this to be done? At last I hit upon a plan to which nothing but my desperation could have prompted me. I determined to keep to the left through the woods, until I reached the open country, which I calculated must happen in about an hour. I would then strike for the nearest farm-house, and there either by fair means or foul get something to appease my hunger, and perhaps also a supply for the next day.

Accident seemed to favor the execution of this plan. In a few minutes I came upon a sort of road, which I followed, although it did not run in the direction that I desired. But how great was my astonishment and my alarm, as, in far less time than I had hoped, I emerged from the woods, and by the starlight distinguished a region of country which I could not by any possibility mistake. There on the right were the cottages belonging to Herr von Granow's estate, Melchow; further on, embosomed in stately trees, was the proprietor's house, and from a slight eminence rose the white steeple of the new village church. Further to the left, lower down in the valley, lay Trantowitz, and still further, but on higher ground, had Zehrendorf stood. Indeed, as if to leave me not an instant of doubt that I had got back to the old well-known district of country, there suddenly sprang from the immense pile of ruins where the castle had stood, a flame so high and so vivid that the steeple of Melchow church glowed with rosy light. But there must either have been little fuel left for the fire, or else in the day there had been ample provision made for its extinction, for the flames sank again immediately, the bright light vanished, and there only remained a feeble glow, as from the embers of a burnt brush-heap in a field.

So at the sacrifice of all my strength, I had wandered about the whole day in a circle, and now at night-fall found myself not far from the spot from which I had started in the morning. This was not very consolatory, but it was ridiculous; and I laughed--not very loud nor cheerfully, it is true, but still genuine laughter. And at the same moment the fancy seized me that perhaps my good genius had led me here against my wishes. Where would I be less likely to be looked for than exactly here? Where had I better friends than here at Trantowitz, for example, where everybody at the house and in the village knew me; where I could knock at any door and be sure to find help and relief. Besides, the circumstance that during the entire day I had met no human creature, to a certain extent assured me that the pursuit towards the last had not been so hot, and finally I was at the point of starvation, and had no choice left me, so I pushed on, almost carelessly, over the fields to Trantowitz, for the first time since we had separated, thinking seriously of the good Hans, and wondering what had become of him. Had he overtaken the fugitives? Had there been a scene, as in that night when the Wild Zehren was pursued and overtaken by the brother of his mistress, and their blades crossed in the uncertain light of the Spanish stars? Had blood flowed for the daughter, as well as for the mother? Had Hans fallen a victim in his bad cause, or had he been victorious? If so, what then? Were the officers of justice after him as they were after me? Had they caught him, perhaps red-handed? Was he now sitting behind bolts and bars?

I grew very sad at heart as this idea struck me. Hans behind bolts and bars was a melancholy picture--one could as well fancy a polar bear fireman on a steamer.

Without observing where I was going, I had approached the house nearer than was necessary to reach the village. From the field a path led across a dry ditch into a wilderness of about two acres extent, of potatoe, cabbage, and salad-beds, blackberry thickets, and stunted fruit-trees, which Hans, by a singular delusion, called his garden, and prized highly because he here in winter shot the most hares from his chamber-window. Towards this chamber, famous in all the country round, my eyes involuntarily turned, and to my great astonishment I perceived a faint glimmer of light in it. The window was open, and the light, as I discovered upon a nearer approach, came from the sitting-room, the door between the two not being closed. I listened, and heard the clatter of a knife and fork. Could Hans be at home again already? I could not resist the temptation, clambered through the window into the chamber, looked through the door, and there sat Hans, just as I had seen him the previous morning, behind a couple of bottles and an immense ham, from which he raised his blue eyes at my entrance and stared at me with a look of astonishment rather than alarm.

I was about to say more, and explain how I had come, but involuntarily I clutched a just-opened bottle with shaking hand, and drained it before I set it down. Hans gave a nod of approval at my prompt recourse to his universal specific. Then he arose without a word, went out and closed the shutters of both windows, came in and bolted the door, took a seat opposite to me, lighted a cigar, and waited in silence until my ravenous hunger was appeased sufficiently to allow me to converse.

"Suppose in the meantime you tell me what happened to you," I said, without raising my eyes from my plate.

Hans had but little to tell, and told that little in the fewest possible words. He had galloped a couple of miles or so along the road to Fährdorf--the only one which the fugitives could possibly have taken--when he observed that his horse, who had so far exhibited no signs of fatigue, began to fail. After riding another mile at a more moderate pace, he was convinced of the impossibility of continuing the pursuit. "The road was very bad," Hans said; "I am a heavy rider, and the poor brute had probably had neither feed nor water for twenty-four hours." So he dismounted and led the horse at a walk the nearest way to Trantowitz, where he arrived safely at nightfall. "By the time I had saddled my Wodan and ridden to Fährdorf," he said, "they were far away. And then--it is always the way with me that I can never manage to do what other men would do in my place; and----" Here he drained his glass, refilled it, leaned back in his chair, and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke.

The good Hans! he had meant all for the best--even his plan of smashing the skull of our happy rival. How could he help it if on this occasion, as so often before--always in his life indeed--he rode a slow horse? He could not founder the animal in a cause which really did not concern it in the least.

About eight o'clock, while he was sitting in his room, he saw the light of the fire, and saddled Wodan and hurried to it, followed by all his wagons. Men came over with wagons and fire-engines from the other estates; but it was not possible to save anything; old Pahlen, who no doubt had no difficulty in eluding the vigilance of the stupid stable-boy, had done the work too well--the flames burst from all parts of the building at once. "I rode home," he went on, "and went to bed, and waked up this morning. I don't know why, I had much rather never have awaked again."

This morning, for the first time, he had learned from his men what had happened; how the night before, the officers of the customs, with the assistance of half a company of soldiers, had hunted down the smugglers; and that they had caught four or five, who would all be hung. And a soldier had sunk in the morass, one of the custom-house men had been wounded, and Jock Swart shot dead. Herr von Zehren had been found dead this morning at the ruin. That it was a lucky thing for him not to have lived to learn that his daughter had run away, and that the old Pahlen, whom the stable-boy Fritz and Christian Halterman had caught in the act, had set fire to his castle and burned it to the ground. And they would have hanged him, just as they meant to hang George Hartwig, the son of customs-accountant Hartwig at Uselin, who had been the captain of the smugglers, as soon as they caught him.

Hans filled my glass again, and invited me by an expressive look to empty it at once, as if so I could best afford him the consolatory assurance that they had not hanged me so far.

Now it was my turn to relate. Hans listened, silently smoking; but when I described the death of the Wild Zehren, and how I had last seen him--dead, with his pale face turned to the rising sun, the first beams of which fell in his glazed eyes--he sighed deeply, rocked his great head from side to side, and drank deep draughts of wine.

That my position was a most serious one, even Hans perceived. I had forced Pinnow, pistol in hand, to take me with him; I had taken the most direct and most active part in the expedition; I had fired upon the officers; I had accompanied Herr von Zehren in his desperate flight. In the eyes of the law these were far from being meritorious performances; and the less I came into contact with the law henceforth, the better it would be for me.

"And yet," I said, "would that this were my greatest trouble; but my father would never outlive the shame of having a son in the penitentiary; and therefore I am resolved to fly, though it were to the uttermost parts of the earth."

So brilliant an idea as this, which at a blow removed all the perplexities of the situation, secured the instantaneous adhesion of Hans.

CHAPTER XXII.

But the most dazzling ideas are frequently found to have their dark side when it comes to putting them in execution. The financial question Hans thought he had settled when he went to his desk, which was not--and apparently could not be--locked, took out a box, and poured its contents between us on the table. There were from four to five hundred thalers in gold, silver, and treasury notes, mixed up with invitations to hunting-parties, receipted and unreceipted bills, dance-cards (apparently from an earlier time), samples of wool, percussion-caps, and a few dozen buckshot, which rolled upon the floor and awaked Caro, who had been asleep under the sofa, and now crept forth, yawning and stretching, as if he considered that buckshot belonged to his department.

Hans said that he had at the moment, so far as he knew, no more in the house; but if it was not sufficient, he would search his coats, in which he had from time to time found quite considerable sums between the cloth and the lining.

I was much affected by Hans's kindness; but even were I to avail myself of it, how was the flight to be accomplished? Hans had heard--and it appeared only too probable--that search was being made for me everywhere. How could I, without being seized, make my way to Bremen or Hamburg or any other port from which I could get a passage to America--at least so long as the pursuit was still hot?

After much consideration, Hans hit upon the following plan, the inspiration to which sprang from his generous heart. I was for a while to remain concealed in his house, until the first heat of the pursuit was over. Then--always supposing that he was himself unmolested--we would undertake the journey together, I being disguised as his coachman or servant. The question now arose about the passport, without which, as I knew, no one was allowed to go on board the ship. Here also the inventive Hans found an expedient. A certain Herr Schulz, who had been his overseer, had intended to emigrate the previous spring, and procured the necessary papers, but had died before his project was accomplished. These papers Hans had kept, and after some searching we found them. It appeared from their contents that the emigrating overseer was not nineteen, but forty years old; not six feet without his shoes, which was my stature, but only four and a half; and moreover, he was distinguished by being very deeply pitted with the small-pox. Still, Hans was of opinion that they would not look into the matter so closely, and a hundred thaler note would reconcile all the little discrepancies.

It was two o'clock by the time we had matured this ingenious plan, and Hans's eyes were growing heavy with weariness. As he insisted that I should sleep in his bed, I was obliged to leave him the sofa in the sitting-room, on which he had scarcely stretched himself when he began to snore. I covered him with his cloak, and went into his chamber, where, tired as I was, I still took time to avail myself of the simple apparatus for ablution that I found there, to my great comfort. Then dressing myself again, I lay down on Hans's bed.

I slept soundly an hour or two, and as I awaked at the first gray glimmer of dawn, a resolution with which I had lain down, arose clear to my mind. I would go: the good Hans should not on my account be brought into any more serious troubles. The longer I remained with him, the greater was the probability that his complicity, which it was just possible might remain concealed as things were, would be discovered, and it would then appear in a so much more serious light. Besides, I had in truth but little faith in the availability of the pass of the deceased overseer of four feet and a half high; and finally, as a youth of no craven spirit, I was possessed with the conviction that it was my duty to take the consequences of my action, as far as possible, upon my own head alone.

So I softly arose from the bed, wrote a few words of gratitude to Hans for all his kindness, filled my game-bag with the remains of the supper, stuck the note in the neck of a wine-bottle on the table, in the assurance that Hans would not overlook it there, gave a parting nod to the brave fellow who still lay in the same position upon the sofa in which he had fallen asleep two hours before, patted Caro, who wished to accompany me, and signified to him that I could not take him, took my gun, and went out by the same window at which I had entered.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Food, drink, and sleep had completely restored my old strength, and I was now in a condition to play my part in the game of "robbers and soldiers" more successfully.

The following days--there were three or four of them--form a strange episode in the history of my life; so that it often seems to me that I cannot really have lived them, but must have read the whole in some story-book. Yes, after so many years--there are thirty of them now--the remembrance of those days comes before me like some story about the bad boy who lost himself in the woods, and to whom so many uncomfortable things happened there; and yet who drank so much sweet pure air, and bathed in so much golden sunshine, that one would give who knows how many stations in the monotonous turnpike of his orderly life, could he but once experience such romantic suffering and happiness.

As if heaven itself was disposed to be good to the bad boy who, whatever his errors, had erred but through youthful folly, and perhaps, all things considered, was not after all so utterly bad, it sent him two or three of the loveliest autumn days for his adventurous flight. The recent rains had cleared the air to a crystalline transparency, so that the remotest distance seemed brought near at hand. A flood of bright but indescribably soft sunlight streamed from the cloudless sky, and penetrated into the inmost recesses of the forest, where from the huge old trees the yellow leaves silently floated down to the others, with which the ground was already strewn. Not a sound was audible in the sunny wilderness except the melancholy chirp of a yellow-hammer in the thicket, or the hoarse cawing of a crow who regarded with disfavor the gun which I was carrying, or the faint cry of cranes that, careless of what was going on below, were winging high in air their proud flight to southern lands.

Then again I lay in the heart of the forest upon some hillock, perhaps a "giant's barrow," as they were traditionally called, and watched sly Reynard steal out of his Castle Malepartus among the great stones, to bask in the morning sun, while a few paces farther off his half-grown cubs chased each other and rolled over and over in merry romp; or I marked in the evening light a herd of deer crossing a clearing, the stag in front with head proudly held aloft, and only lowered occasionally to pick a peculiarly tempting tuft of herbage, while the does came peacefully grazing after.

Again I stood on the heights, close to the verge of the steep chalk-cliff, and looked longingly out over the blue sea, where on the farthest horizon a little cloud marked the spot where the steamer which I had been watching for an hour had disappeared, while in the middle distance glittered the sails of a pair of fishing-boats. The speck of cloud vanished, the white sails dwindled away, and with a sigh I turned back into the forest, scarcely hoping now that I should succeed in getting off the island.

Twice already I had made the attempt. Once at a small fishing village that lay at the head of a narrow cove in a recess of the shore, and was the picture of isolation and loneliness. But the men were all out fishing; only a very old man and a couple of half-grown youths were at home with the women and children. If the catch was a good one, it might be two days before the men came back; and it was not likely then that any one would take me so far. So said the old man, when I asked; while a pair of red-haired children stood by staring at me with open mouths, and an old woman came up and confirmed the man's statement, while the sun sank below the horizon, and a cool breeze blew down the cove towards the darkened sea.

It was the second day of my wandering. The first night I had passed in a sheep-fold: I thought I might venture for once to sleep under a roof; and the good wife to whom I made the proposal willingly gave up to me the chamber of her son, who had sailed away three years before, and not been heard of since. I might, very likely, have spent days in this retired nook without being discovered; but the necessity of my getting off the island was too pressing, and early on the next morning I set out to try my fortune elsewhere.

My next trial was made in a large village. There were boats enough and men enough there, but no one would take me; not even though I offered ten dollars, half the money I had, for the short passage to the Mecklenburg coast, where I might consider myself tolerably safe. I do not know whether, as was possible, they knew who I was, or merely saw something suspicious in the wild-looking young man with a gun on his shoulder who asked a passage to another country; or whether, as I seemed in such extreme haste, and appeared to have money, they merely wished, by delay and apparent reluctance, to extort a higher fare. But after an hour had been spent in parleying, and Karl Bollmann said he was willing to take me, if Johann Peters would lend his boat; and Peters, for his part, was ready to go, but only in Bollmann's boat; and Christian Rickmann, who was standing by with his hands in his pockets, said he would take me with his boys, but not for less than thirty dollars; and all then held a whispering consultation together, during which the whole population, women and children included, gathered around--I thought it prudent not to await the result, but turned abruptly away, and strode off towards the dunes. A half-dozen followed me, but I showed them my gun, upon which they kept back.

The same day I had another proof that the pursuit for me was still kept up, which indeed I had never doubted. It was towards evening, when reconnoitring from the edge of the woods a piece of open country that I had to cross, I caught sight of two mounted patrols on the road, talking with a shepherd who had driven his flock upon the strip of heath between the road and the woods. I observed that they several times pointed to the forest, but the shepherd's answers seemed satisfactory, for they presently rode away in the opposite direction, and disappeared beyond some rising ground. When I thought them far enough, I came out of my concealment and joined the shepherd, who was knitting a long black stocking, and whose simple face gave a sufficient guaranty of the security of the step. He told me, in answer to my inquiries, that the patrol were on the track of a man who had committed a murder. He was a tall young man, they had said, and a desperate villain; but they would have him yet.

The lively imagination of the stocking-knitter had probably had sufficient time in the interval between the departure of the patrol and my appearance, to paint the portrait of the fugitive from justice in the most frightful colors. At all events he did not recognize me, but took me at once for what I gave myself out to be: a huntsman, who was stopping on a visit at one of the neighboring estates, and not knowing the country well, had lost his way. He gave me minute directions how to find my way, thanked me for the coin I put in his hand, and dropped his knitting in astonishment as he saw me, instead of following his directions, strike across the heath into the forest.

The vicinity of the patrol had startled me, in fact, and I had determined to pass this night in the woods. It was a bad night. Warm as it had been in the day, it grew cold at nightfall, and the cold steadily increased as the night advanced. In vain did I bury myself a foot deep in the dry leaves, or try by brisk walking backwards and forwards to gain a little warmth. The dense mist that arose from the earth soaked my clothes through, and chilled me to the marrow. The long hours of the autumn night crept on with dreadful slowness; it seemed as if it would never be day. And in addition to these physical and almost intolerable sufferings of cold, hunger, and fatigue, the recollection of what I had recently gone through presented itself to me in ever more frightful pictures the longer the night lasted, and the more hotly the fever burned in my veins. While, half dead with fatigue, I staggered backwards and forwards in a clear space between the trees, I saw myself again on the moor at Herr von Zehren's side, with Jock Swart lying dead at our feet, while the flames of the burning castle wrapped us in an awful glare, so fearfully bright that it seemed the whole forest was burning around me, while yet my limbs shivered and my teeth chattered with cold. Then Herr von Zehren sat before me as I had last seen him sitting, with the rising sun shining in his glazed eyes; and then again it was not Herr von Zehren, but my father, or Professor Lederer, or some other, but all dead, with glassy eyes open to the sun. Then again I became conscious of my real situation, that it was dark night around me, that I was excessively cold, that I had sharp fever, and that despite the risk of discovery I must resolve to kindle a real fire instead of the frightful visionary one which I still saw in my feverish hallucination.

I had provided myself against this necessity with a large piece of touchwood which I had broken out of a hollow tree and placed in my game-bag. By its aid I succeeded after a while in kindling a pile of half-dry wood, and I cannot describe the delicious sensation that thrilled through me as at last a bright flame sprang up. The cheery light drove back the fever-phantoms into the darkness from which they had sprung; the luxurious warmth expelled from my veins the icy cold. I dragged together great quantities of fuel; I could not sufficiently luxuriate in the sight of the curling smoke, the leaping flames, and the glittering sparks. Then I seated myself at my forest-hearth, and resolved in my mind what I should do to escape a situation which I clearly saw I could not long endure. At last I hit upon a plan. I must make the trial to get away at some one of the points from which there was a regular communication with the main-land, and which I had, on good grounds, hitherto avoided; and the attempt must be made in disguise, as otherwise I should be recognized instantly. The difficulty was, how to obtain a suitable disguise; and here a happy thought struck me. I had noticed in the chamber in which I had slept the previous night, a complete sailor's dress hanging against the wall; very likely the kind old woman would sell it to me. If thus disguised I could get off the island, I was pretty confident that by a night-march I could reach the Mecklenburg frontier; and once there, I would let chance decide what was next to be done.

At early dawn I began to put this plan into execution; and although I had a walk of eight or ten miles to the lonely fishing village, I reached it just after sunrise. The good old dame would not hear of any sale; I needed the things, and that was enough; perhaps some one in some strange land might do as much for her son, if he was alive--and a tear rolled down her aged wrinkled cheeks. My clothes and my gun--for I had left my pistol at Hans's--she would keep for me; I should have them any time that I came for them. I do not I know for what the kind old creature took me; but no doubt she thought that I was in distress; and she helped me thus because I said that this was the only way to help me. The worthy soul! Later in my life it was in my power in some measure to repay her kindness, if indeed a kind deed can ever be repaid.

So I set out at once upon my way, which took me, through many perils, directly across the island to a point where I determined to wait until evening before entering Fährdorf, which I could reach in an hour. Relying upon my sailor's dress, which fitted me perfectly, and, as I thought, completely disguised me, I had chosen the ferry which led most directly to Uselin. In this way, it was true, I should have to go through my native town; but it was probable that just there I should be least looked for; and at that time, I confess it, it took but a little to rouse in me the old daring spirit which had already played me so many an unlucky trick. With a grim satisfaction I imagined myself pacing at night through the silent streets, and even considered whether I should not write on the door of the Rathhaus^[4] the old saying of the Nuremburgers, and sign my name to it.

At nightfall I entered Fährdorf. I had missed the boat; but the next one, which was the last, sailed in half an hour. As I had seen through the window of the tavern that the large tap-room was almost empty, and as I must of necessity strengthen myself for my night-journey, I entered it, took my seat at the farthest table with my face to the wall, and ordered some supper of the bar-maid.

The girl went to get it for me. On the table, beside the candle which she had lighted, lay a beer-stained copy of the Uselin Weekly News of the previous day--another cleaner copy is now lying beside the page on which I am writing. I took it up, and my first glance fell upon the following announcement:

Frederick William George Hartwig, former pupil of and fugitive from the Gymnasium in Uselin, strongly suspected of smuggling, of violent resistance to officers of the Government, and of murder, has still, notwithstanding every exertion on the part of the authorities, evaded arrest. As it greatly concerns the public welfare that this apparently most dangerous person should be brought to justice, he is hereby summoned voluntarily to surrender himself; and all persons who may have any knowledge of the place of concealment of the aforesaid Hartwig, are called upon to give notice thereof without delay to the undersigned. We also urgently and respectfully request the various authorities, both here and abroad, to keep a strict watch for the aforesaid Hartwig, (description at foot), to arrest him promptly, should he be discovered, and forward him to us at our expense, under the assurance of the readiest reciprocity on our part in a similar case. (Signed)

I will not copy the description that followed. The reader could learn from it nothing except that at that time I rejoiced in dark-blond, curly hair ("sorrel-top" the boys used to call me when they wanted to tease me), stood six feet without my shoes, and, as a well-finished specimen of humanity, had no special marks, or at least none in the eyes of Herr Justizrath Heckepfennig.

But in truth, at this moment so critical for me, I scarcely noticed the description of my person; the Notice occupied all my thoughts. When, the evening before, the shepherd said that the man whom the patrol were after was charged with murder, I did not believe it for a moment. He was such a simple-looking fellow, that I thought the patrol had been telling him a frightful story to scare him, or to enhance their own importance. But here it stood in large clear letters in the Weekly News, which, as but few other papers had ever fallen into my hands, was always to my uncritical youthful mind invested with a certain magisterial authority--I might almost say, bore the stamp of infallibility. "Suspected of murder!" Was it possible? Was I then looked upon as the murderer of Jock Swart? I, who had thanked God when I saw the man at whom I had fired, limping briskly off? I, whose only consolation in these last days of suffering, was that at the worst no man's death weighed upon my conscience? And here it was proclaimed to all the world that I was a murderer!

The bar-maid brought the refreshment I had ordered, and I think advised me to waste no time, as the ferry-boat would soon start. I scarcely heard what she said, but left my supper untouched, and sat staring at the paper, which I had hastily turned over as the girl entered, as if my printed name might betray me. But on the other side it again appeared in a paragraph headed City Items. The paragraph ran thus:

"Yesterday evening, in some unaccountable way, a rumor got afloat that George Hartwig, whose name is now in everybody's mouth, had taken refuge in the house of his father, Customs-Accountant Hartwig, and was there in hiding. An immense crowd, of probably more than a hundred persons, assembled in consequence in the Water street, and tumultuously demanded that the young criminal should be given up to them. In vain did the unhappy father, standing on his threshold, protest that his son was not in his house, and that he was not the man to obstruct the course of justice. Even the vigorous exertions of those dauntless public servants, officers Luz and Bolljahn, were ineffectual; only the eloquent appeals of our respected mayor, who had hurried to the spot at the first news of the disturbance, succeeded at last in dispersing the excited crowd. We cannot refrain from earnestly warning our fellow-citizens of the folly and lawlessness of such proceedings, although we willingly admit that the affair in question, which unhappily seems to assume even more serious proportions, is of a nature to strongly excite the minds of all. But we appeal to the men of intelligence--that is to say, to the great majority of our fellow-citizens--and ask them if we cannot repose the fullest confidence in the authorities? Should we not be convinced that the public welfare is in better keeping in their hands than in those of a thoughtless, ungoverned mob? And in reference to the occurrence of yesterday, we earnestly appeal to the good feeling of all well-meaning persons. Let them remember that the father of the unhappy George Hartwig is one of our most respectable citizens. He would, as he declared, and as we for our part firmly believe, be the last to obstruct the course of justice. Fellow-citizens, let us respect this assurance; let us respect the man who gave it. Let us be just, fellow-citizens, but not cruel. And before all, let us take care that the reputation of good-order and of a law-abiding spirit which our good old town has so long enjoyed, be not lost through our fault."

The well-known signal summoning the passengers on board, now sounded from the wharf, and at the same moment the girl came in again and told me I must make haste.

"But you have not eaten a bit!" she exclaimed, and stared at me with surprise and alarm. I suppose that I looked very pale and agitated. I muttered some reply, laid a thaler on the table, and hurried from the house.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the boat was crowded with passengers. On the forward-deck were standing two saddled horses, which could only belong to the mounted patrol; and I soon discovered their riders, who were the same that I had seen talking to the shepherd, as I gathered from their conversation with a couple of peasants. They were complaining bitterly of being recalled, for they were sure, they said, that they would have caught the villain, who must be somewhere hidden on the island, though six more besides themselves, two on horseback and four on foot, had searched it through in every direction. Now the others would gain the reward, while they were sent for to keep order in the town, which was no affair of theirs; there were Bolljahn and Luz to attend to that duty.

I sat quite near them, and could hear every word they said; and I thought what delight it would give the brave fellows if I were suddenly to stand up and say, "here's the villain." But I could not afford them that pleasure; what I had resolved to do, must be done voluntarily. So I kept quiet, and it never occurred to the wise servants of the law that the young sailor who was listening to them with such apparent interest was the man they were looking for.

The wind was fair, and the passage quick; in half an hour the boat reached her wharf. The horses pawed, the patrolmen swore, the passengers crowded out of the boat, and went up the wharf with their luggage. At the upper end of the wharf, just by the gate, stood fat Peter Hinrich, the landlord of the sailor's tavern, and asked me if I would not lodge in his house. I said I had a lodging engaged elsewhere.

So I passed through the ruinous old port-gate, which was never shut, and entered the Water street. When I arrived at the small house, I paused for a moment. All in the house was dark and silent, and it was dark and silent in the street; but only two days before there had been commotion enough here, and there upon the threshold my father had stood and said that he was not the man to obstruct the course of justice. He should not incur the suspicion of having concealed his son in his house; he should see that his son had still some regard for his father's good name, and that he had the courage to face the consequences of what he had done.

The exhortations of the Weekly News had not been in vain. The little town seemed as if life had departed; the energetic Luz and Bolljahn, with the best will in the world, could have found no field for their activity. My steps resounded along the empty alleys, which struck me as being singularly narrow and crooked. Here and there was light in the windows; but folks went early to bed in Uselin, and the authorities could therefore extinguish the street lamps at a very early hour, especially when, as now, the new moon over St. Nicholas's church looked sadly down through driving clouds upon the empty market-place.

I stood in the market-place before the house of Herr Justizrath Heckepfennig. It was one of the stateliest mansions in the town. How often had I passed it when I came out of school at mid-day, and cast a glance of respectful longing at the left-hand corner-window in the second story where Emilie used to sit behind a vase of gold-fish, and always happened, just as I passed by--a little dim window-mirror gave her faithful notice--to have her attention attracted by something in the market. Now I again looked up at the window, but with very different feelings. There was a light in the room, which was the usual sitting-room of the family. The justizrath used to smoke his evening pipe there. I had a presentiment that the visit that he would presently receive would cause it to go out.

The good people of Uselin did not usually fasten their street-doors until they went to bed; but whether it was that the recent disturbances so energetically and successfully contended with by the officers Luz and Bolljahn had rendered greater precautions advisable; or whether the justizrath, in his double capacity of wealthy man and officer of the law, insisted upon a stricter rule in this matter--in any case his door was fastened, and it was some time before my repeated ringing was answered by a female voice that called through the keyhole in rather a quavering tone to know who was there. My reply, "one who wishes urgently to speak with the Herr Justizrath," did not seem by any means entirely to satisfy the portress, who could be none other than the pretty housemaid Jette. A whispering followed, from which I inferred that Jette had brought the cook with her; then a giggling, and finally the answer that she would tell her master.

I was patrolling up and down before the house in my impatience, when a window opened in the sitting-room above, and the Herr Justizrath in person, putting out his head a very little way indeed, repeated the question of the housemaid, and received the same answer.

For some days the justizrath had done nothing but give audience to people who professed to be able to throw some light upon the great mystery. A sailor or fisherman just from the island, and who urgently desired to speak with him at ten o'clock at night, could come with but one object: to make some important communication which might bring some illumination into the obscurity of this mysterious affair. I for my part believed that the justizrath had recognized me by my voice, and that his exclamation meant: "So! here you are at last!" I was soon to learn how greatly I was mistaken.

The door was opened, and I hastily entered. Scarcely had the light of the candle which Jette was holding up in her hand, fallen upon my face, when she gave a loud scream, dropped candlestick and all, and ran off as hard as she could, while the cook followed her example, at least so far as screaming and running went. The cook, who was an elderly female, ought to have had more sense; but still she only knew me by sight, and for a long time had heard nothing but horrors about me, so I cannot blame her. But the conduct of the pretty Jette admitted of no defence. I had always been very friendly to her, partly on her mistress's account, and partly on her own; and she had always freely acknowledged it, coquettishly smiling whenever I met her, saluting me with her deepest curtsey whenever I entered the house, and now--but I had now something else to think of than the ingratitude of a housemaid. I passed through the dark hall, ascended the stair I knew so well, and knocked at the door of the justizrath's study, which adjoined the sitting-room, and to which he had doubtless betaken himself to receive his late visitor.

There he stood, just as I expected to find him, a tall, broad-shouldered figure, wrapped in his loose flowered dressing-gown, his long pipe in his hand, his low, narrow forehead wrinkled into deep folds as he fixed his little stupid eyes with a look of curiosity upon me at my entrance.

My presentiment that he would let his pipe go out was fulfilled by his simply letting it drop upon the floor; and without saying a word he caught up the skirts of his flowered dressing-gown in both hands, and fled into the family-room.

There I stood by the broken pipe, and trampled out the glowing ashes which had fallen upon the little carpet by the writing-table. While engaged in this certainly not criminal occupation, I was startled by a cry for the watch from the adjacent window that opened on the market-place. It was the voice of the justizrath, but it had a very hoarse and lamentable sound, as if some one had him by the throat. I stepped to the door of the sitting-room and knocked.

A pause, and then a frightened little voice that I had so often heard laughing, and with which I had sung so many a duet in parties by land and water, piped feebly out:

"Tell your father, Fräulein Emilie, that if he does not at once stop calling the watch, and does not immediately come into his study, I shall go away and not come back."

I said this in a tone in which resolution and politeness were so blended, that I was sure it could hardly fail of its effect. I could hear a whispered discussion within. The women seemed to be adjuring the husband and father not to adventure his precious life in so manifest a peril, while the husband and father sought to calm their terrors by heroic phrases, such as, "But it is my duty," or, "It might cost me my place!"

At last, assisted by these weighty considerations, duty triumphed. The door slowly opened, and by the side of the flowered dressing-gown I caught a glimpse of the cap of the Frau Justizrath, and of the curl-papers of Fräulein Emilie, whose golden ringlets I had always supposed a beautiful work of nature. But so many great illusions of mine had been dissipated in the last few days, that this small one might well go with the rest.

Hesitatingly the justizrath closed the door behind him, hesitatingly he came a few paces nearer, stopped and tried to fix me firmly with his eye, in which, after some difficulty, he almost succeeded.

I unbuttoned my sailor jacket to convince my questioner of the truth of my statement. The justizrath evidently breathed more freely.

The justizrath cast a confused glance at his broken pipe on the floor, cleared his throat, and seemed not to know exactly what was to be done in such an extraordinary case. There was a pause of silence.

The ladies must have inferred from this pause that I was engaged in cutting the throat of the husband and father; at least at this moment the door was flung open, and the Frau Justizrath, in night-gown and night-cap, came rushing in and fell upon the neck of her spouse in the flowered dressing-gown, whom she embraced with every mark of mortal fear, while Emilie, who had followed close behind her, turned to me, and with a tragic gesture of supplication, raised both her hands as high as her curl-papers.

And now the door leading into the passage opened. Jette and the cook were curious to see what was going on, though at the peril of perishing in the general massacre, and appeared upon the threshold wailing aloud. This mark of courageous devotion so touched the night-gown that it burst into a flood of hysterical tears, and the curl-papers tottered to the sofa with the apparent intention of swooning upon it.

Here the justizrath showed, for the second time, how great emergencies bring out the strength of great characters. With gentle firmness he freed the flowered dressing-gown from the embrace of the night-gown, and said in a voice that announced his resolve to do and dare the worst: "Jette, bring me my coat!"

This was the signal for a scene of indescribable confusion, out of which, in about five minutes, the victim of his devotion to duty emerged victorious with coat, hat, and stick: a sublime sight, only the effect was a little damaged by the hero's feet being still covered with embroidered slippers, a fact of which he was not aware until it was too late, when we were standing on the pavement of the market-place.

"Never mind, Herr Justizrath," I said, as he was about to turn back. "You would not get away again, and we have but a few steps to go."

In fact the little old Rathhaus was at the other side of the by no means wide square, and the pavement was perfectly dry, so that the victim of fidelity had not even to fear a cold in the head.

"Herr Justizrath," I said, as we crossed the market-place, "you will tell my father, will you not, that I gave myself up voluntarily, and without any compulsion; and I will never mention to any one a word about the broken pipe."

I have spoken many foolish and inconsiderate words in my life, but few that were more foolish and more inconsiderate than this. Just as I was touching the point which I might say was the only thing in the whole affair to which I attached importance, namely, to show my pride to the father who had disowned me, I failed to perceive that I gave mortal offence to a man who would never forgive, and had never forgiven me. Who can tell what other turn the affair might have taken, if, instead of my unpardonable stupidity, I had intoned a pæan to the heroic man who knew how to guard himself from a possible and indeed probable attack, and then did his duty, happen what might. But how could I know that, young fool that I was?

So we reached the open hall of the Rathhaus, where in the day time an old cake-woman used to sit in a chair sawed out of a barrel, before a table where plum-buns and candies lay upon a cloth not always clean, that was constantly fluttering in the wind that blew through the hall. The table was now bare, and presented a very forlorn appearance, as if old Mother Möller, and not only she, but all the cakes, plum-buns, and candies of the world, had departed forever.

A desolate feeling came over me; for the first and only time this night, the thought occurred to me that perhaps after all I had better make my escape. Who was to prevent me? Assuredly not the slippered hero at my side; and as little the old night-watchman Rüterbusch, who was shuffling up and down the hall, in front of his sentry-box, in the dim light of a lantern that swung from the vaulted roof. But I thought of my father, and wondered if his conscience would not smite him when he heard the next morning that I was in prison; and so I stood quietly by and heard the night-watchman Rüterbusch explaining to Justizrath Heckepfennig that the matter would be very hard to manage, since the last few days so many arrests had been made, that the guard-house was completely full.

The guard-house was a forbidding-looking appendage to the Rathhaus, and fronted on an extremely narrow alley in which footsteps always made a peculiar echo. No townsman who could avoid it ever went through this echoing alley; for that gloomy appendage to the Rathhaus had no door, but a row of small square windows secured with iron bars and half-closed with wooden screens, and behind them here and there might be seen a pale, woe-begone face.

A quarter of an hour after the conversation between Herr Justizrath Heckepfennig and night-watchman Rüterbusch had come to a satisfactory conclusion, I was sitting behind one of these grated windows.

Part Second.

CHAPTER I.

This little alley by the Rathhaus, in which footsteps gave such a singular echo, had never, even within the recollection of the most ancient crow on the neighboring steeple of St. Nicholas's church, enjoyed such a reputation for uncanniness as in the last two months of this year, and the first two of the next. It was also observed that in no previous winter had the snow lain so deep in it, and it grew dark much earlier in the evening than had ever before been known. And Mother Möller, the old cake-woman in the Rathhaus hall, who always hitherto, in the winter season, packed up her wares at the stroke of five, now did it regularly at half-past four, because, as she affirmed, just as it grew dark there was "what you might call a kind of corpsy smell about," and her old table-cloth flapped about in a way no natural table-cloth would do. On the other hand Father Rüterbusch, the night-watchman, asseverated that for his part he had not observed either in the hall or the alley anything out of the common, not even between twelve and one o'clock, which was the fashionable hour with ghosts, let alone at other times. Yet people were more disposed to accept the views of the old cake-woman than those of the still older night-watchman; as the first, though she took a nap now and then, still on the whole was more awake than asleep; while in regard to the other, the regular customers of the Rathhaus cellar, who had to pass his post at night, maintained precisely the contrary. By these assertions they deeply wounded the good heart of Father Rüterbusch, but did not confute him. "For, d'ye see," he would argue, "you must know that a sworn night-watchman never goes to sleep, on any account; but it may happen that he pretends to be asleep, in order not to mortify certain gentlemen who would be ashamed if they knew the old man had his eye on their doings. And mark you, I am willing to be qualified to what I say, upon my oath of office; and none of them can say that. And even if many of them, for instance Rathscarpenter Karl Bobbin, come and go the same way every evening, that is to say every night, for nigh on to twenty years now, a habit is not an office, mark you; and I for my part have never heard, for example, that the customers of the cellar ever took any oath or were qualified in any manner, shape, or form; and yet it was only last Easter I celebrated my jubilee, for it was then fifty years I had held this place, and I went to school with Karl Bobbin's father, who was never of any account, for that matter."

However, be that as it might, during the winter of '33-'34, there was but one opinion of the matter in Uselin; and that was, that if there was anything queer about the Rathhaus alley, nobody need wonder at it, as things were.

Things were certainly bad enough, and worse for no one than for me, who, as was admitted on all hands, was by far the chief figure in the great smuggling case; for into such proportions, thanks to the inquisitorial genius of the justizrath who had charge of the investigation, a thing which to my eyes was of extreme simplicity had now been developed.

As if it was of the least importance how the case looked in my eyes! As if anybody gave himself the trouble to inquire what my thoughts or wishes were! But no; I will do Justizrath Heckepfennig and co-referent Justizrath Bostelmann no injustice. They gave themselves the very greatest trouble; but they had no desire to find out where the truth lay, and where I told them it might be found.

"A fine reason, truly! Angry fathers often tell their sons to be gone, without the idea ever seizing the sons to start off into the wide world. There must be something more behind. Perhaps you wanted to be sent off?"

"Very good. Actuary, please to take down the reply of the prisoner, who admits without qualification that he wished to be sent off by his father. And when and where did you first make the acquaintance of Herr von Zehren?"

"Not even at Smith Pinnow's? Pinnow declares that Herr von Zehren was so often at his house, and you also so often, that it is incredible that you never met before."

"You still persist then that your meeting with Herr von Zehren was entirely accidental?"

"You had no such prospect, had but twenty-five silbergroschen in your possession, were anxious that your father should send you off, and yet you persist in asserting that your meeting on that same evening with the man who took you at once into his house, and with whom you stayed until the final catastrophe, was purely accidental! You are sharp enough to see how extremely improbable this is; and I now ask you for the last time, if, at the risk of casting the strongest suspicions on your veracity, you still persist in that statement?"

Justizrath Heckepfennig cast a look at Actuary Unterwasser as much as to say: Can you conceive such impudence? Actuary Unterwasser smiled compassionately, and sadly shook his head, and scratched away with his pen over his paper, as if his shocked moral sense found some relief in getting such inconceivable things at all events down in black and white.

Thus it went on with I do not know how many interrogations and examinations; summary examination, examination in chief, articular examination. Often I could not tell what they were aiming at, and what was the object of all the long-winded interrogatories, and short cross-questions, in which last Justizrath Heckepfennig considered himself particularly great. I complained bitterly of this to my counsel, Assessor Perleberg, saying that I had told--or, as they preferred to express it, confessed--everything to the gentlemen.

"My dear sir," said the assessor, "in the first place it is not true that you have confessed everything. For instance, you have refused to say who was the person whom caller Semlow saw, about four o'clock on the evening in question, with you on the path leading to Zehrendorf. And in the second place, what is confession? In criminal jurisprudence it has but a very subordinate value. How many criminals cannot be brought to confess at all? and how many confessions are false, or are afterwards recanted? The real object of the examination is the detection of guilt. Consider, my dear sir, your entire so-called confession might be a fabrication. It has often happened before, the criminal record--"

It was enough to drive a man desperate. Years after, my counsel became a great beacon and luminary of jurisprudence; and indeed he was such at that time, though he was not then a professor, a privy-councillor, and a man of wide reputation, but an obscure assessor of the superior court, a very learned man, and of wonderful acuteness--a world too learned and too acute for a poor devil like me. With his "in the first place," and "in the second place," he would have prejudiced a jury of angels against innocence herself, to say nothing of a college of learned judges who could not avoid the conclusion that a man whose defence required so extraordinary an expenditure of learning and acumen, must of necessity be a very great criminal. I can still see him sitting on the end of the table in my cell, which was fastened with iron clamps to the wall, jerking his long, thin legs, and flourishing his long, thin arms, like a great spider who finds a broken mesh in his web. It was probably a hard task for so learned a spider, into whose web a clumsy blue-bottle had blundered and was floundering about in his awkward way, to extricate him with scientific nicety. And now for the first time I began to find out how far-spreading this web was, and how many flies, besides myself, were entangled in its meshes.

There were very careless flies that under the masks of respectable citizens and honest tradesmen of my native place and the neighboring towns, had for years carried on an extensive business in smuggled goods, and defrauded the revenue of thousands upon thousands. This sort of flies was very dirty and disgusting. For as soon as one had caught its foot in the web, and found itself entangled, it turned traitor to its companions, and did not rest until all were fast in the web.

Then there was another and honester species, though it was far from wearing so honest an appearance. These were my old friends, the weather-beaten, tobacco-chewing, silent men of Zanowitz and the other fishing villages on the coast. They had by no means had so good a time of it as the gentlemen in the counting-houses and behind the counters. They had had to fight with wind and storm, to keep watch and ward, to suffer hunger and cold, and carry their lives in their hand, and all for small gain, many of them for only just enough to keep wife and children from starving; and yet, though four of them had been taken prisoners in that terrible night on the moor, the examiners could draw nothing from them. No one betrayed his comrade; no one knew who had been the man at his side. "The night was dark, and in the dark all cats are gray; every man had enough to do to look to himself. If Pinnow has said that this man and that man was there, why he can probably make oath to it." In vain did the justizrath ask the most ingenious questions, in vain did he wheedle and threaten--they had to let go a dozen or two that were very strongly suspected, and console themselves with the reflection that at all events they had four who had been taken in the act.

Yes, it was a very peculiar sort of flies who had thus been caught with the others in the web of law; a tough, rough sort, very inconvenient for the guardians of the flesh-pots of an orderly government, but still honest after their fashion, and not the sneaking crew that the others were.

These two species of flies had for a long time played into each other's hands, but without any proper system, and consequently at great disadvantage, until, about four years before, the business had taken a sudden and enormous expansion. For some one, who hitherto, like all the proprietors along the coast, had obtained his wine, his brandy, his salt, his tobacco, from the smugglers in small quantities, had hit upon the idea that what was needed was an intermediary between the supply and the demand; a middleman who should provide a sort of warehouse or magazine for the smuggling trade, and thus afford the furnishers an opportunity of getting rid of larger quantities at once, and the purchasers the means of procuring their supplies as they needed them, and at convenient times.

This plan, founded on the soundest commercial principles, begotten of necessity, and joyfully welcomed by the naturally adventurous spirit of the man, he carried out with the audacity, the judgment, and the energy, which so highly distinguished him. The solitary position of his estate upon the long promontory, with the open sea on one side and a narrow strait on the other, was as if it had been made for the very purpose. If before the dealings were in boat-loads, now whole ships' cargoes were received at once, or in a couple of nights, and stored in the cellars of his castle, from which they were gradually delivered to the purchasers, the neighboring proprietors, and the tradespeople in the small towns of the island and the little seaports of the mainland.

This part of the business was chiefly undertaken by Smith Pinnow. Smith Pinnow had been long known to be a smuggler, had been frequently overhauled by the officers of justice, and more than once punished, when of a sudden he found that he was going blind, had to wear great blue spectacles, and could only in very fine weather, with the help of his deaf and dumb apprentice Jacob, take some of the bathing-guests at Uselin out in his cutter for an hour or two's sail. This affliction befel the worthy man just at the time that the great smuggler-captain on the island, whose attention had been drawn to so highly qualified an assistant, one night paid a visit to the forge, and took him, so to speak, into his service. From that time forth the two acted in concert; and by the time the four years had passed, the smith had amassed so much money that he would never have thought of betraying his chief, had not jealousy got the upper hand of the old sinner. "If you do not leave the girl in peace, I will shoot you down like a dog," the Wild Zehren had said; and Smith Pinnow was not the man to quietly put up with such a threat, especially when he knew in what deadly earnest it was uttered.

From that time a rumor, of which no one knew the source, spread abroad in the city, but especially in the offices of the customs, that the Wild Zehren at Zehrendorf was the soul of the whole smuggling trade, which was carried on with such activity for leagues up and down the coast. At first no one gave credit to the rumor. To be sure the Wild Zehren was a man whose name was used as a bugbear to frighten children with in Uselin; and no doubt things were known or believed of him which people hardly ventured to whisper--he had stabbed his brother-in-law, he had horribly maltreated his wife and afterwards drowned her in the tarn in the woods, and more of the same sort--but these were things that were to be expected of the Wild Zehren, while smuggling--no, it was not possible! A man of the most ancient nobility, and whose brother moreover was the highest officer of the Revenue Department in the province!

This was the general opinion. But now and then there would be a voice heard, but very softly indeed, remarking that however different the brothers might be in disposition, mode of life, and even in person, they resembled each other at least in this, that both were deeply in debt; and similar causes might very well produce similar effects. If the Wild Zehren's undertakings had been accompanied with such extraordinary good fortune during these years, the reason probably was that the custom-officers had no clue to his movements, while he, for his part, was perfectly well informed when and where there was no risk of meeting any of them.

The matter might still have been long quietly argued pro and con, had not an unlucky chance happened to give effect to Smith Pinnow's treachery. In the same night when Pinnow and Jock Swart, who could have turned traitor to his master from no other cause than sheer black-heartedness, lodged their information with Customs-revisor Braun, the provincial customs-director arrived in Uselin. The revisor, who belonged to the party that distrusted their chief, did not go to the latter, as he would certainly have contrived to render the denunciation harmless; but went straight to the director, who at once laid his plans with great skill and forethought, to strike a strong blow at the smugglers, in which he succeeded but too well.

Was the steuerrath guilty? There was no direct proof of the fact, if it was a fact. The steuerrath had always declared that for a long time he had broken off all personal intercourse with his brother, whose conduct--though in truth he was greatly reformed of late--was of a nature to compromise a faithful public officer. And in truth, the Wild Zehren had in the last year never been seen with his brother, nor even in the city. If, notwithstanding, there had been any personal intercourse between them, their meetings must have been kept extremely secret. Any letters he might have received from his brother, the steuerrath would of course have destroyed; and if the Wild Zehren was less cautious, he was now dead, his castle burned to the ground--who or what was there to bear witness against the steuerrath?

I was the only one who could have done it. I remembered well the expressions which Herr von Zehren had always used in speaking of his brother; I knew that this last expedition had been made chiefly on that brother's account. I had held in my hands the proof of his guilt, and--destroyed it.

It seemed as if something of the sort was suspected. Suddenly the name of the steuerrath made its appearance in the examinations to which I was subjected, and I was closely questioned as to what I knew of the relations between Herr von Zehren and his brother. I firmly denied all knowledge of anything of the kind.

"My dear sir," said Assessor Perleberg, "why do you wish to screen the man? In the first place, he does not deserve to be spared, for he is a bad subject, take him as you will; and in the second place, you thus do yourself irreparable injury. I will tell you beforehand, you will not get off with less than five years, for in the first place----"

I had been confined now for nearly half a year in a cell but half lighted by a small grated window, and which I could traverse with four steps lengthways and with three across. This was a hard trial for a young man like me, but harder, much harder, were the mental sufferings that I endured. The confidence in humankind which had hitherto filled my heart, was all now gone. That no one visited me in my prison, I could lay to the account of Justizrath Heckepfennig, who felt it to be his duty to see that so dangerous a man held no communication with the outer world; but that men to whom I had done nothing, or at the worst had perhaps at some time or other, in my clumsy way, ruffled their pride a little, should set their hearts upon trampling a fallen man still deeper into the dust--this I could not forgive; this it was that filled my soul with bitterness unspeakable. Ten witnesses were called to prove my previous good character; and of these ten there was but one, and that one the man whom of all others I had most deeply wounded--Professor Lederer--who ventured to say some words in my behalf, and to put up a timid plea for lenity. All the rest--old friends of my father, neighbors, fathers whose sons had been my friends and companions--all could hardly find words to express what a miscreant I had been all my life long. And good heaven! what had I done to them? Perhaps I had filled the pipe of one with saw-dust; I had caught a pair of pigeons that belonged to another; the son of a third I had sent home with a bloody nose--and this was all.

I could not comprehend it, but so much of it as I did understand, filled me with inexpressible bitterness, which once even broke out into indignant tears when I learned through my counsel that Arthur--the Arthur whom I had so dearly loved--when interrogated as to his association with me, declared that for years I had talked to him about turning smuggler, and had even attempted to persuade him to join me; that I had always been on the most intimate terms with Smith Pinnow, and that if he were asked if he believed me capable of the crime laid to my charge, he must answer unequivocally Yes.

"That ruins you," said Assessor Perleberg. "You will not get off under seven years; for in the first place----"

I brushed away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks, burst into a wild laugh, and then fell into a paroxysm of frantic rage, which finally gave place to a stony apathy. I still felt a kind of interest in the sparrows that I had taught to come every morning and share my ration of bread; but all other things were indifferent to me. I learned, without feeling any special interest in the news, that Constance was already deserted by her princely lover, who had yielded to the entreaties and threats of his father; that Hans von Trantow had disappeared and no one knew what had become of him, but the general opinion was that he had met with some accident in the forest or on the moor; that old Christian had never recovered from the effects of his young mistress's flight, his master's death, and the burning of the castle, and had been found one morning lying dead among the ruins which he could never be prevailed on to leave; and that old Pahlen had escaped from the jail at B. in which she had been confined. I heard all this with indifference, and with similar apathy I received my sentence.

Assessor Perleberg, with his "first place" and "second place," had been perfectly right. I was condemned to seven years' imprisonment in the prison at S.

"You may think yourself lucky," said Assessor Perleberg. "I would have condemned you to ten years and to hard labor; for in the first place----"

It was no doubt a mark of youthful levity that I had no ears for the very learned and instructive exposition of my counsel, and that too when it was my last opportunity. But I was really thinking of something quite different. I was thinking what the Wild Zehren would have done had he been alive and learned that they had shut up his faithful squire in prison and placed his own brother as jailor over him.

CHAPTER II.

It was an evening of May, as the wagon in which I was conveyed, escorted by two mounted gendarmes, drew near the place of my destination. On the left of the road, which was lined with stunted fruit-trees, I saw numbers of laborers working on the new turnpike which was to connect my native town with the provincial metropolis; on the right, open meadow-land stretched away to the sea, which was visible as a wide dark-blue streak. On the other side of the water, from a low beach of sand, green fields sloped upwards to a moderately high upland which was crowned with woods. This was the island, which here lay much nearer the mainland than it did near Uselin, and which I now beheld again for the first time. Before me, still more than a mile distant, I could perceive two towers rising high above a range of hills that we were slowly approaching.

My feelings were strange. During the whole journey I had been looking through the rents in the cover of the little wagon, but only watching for an opportunity of escape. But however determined I was to seize the very first that presented itself, there was none, not even the slightest. The two gendarmes, of whom one was one of those who had hunted me in vain upon the island, rode on the right and left close behind the wagon without exchanging a word, their moustachioed faces looking straight between their horses' ears, or turned sideways towards the wagon. There was not the slightest doubt that the first movement that looked like an attempt to escape would bring the butts of their carbines to their shoulders. To make the attempt in the presence of two well-armed, well mounted, and thoroughly determined men, would have been to seek, not liberty, but death.

And none of the chances had happened which I had imagined possible. We had passed no bridge over which I might have leapt into a torrent, we had entered no crowded market-place in which I might have sprung into the throng, and perhaps found shelter with some compassionate soul. Nothing of the kind; we travelled the seven or eight miles of the journey at a walk, or a short trot, without a single halt, and without an interruption of any kind, and now before me rose the towers in whose shadow lay my prison.

And yet at this time I no longer felt the wrath and burning indignation which had filled my breast the whole time that I was in custody under examination. The two hours in the open air had done me inexpressible good. It had been raining for some time before, and I had held out my hands to catch the drops; I had inhaled with delight the fresh air that blew into the wagon. Now the sun had again broken through the clouds, and, as it was near its setting, cast long ruddy streaks over the green sprouting fields and the sparkling meadows. Birds sang and twittered in the trees by the wayside; just before us in the east stood a brilliant rainbow with one foot on the mainland, and the other on the island. All nature seemed so calm and gentle, so free from hate or anger; on the contrary all things wore so mild a beauty and breathed such sweet peace, that I who from a child had sympathized with every mood of nature, could not close my heart to her soft solicitations. My heart sang with the birds; it floated on the moist pinions of the gentle breeze that bore blessings over the fields and meadows; it bathed in the bright hues of the bow of hope, which sprang from earth to heaven and back to earth again. The feeling that I was, as it were, a part of all these, and yet was sitting a prisoner in the jail-van, begat in me such a sense of pity for myself as I had never before experienced. I covered my face with my hands and wept.

The sun had now set; the eastern and western skies were glowing with the most splendid hues as the van rolled through the town-gate, rattled up two or three narrow, badly-paved streets, and stopped at last at a gateway in a high dead-wall. The gate slowly opened, the van rolled across a wide yard shut in on all sides with lofty blank walls and tall, gloomy-looking buildings, to the gate of the tallest and most forbidding of these, and there stopped. I had reached the place where I was to spend seven years because I had endeavored to guard my friend and protector from the results of a crime which I myself abhorred.

Seven years! I was determined that it should not be so long. I had read the adventures of Baron Trenck, and knew that it was possible to pierce thick masonry and undermine great fortress-walls. What he had succeeded in doing, I thought I could not fail to accomplish.

So my first proceeding, when the door closed behind the surly warden, was to examine my cell as closely as the faint remains of daylight would allow. If all the prisoners were so well lodged, there were certainly many of them that fared much worse when at liberty. The walls of the small room were simply whitewashed, it is true; but so were those of my garret at home. There was an iron bedstead with what seemed a very comfortable bed, a clothes-press, at the solitary window a large table with a drawer, two wooden chairs, and, to my surprise, a great arm-chair covered with leather, which strongly reminded me of the one in my room at Castle Zehrendorf.

Yes, I was again the guest of a Zehren, though this time he was only the superintendent of a prison. It seemed as if the Zehrens were inextricably woven into my life. They had brought me but little good fortune; and the proud lustre that had formerly seemed to me to illume the name, had greatly paled in my eyes. The steuerrath, in whom the boy had beheld the incarnation of the highest earthly authority, what was he in the eyes of the prisoner but a liar and hypocrite who had ten-fold and a hundred-fold deserved the misfortunes he had brought upon men who were better than he? And the man here, who, sprung from such a family, had been willing to undertake such an office as his, must be even worse than the hypocrite and liar. I would let him feel the full measure of my contempt when I met him; I would tell him that if he chose to be a jailor, he ought at least to renounce the name which his noble brother had borne, who preferred dying by his own hand to falling into the hands of those who would have brought him here, behind this triply-bolted door, and these windows with massive bars of iron.

The window was by no means so high as those in the guard-house, and I looked with curiosity through the bars. The prospect might have been worse. True, a high and perfectly blank wall shut out the view to the left, but on the right I could see into a court planted with trees, in which at no great distance was a two-storyed house presenting a gable covered entirely with vines. Behind the house there seemed to be a garden: at least I could catch glimpses of fruit-trees in blossom. All this had a very lovely and peaceful appearance in the dim light of the spring evening; and the shrill twittering of the swallows that skimmed in flocks past my window, might have made me forget that I was a tenant of a prison, had I not been painfully reminded of it by the sharp angle of one of the bars against which I had pressed my forehead.

I seized the bar with both my hands, and shook it with my whole force. Six months of confinement had not deprived my muscles of their strength, as I well perceived. I felt as if with one wrench I could bring away the whole grating. Did I deceive myself, or did it yield a little? I was not mistaken; either the screws were loose, or the wood-work decayed; I could not at the moment determine which; but this seemed no grating that could hold me. My heart beat with the exertion and the joyful surprise. I had vowed to myself that they should not keep me seven years! But caution! it was not the grating alone that made a prisoner of me. Were the grating away, there was a depth of at least thirty feet to the stone pavement of the court. And were I safely down, there were doubtless other difficulties to overcome, and a baffled attempt at escape might make my position incalculably worse.

I heard a rustling in the passage. Footsteps drew near and came to my door. I sprang back from the window and stood in the centre of the room, when there was a rattling of keys on the outside, the door opened, and a man of tall stature entered, passing the turnkey, and the door was closed after him. He stood for a moment at the threshold, and then approached me with a peculiar light step. From the ruddy evening clouds there still fell a pale rosy light into the room; in this rosy glow I always see him again when I think of him--and how often do I think of him, with the deepest emotions of gratitude and love!

Over the table at which I am writing these words, hangs his portrait, painted by a beloved hand. It is a most perfect likeness. It would recall to my memory every feature, every line, were it possible that I could forget them. And now, did I close my eyes, he would stand before me again as he stood on that evening, in the rosy sunset light, and not less clearly would I hear his voice, whose soft, deep tone I then heard for the first time, and whose first word was one of pity and sympathy.

How deeply must the prison air have poisoned my heart, that these words and the tone in which they were spoken did not move me! Alas, it is one of my most painful recollections that this was so; that I rudely repulsed the hand of the noblest of men, and deliberately wounded the kindest heart on earth. But the narrative of my life would have no worth, if my faults were not honestly set down. And I have often thought that I might not have learned to love him so well had I been less obdurate at first, had I not given him the occasion to heap upon me all the wealth of his benevolence and love. And yet I err in this. Jewels of the costliest price, of the purest water, need no dark foil.

"Poor youth!" he said again, and held out his white and almost transparent hand; but let it fall again, when, instead of taking it and pressing it with reverence to my lips, as I should have done had I known him, I folded my arms and stepped back.

"Yes," he said, and his voice sounded, if possible, still gentler than before, "it is very hard, very cruel, the fate which has befallen you for a crime which, whatever it may be in the eyes of the judge who must follow the stern letter of the law, in the eyes of others merits a milder name, for at least it does in mine. I am the brother of the man for whose fault you are suffering."

He seemed to expect an answer from me, or at least some word of acknowledgement, which I would not give. I would not do my jailor the favor to help him in his attempt to show himself in another light than that in which I saw him.

"It is a strange caprice of fortune," he continued, after a short pause, always in the same gentle manner, "that one brother should to a certain extent be the instrument of punishing you for the injury which another has done you--a chance for which I am thankful, and which I think I shall rightly employ by--but of this another time. To-day the gloomy shadow of the first dreary impression a place like this must make upon a spirit like yours, lies too heavily upon you; though I could speak with the tongues of angels, I could find no entrance to your heart, which is closed by anger and hatred. I have merely come to perform a duty which my office and I may say my heart prescribes. And this also is my duty, so that you may freely answer me without feeling that your pride is making concessions. Have you any wish that it is in my power to grant?"

"No," I answered, "for you could hardly give me a day's shooting over the heaths of Zehrendorf."

"I have heard," he said, "that you used to hunt much with my brother, and that you are yourself a skilful hunter. The hunter's nature is a peculiar one. I think I understand it, for I was born with the hunter's instincts; but there is no room for its exercise in these court-yards and gardens. I seldom have a holiday, and still more rarely avail myself of it; and in this respect I enjoy, and indeed desire, but little advantage over my prisoners. So it would be a hard trial for me, if with the old passion I still possessed my former vigor; and thus I may almost count it a piece of good fortune that at the Battle of Leipzig I was shot through the lungs, so that it would avail me nothing though I had the range of the boundless hunting-grounds of America. I have since learned to confine my activity within narrower limits. My favorite recreation is the turning-lathe. It is light work, and yet often proves too heavy for an invalid like myself I shall probably soon give it up, and must choose some still lighter work. But I should not like to find myself condemned to absolute inactivity. You do not now know, but you will soon learn, how great a blessing to a prisoner is a mechanical occupation which fixes his wandering thoughts upon some near and easily obtainable result which shapes itself under his hand. And now I will leave you. I have still two visits to make, besides my evening round through the building. One thing more: the old man who will wait upon you, is, despite his rough ways, a thoroughly good man, whom I have known for many years, and who has rendered me in my life the most important services. You can trust him absolutely. Now, good-night, and good sleep to you, and dream of the freedom which I hope you will sooner regain than you now think."

He gave me a friendly nod, and left the room with the slow, light step with which he had entered. I looked after him with fixed eyes, and passed my hand over my brow; the silent cell seemed to have become suddenly darker.

CHAPTER II.

I was still standing on the same spot, endeavoring to collect my thoughts, when the door again opened, and the old turnkey who had first received me, entered with a lighted candle, which he placed upon the table. Then returning to the door, he took from some female whose form was barely perceptible, a waiter upon which was a collation, and even a bottle of wine. He laid a snow-white napkin over one corner of the great oak table, placed everything neatly and orderly, took a step back and cast a satisfied look at his work, then an angry one at me, and said with a voice which strikingly resembled the growl of a great mastiff: "There!"

The roast meat on the dish had a very appetizing odor; for half a year I had not tasted a drop of wine; and what was more, I did not feel towards the surly turnkey the aversion that I felt towards the gently-speaking, courteous superintendent; but I was resolved to accept no favors from my jailor.

"I owe this to the kindness of the Herr Superintendent?" I asked, taking my seat at the table.

"For instance, that one has our best cell, with a look-out into the garden, and not one looking into the prison-yard, where neither sunlight nor moonlight ever comes."

"That one can wear his handsome town-clothes, instead of unbleached drilling; which is not such a bad rig, though, after all."

I looked up to get a better view of the man whose relation to me was so fraught with honor and advantage. He appeared to be above fifty years of age, of short, compact build, who seemed to stand remarkably firmly for his age upon his short bowed legs. From his broad shoulders hung a pair of quite disproportionately long arms, with great brown hairy hands, which evidently had not lost their strength of grasp. From his furrowed and wrinkled face, which might once have been good-looking, twinkled under gray bushy eyebrows a pair of clear, good-humored eyes, which in vain tried to look fierce and cruel. His smooth, close-cropped gray hair lay thick above his bronzed forehead; and beneath his great hooked nose, like an eagle's beak, a heavy moustache drooped on either side far below his firm chin. Sergeant Süssmilch was, in later years, long my true friend; in hours of trial he rendered me priceless services; he taught my eldest boys to ride; and when, five years ago, we carried him to his last resting-place, we all heartily sorrowed over him; but at this moment I was considering what amount of resistance he would be likely to offer in a contingency which I deemed very probable, and thought that I should be sorry to have to take the life of the old fellow who was so delightfully surly.

"If one has looked at Sergeant Süssmilch long enough, one will do well to fall to the supper, which is getting no better by standing," he said.

"It may stand there for me," I answered. "I have no appetite for the Herr Superintendent's roast meat and wine."

"Might as well have said so at once," growled Herr Süssmilch, commencing to replace the things on the waiter.

"That is not true," I said. "I am not condemned to labor: I was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, and should by rights have been sent to the fortress, where decent people go."

"One is altogether mistaken," he replied, having by this time cleared away the things. "In the prison one is compelled to work, unless one has a father or some one who will pay for his keep. In this case one has a father, and gets from him ten silbergroschen daily."

"Herr Süssmilch," I cried, stepping up to the old man, "I take for granted that you are telling me the truth; and now I give you my word that I will rather starve in the dungeon like a rat, than take a penny from my father."

"One wants, then, the ordinary diet, such as every one receives when he comes here?"

I made him no answer. I heard the old man go to the table, take the light, place it on the waiter, and move to the door. There he paused, apparently to see if I would change my mind. I did not move. He coughed; I took no notice. The next moment I was alone in the dark.

"To the devil all of you, with your smooth ways and your rough ways!" I muttered to myself "I want the one as little as the other, and I will be under obligations to no one--no one!"

I laughed aloud, seized the grating of the window and shook it, and then ran up and down the dark room like some wild animal. At last I threw myself in my clothes upon the bed, and lay there in gloomy desperation brooding over my fate, which had never before seemed to me so intolerable. I wrought myself up to a pitch of wild hatred against all who had had any share in my ruin, against my judge, my counsel, my father, the whole world; strengthening myself in my resolution not to abate my obduracy, not to ask the slightest thing of any one, not to be grateful to any one, and above all to win my liberty, cost what it might.

Thus I lay for long hours. At last I slept and dreamed of a flowery meadow over which were fluttering gay butterflies which I tried to catch but could not, for whenever I touched them they turned to red roses. And the red roses, when I attempted to pluck them, began to flash with light and ring with music, and flashing and ringing they floated up to heaven, whence they looked smiling down upon me as the faces of blooming maidens. It was all so strange and sweet and fair, that I lay upon the grass, laughing with bliss. But when I awaked I did not laugh. When I awaked Süssmilch stood at my bed-side and said: "Now one will have to work."

CHAPTER III.

For a fortnight I had been doing the very hardest work which at the time was to be had in the establishment, which combined in itself the features of a work-house, jail, and penitentiary. I was not compelled to do this either by the letter of the law which prescribed that prisoners should be employed in accordance with their capabilities, nor by order of the superintendent, who on the contrary had allowed me to choose whatever work I preferred. Indeed he proposed to me to draw up certain lists, and make out certain accounts which happened to be needed in the office, and for which the materials should be sent to my cell. For exercise I might find pleasant and healthful work in the large garden, which was about to be extended.

I replied--and in this I spoke the exact truth--that I was but a poor hand at accounts, and that I understood nothing of gardening. I should prefer, if I were allowed any choice in the matter, the very hardest work that could be found. The Herr Superintendent had himself remarked that work of this sort was the most suitable to a man of my constitution. I had at first denied this; but had more maturely considered the matter and found that the superintendent was right. Indeed I must confess that I felt an irresistible desire to split wood, to break stone, or to handle great weights.

In this, too, I spoke but the truth. My powerful frame was really suffering from the compulsory inactivity. But there were other reasons besides this which really prompted my request. Though I scarcely knew it myself, most of my decisive steps were taken with reference to my father. It was in a spirit of defiance to him that I had left his house; it was in defiance to him that I had given myself up to justice; and it was in defiance that I rejected his provision for my support and demanded the hardest work. He should not have it in his power to say that I ever, even in prison, was a burden to him; he should know that his son was treated no better than a common criminal, which indeed he was in his eyes.

And as little should the soft-speaking superintendent be able to say that he had dealt out to the young man who came of such respectable parents, mercy instead of justice.

And finally, heavy work which would have to be done in the open air must offer better chances for the execution of the plan over which I was brooding day and night, the plan either by cunning or force, or both combined, to obtain my liberty.

Now it is true that the work in the garden which was proposed to me perhaps offered still greater facilities for my purpose. The watch that would be kept there would hardly be very strict, especially for me, whom for some reason or other the superintendent seemed so particularly disposed to favor; but here a feeling arose within me which would probably appear singular to most men in my position, and yet of which I have no cause to feel ashamed.

I was not willing to abuse any confidence that might be placed in me. I had never done this in my life before; and I would not learn it now, not even though a prisoner, not even to win the liberty for which I so wildly longed. If they set me to work with the common criminals condemned to hard labor, they would probably treat me and watch me as one of them; and if they neglected this, so much the worse for them who made the distinction at their own risk, and so much the better for me who did not ask to be spared, and consequently was under no obligations to spare any one.

These thoughts passed through my mind as I appeared before the superintendent on the following day--this time in his office--and presented my request to him.

"Whoever enters this place as a prisoner, is an unhappy man, who as such alone is entitled to my compassion. If your fate touches me more nearly than the rest, the reason is so clear as to need no explanation. You have rejected the sympathy which I proffered you, but have not offended me. From what I know of you, from your attitude during your trial, this was what I had to expect. Whether you do well to reject the provision which your father is willing to make for you, I greatly doubt, as by so doing you but widen the breach between you; and in any circumstances one owes a father so much, that one can, without shame, accept even a humiliation at his hands. But this matter I must leave to your own feelings. If you wish to be treated as a common pauper criminal, who has to work for his maintenance, I had planned, as you know, work for you better suited to your capacities and your education. You say that what you desire is hard, laborious work. It may be so: you are a man of very unusual bodily strength, and the confined air of a prison is poison to both your mind and body. You have been deeply embittered by the long term of your preliminary detention, which appears to have been unprecedentedly rigorous. You will again, I am convinced, become the generous, good-natured, noble fellow which you are by nature, and which in my eyes you still are, when you have expanded this deep chest with pure fresh air, and your torpid circulation has been quickened by active work. You need, moreover, a strong counterpoise to the passions that are raging within you. So, all things considered, I am willing to grant your request. Süssmilch shall show you your duties. But I tell you beforehand, it is convicts' work, and you will find yourself in very bad company; so much the earlier will you remember the difference between you and them."

He gave me a friendly look and wave of the hand, and dismissed me. A feeling which I could not explain brought tears to my eyes as I turned from him to the door, but I forced them back and said to myself: That is all very fine; but I do not wish to be good, I wish to be free.

At the extreme corner of the prison wall, upon a slight elevation, there was a new infirmary to be built. Design, plans, specifications, had all been prepared by the superintendent himself, who was an excellent architect, and the work was to be done by the convicts. They were now digging the foundations. It was a heavy piece of work. An old tower, forming part of the city wall, had once stood upon the spot the ruins of which in the lapse of centuries had first crumbled to rubbish, and then become consolidated into a compact mass which had to be broken up with the pick until the old foundation-wall was reached, which was to serve in part for the new building.

About twenty men were employed on this work. Sergeant Süssmilch had the general supervision of it, and indeed, I being the only prisoner under his immediate charge, had nothing else to do, the convicts from the penitentiary being under the charge of two overseers. The most of these convicts, of whom the majority were young men, and all strong and well fitted for such work, looked as any men would look dressed in coarse drilling, working under the eyes of a pair of stalwart overseers, and forbidden to smoke, to whistle, to sing, or to speak in a low tone. This latter prohibition first struck me upon hearing Süssmilch give to one who had attempted to open a private conversation with his neighbor, in a very emphatic tone the warning: "One has no secrets here; one can talk loud or hold his tongue."

This warning was most frequently given to one particular convict, with the additional remark that he had every reason to be careful.

This was a fellow of Herculean frame, the only one that had what might be called a thorough gallows-face, and who owed his precious life only to the circumstance that a murder of which he was most vehemently suspected, could not quite be brought home to him in the eyes of the judges. He was named Kaspar, and his fellow-convicts called him Cat-Kaspar, because he was believed to possess the mysterious faculty of seeing in the dark as well as in broad daylight, and, notwithstanding the gigantic breadth of his shoulders, of creeping through holes only large enough to allow the passage of a cat.

From the very first day I had made a conquest of this richly-gifted man. While the others watched me with suspicious side-glances, never spoke a word to me, and visibly avoided me, Cat-Kaspar sought every opportunity to be near me; made furtive signals with his eyes, first looking at me and then at the overseers, and gave me in every way to understand that he wished to enter into more intimate relations, and especially that he wished to speak with me.

I confess that I felt the strongest abhorrence for the man, whose nature was plainly enough indicated by a low forehead almost covered by his hair, a pair of evil, poisonous eyes, and a great brutal mouth; and any one would have felt the impulse to shun him even without the knowledge that his hands were stained with blood. But I mastered this instinctive aversion, for I said to myself that this man would have decision enough for any venture, and dexterity and strength enough to carry out any plan. So I also sought an opportunity to get near him, but did not succeed until we had been working together for a fortnight. I had hardly effected this, when I made the discovery that Cat-Kaspar, in addition to the accomplishments of which I had heard, possessed another, which I afterwards found out to be easily acquired. This art consisted in a most perfect imitation of a yawn, and while holding the hand to the open mouth, forming by means of the tongue and teeth certain sounds which, when closely listened to, could be detected to be words. Thus for the first time I heard, to my no small astonishment, from the midst of the most natural yawn in the world, the words: "The great stone--help me."

They had recently been hauling stone for the foundations, and a particularly large one, through the clumsiness of the wagoners, had rolled into the foundation at a place where it was not needed. It seemed a matter of impossibility to get it out again without erecting apparatus for the purpose. Sergeant Süssmilch swore at their cursed stupidity, which would now cause an hour or more of unnecessary work. Cat-Kaspar, after he had given me the mysterious hint, suddenly raised his voice and said:

"What is the great difficulty, Herr Süssmilch? I will undertake it, single-handed."

The rest laughed. Cat-Kaspar called them a pack of toadies, and said that it was an easy thing to crack jokes and laugh at an honest fellow who was not allowed to show what he could do.

Cat-Kaspar knew his man. The honest sergeant turned red in the face; he pulled his long moustache, and said:

"In the first place, no arguments; in the second place, one may show now what he can do."

In an instant Cat-Kaspar had seized an immense crowbar and sprung into the foundation.

The stone lay upon the incline covered with planks by which the rubbish and earth were hauled away, and a giant, by means of a lever, might perhaps have rolled it up. Cat-Kaspar certainly exhibited very surprising strength. Thrusting his bar under the stone, he raised it so far that it required but little more to turn it over. The exertion of strength was really so astonishing, that the men hurrahed, and the attention of even Sergeant Süssmilch and the two overseers was riveted on the performance. Suddenly Cat-Kaspar's strength seemed to fail him; he looked as if in peril every instant to be crushed between the stone and the bank of earth.

I did not imagine that all this was a mere stratagem of the cunning rascal. Snatching a second crowbar, and without waiting for the sergeant's permission, I leapt down, thrust the bar under the stone, clapped my shoulder to it and heaved with all my strength, and the stone rolled over.

"Slowly, comrade," said Cat-Kaspar, as I was exerting myself further to help him with the stone, "slowly, or we will get up too soon."

He had no need to yawn now; the excitement of both convicts and overseers was such that the regulations were for the time forgotten; and then we were at least fifteen feet below them, and only our backs were visible. Cat-Kaspar took advantage of his opportunity. While we were heaving at the stone, shoulder to shoulder, he kept bandying coarse jokes with those above, and in the intervals addressed me in rapid, broken sentences.

"Will you join us.--never have such another chance--two fellows at least, such as you and I, must take it in hand--there are ten more of them--but two must begin--no one has the courage but myself--and you too, I hope--to-morrow is the last day--through the gate across the bridge over the rampart to the outer harbor at the strand--only follow me--I'll bring you through--if any one offers to stop us, kill him--the scoundrel Süssmilch first of all. If you betray us----"

He had gained his object, and had no desire to expend his strength further, at no advantage to himself.

"Come out!" ordered the sergeant, well pleased to have been right, and indeed doubly right, since the two strongest men of the gang had not been able to accomplish what Cat-Kaspar had undertaken to do single-handed.

Order was restored, and the work proceeded as usual. I did the work of two, to conceal the excitement into which the assassin's words had thrown me. His plan at once seemed tolerably plain, and I comprehended it thoroughly when I found an opportunity to take a look around from the highest point of the site from which one could see over the wall. Immediately adjoining the place where we were working was a gate in the wall, which during the progress of the work was frequently used, and the key to which the sergeant carried in his pocket. A short bridge, which had in the centre a gateway defended by chevaux-de-frise, led from the gate over a wide moat which in former times had been the town-fosse, as our prison-wall had once been part of the town-wall. Beyond the moat was a high bastion, with a walk shaded with walnut-trees at its foot, and on it stood two cannon, but I had never observed any sentry near them. To the right of the bastion was a much lower rampart, over which from my position it was easy to see; and beyond this I caught sight of the pennons of ships, which must be in the outer harbor of which Cat-Kaspar had spoken. Between the pennons glittered a bit of blue sea; indeed I could catch a glance of the island beyond, whose low chalk-cliffs shone bright in the sunset.

I had seen enough, and hastened to descend in order to awake no suspicion. The evening-bell rang, our work was over for the day; with the sergeant at my side I retraced the now familiar way by the garden, past the house to my cell.

This night no sleep visited my eyes. All night long I revolved in my mind the possibilities of flight. That Cat-Kaspar's plan was feasible, I was now convinced; and equally so that this cunning, bold fellow was the very man to carry it out. The place could not have been better chosen; a high bastion, an outer harbor with ships and boats, a deserted strand beyond, and over there the island, which I could reach in any event by swimming. Once there, I knew now how to get away, and how easily it could be done. My clothes were still in the old woman's keeping, and there also were my gun and my game-bag. Then farewell preliminary detention and imprisonment; farewell judges and counsel, superintendents and turnkeys! I should be a free man and could mock you all--and you too, worthy citizens of my native town, who had dealt so generously with me, and my father--well, my father might look to it how he reconciled to his conscience his treatment of a son whom his severity had driven from his house, whom he and he alone had made a criminal.

I had not been a criminal yet, but I knew that I should soon be one; indeed I felt myself one already. I even now felt the taint of my associations with Cat-Kaspar. It was plain enough that without real and deep crime--without murder--our plan could not be executed. The sergeant kept the keys of the gates in his pocket, and he was not a man to yield, especially in such a case. Then the other two overseers were there, who were clearly no chicken-hearts. The three would resist as long as life was in their bodies. They must be despatched at the very first attack, in order that terror should be added to confusion, if our flight was to succeed.

I sprang up from my bed with a wildly-beating heart. Cat-Kaspar counted on my assistance first of all, and he was right; unless we two began the attack simultaneously, there was no chance of success; one man alone would have none to second him; so one of the guards, probably the sergeant, must fall by my hand.

By my hand--how easy it was to think and to say this; but would not my courage fail me at the moment? True, I had fired at the officer in the moor, but then not only my own liberty, but that of my protector, benefactor, and friend was at stake, and thankful had I been that my bullet went astray. Now my associate was not the man I so loved and admired, but Cat-Kaspar; the thing to be done now was not to fire a pistol at a dark figure that suddenly springs up threatening in the way, but to perpetrate a deliberate murder; it was to kill a comparatively unarmed man with a spade, a pick, or a crowbar, or the first tool that came to the murderer's hand. And I had done everything in my power to hate the man, and could not do it. Through all his roughness there shone so much genuine kindness, that it often seemed to me that he had put on this prickly garb because he knew how soft he was by nature. If my relations to him were none of the best, whose fault was it but mine who had so rudely repulsed all his advances? He had not retaliated; he had never wavered in his rough but sincere good-will; if I overlooked his surly fashion of speech, he had treated me, not as a keeper his prisoner, but as an old faithful servant, who can take many liberties, might treat a young master who has behaved badly, and who has been entrusted to him to bring back to reason. Often during the work I found his clear blue eyes looking at me with a strange expression as if he were saying constantly to himself: "Poor youth! poor youth!" and as if he would like to throw down his measuring-rod, seize my pick, and do the work in my place. Once or twice he had said, as we were returning from work, "Well, hasn't one had enough of it yet?" and again, "One shouldn't be too obstinate and grieve the captain so." (The sergeant never called his former officer the "superintendent," except where it was absolutely necessary.) "How grieve the captain?" I asked. "One will not understand it," the old man replied, and looked quite sad and dejected.

But does any one understand less because he pretends unconsciousness? Whatever the reason might be that drew the superintendent's sympathy to me and my fate, I could not close my eyes to the fact that this sympathy existed, and that it was expressed in the sincerest, in the most winning manner, I still heard his words and the tone in which they were spoken, a tone which so vividly brought back to my memory the voice of the man who had been and still was my hero. The oftener I saw the superintendent--and I saw him nearly every day--the more I was struck by his resemblance to his unfortunate brother. It was the same tall form, but toil and sickness, and probably grief and care, had broken down the proud strength; it was the same noble face, but nobler and gentler; the same great dark eyes, but their looks were more earnest and sad. Even when his lips were silent, these eyes greeted me with kindness; and in this frightful night, while I was struggling with the tempter, I saw them still, and their soft sad looks seemed to ask: "Have you a heart to plan such a deed?--a hand to execute it?"

But I will, I must be free! my spirit cried out. What care I for your laws? If you have brought me to despair, you can only expect from me the actions of a desperate man. From my school here--from one prison to another! I shook off one tyranny because I found it intolerable; should I patiently bear this which oppresses me so much more heavily? Shall I not meet force with force? What would the Wild Zehren do were he alive and knew that his dearest friend was here in a dungeon? He would strive to set me free, though he had to burn down the prison or even the town, as those faithful fellows did, who delivered his ancestor! What he would do and dare, that would I. At the worst it could but cost my life; and that life should be thrown away when it was no longer worth having--the Wild Zehren had taught me that.

Thoughts like these agitated me as if a hell had been let loose in my breast. Even now, after so many years, now when with a joyous and innocent heart I feel grateful for every sun that rises bringing me another day of earnest work and calm happiness--even now my heart palpitates and my hand trembles as I write these lines, which bring so vividly before me the terrors of that night, and of the time when I sought for any means of escape from the labyrinth in which I wandered in despair.

Let no one cast a stone at me that I strayed so far from the right path. Well for thee, be thou who thou mayst, whose brow falls into severe judicial folds upon reading this--well for thee if the happy temper of thy blood has preserved thee from the blind fury of raging passions, if a judicious education has early given thee a clear view of life, and kindly smoothed thy path before thee. Then thank thy beneficent stars that have granted thee all this, and perhaps kept thee from going widely astray. For when is this not possible? It is a peril to which all are exposed. Then devoutly pray that thou mayst not be led into temptation, that no such night may come to thee as that through which I suffered; a night in which it is not only dark without, but within; a night which, when thirty years have passed, you will still shudder to think of.

When the dawning light entered my cell, it found me with burning temples, and shivering with chill. I probably looked pale and haggard, for the sergeant's first word when he saw me was, "Sick: no work to-day."

I was sick; I felt it but too plainly. I had never felt thus in my life before. Was this the hand of fate, I thought, which forbade our designs? If I did not go to work to day, the attempt would not be made. Cat-Kaspar reckoned on my strength, courage, and decision. My example--the example of one who was to a certain extent a volunteer, and whom they all felt to be their superior--must exert an irresistible influence upon them. Cat-Kaspar fully calculated upon this, and he neither could nor would venture without me.

"No work to-day," said the sergeant. "Look as miserable as a cat. Overdid it yesterday. Not got seven senses like a bear."

This last mysterious phrase--a favorite one with the sergeant--was beyond my comprehension; but its meaning could only be a friendly one, for his blue eyes rested upon me as he spoke with an expression of sincere solicitude.

"Not at all," I said. "I think I shall feel better out of doors: the prison air does not suit me."

"And me first of all," I said; "so badly that I have a strong inclination to go away pretty soon."

I looked the old man fixedly in the eye. I wanted him to read my intention in my looks. But he only smiled and replied:

Again I looked at him steadily in the face. This time the expression of my look struck him.

"Look like a bear with seven senses. Got a robber-murderous-gallows look,"^[5] said he.

"What I am not, I may be yet," I said; "what if I were to throttle you this moment? I am thrice as strong as you."

"No stupid jokes," said the sergeant. "Not a bear; and an old soldier is no toothpick."

In this way the worthy Herr Süssmilch disposed of the matter. As I would neither remain in my cell nor see the prison-doctor, we started for the work-place.

On the way I had to stop more than once, for everything grew dark before my eyes, and I thought that I was about to die. The same sensations returned several times during the day, which was unusually hot. A fierce fever was raging in my veins, a terrible malady was swiftly coming on me, or indeed had already come.

Dr. Snellius said to me afterwards, and indeed repeated the remark to me but a few days ago, over our wine at table, that he cannot to this day understand how a man in the condition in which I must have been, could not only remain upon his feet all day long, but do hard work. He said it was the strongest proof he had ever met, of how far an intense will could prevail contra naturam, against the course of nature. "To be sure," he added, clapping me on the shoulder, "only blacksmiths can do it; tailors die in the attempt."

How dreadfully I suffered! When the dream-god has a mind to play me a malicious trick, he places me in a deep excavation into which pour the rays of a pitiless sun; he claps a pick into my hand, with which I smite furious blows upon a soil hard as rock, but the soil is my own head, and every blow pierces to my brain; and then he fills the excavation with fiends in the shape of men, who are all working like myself with picks or with spades, shovels and barrows, and these fiends have all flat, brutal faces and evil eyes that they keep fixed upon me, giving me signs of intelligence and readiness for the devilish work I am to do. And among them rises from time to time a head that has eyes more evil than all the rest, and the head opens its horrible mouth to yawn, and from the distended jaws come the words: "Sunset soon--ready, comrade--I take Rollmann, you sergeant--smash skulls!"

It is half an hour before sunset. In half an hour the bell will ring to stop work. This is the last day; the excavation is done and the foundation-stones are brought. Tomorrow regular masons will take the work in hand. Some of the convicts will help them, but others will be employed elsewhere; it is the last evening on which the eleven of whom I am to be the twelfth will be together. Now or never is to be the time, and the signal has been already given.

Cat-Kaspar commences a dispute with his neighbor, in which the others join, one by one. The quarrel gets hot; the men appear to grow furious; while the overseers, with the sergeant at their head, endeavor to separate them, and threaten them with solitary confinement on bread and water for such unheard-of insubordination. The rioters pay no attention; from words they come to blows, and pushing and striking, they get into a confused mêlée, into which they endeavor to involve the overseers.

This prelude has lasted but a few moments, and it can be continued no longer, lest the unusual noise should bring other officers upon the spot, and so the whole plan be defeated.

Whether I was drawn into the mêlée, or whether I sprang into it voluntarily, I cannot say--I find myself in the midst. I do not know if I am helping the overseers to drag the men apart, or if I am trying to increase the confusion; but I shout, I rave, I seize two by their necks and hurl them to the ground as if they were puppets; I behave like a madman--I am really mad, though neither I nor the rest know it; even Cat-Kaspar does not perceive it, but rushes up to my side and shouts: "Now, comrade!"

At this instant I see a man of tall stature emerge from the garden-gate and hasten towards us. It is the superintendent. A maiden of about fifteen, of whose slender figure I have more than once caught a glimpse through the garden-gate, holds him by the hand, and seems to endeavor to detain him, or else to share the danger. Two boys appear at the gate, and hurrah loudly; they have no idea of the terrible seriousness of the affair.

The tall superintendent confronts us. He draws his left hand gently from the hand of the maiden and presses it upon his weak chest, which is laboring with the exertion of his rapid walk. The other hand he has raised to command silence, as he is not yet able to speak. His usually pale cheeks are suffused with a feverish glow; his large eyes flash, as if they must speak, since his lips cannot.

And the raging, furious crew understand their language. They have all learned to look up in reverence to the pale man who is always grave and always kind, even when he must punish, and whom no one has yet known to punish unjustly. They are prepared for everything except this, that at the last moment this man should confront them. They feel that their plan has failed: indeed they abandon it.

One does not. One is resolved to win the game or lose all. In truth, is not the chance now better than ever? Let yonder man once lie prostrate, who or what could restrain him and the rest?

Giving a yell more horrible than ever issued from the throat of the fiercest beast of prey, he swings high his pick and rushes upon the superintendent. The maiden throws herself before her father. But a better defender is still swifter than she. With one bound he springs between them and seizes the miscreant's arm. The pick, in descending, grazes his head, but what is that to the torments that have been raging in it for hours?

"Cursed hound!" roars Cat-Kaspar, "have you betrayed us?" and swings his pick again, but has hardly raised it when he is lying upon the ground, and on his breast is kneeling one to whom the delirium of fever has now given the strength of a giant, and whom in this moment no living man could resist.

In a moment it is all over. For an instant he sees the horribly distorted face of Cat-Kaspar--he feels hands striving to wrench his hands from the man's throat, and then a black night swallows up all.

CHAPTER IV.

A black night which is but a long, long continuation of the dreadful dream, until at last it is broken by rare gleams of soft, dim light, at which the forms of fear grow faint and give way to more friendly shapes. These also melt into deep night, but it is not the old terrible gloom, but rather a blissful sinking into happy annihilation; and whenever I emerge from it the figures are clearer, so that I sometimes now succeed in distinguishing them from each other, whereas at first they melted indistinguishably into one another. Now I know that when the long gray moustache nods up and down before my face, there is always an honest, good-natured old mastiff there, who growls out of his deep chest; only I never get sight of the mastiff, and sometimes think that it is the long gray moustache itself that growls so. When the moustache is dark, I hear a soft voice, the sound of which is inexpressibly soothing to me, so that I cannot refrain from happy smiles, while when I hear the mastiff I would laugh aloud, only I have no body, but am a soap-bubble which floats out of the garret-window in my father's house, into the sunny air, until two spectacle-glasses which have no moustache, are reflected in it. These spectacle-glasses perplex me; for although they never have a moustache, they are sometimes blue, and then they are a woman; but when they are white they are a man and have a creaking voice, while the blue glasses have the softest voice--softer even than that of the dark moustache.

I cannot make out how all this is, and puzzle myself over it until I fall asleep, and when I awake some one is leaning over me who has a dark moustache and brown eyes, and exactly resembles some one that I know, although I cannot recall where and when I have seen him. But I feel both glad and sad at the sight of this unknown acquaintance, for it seems to me that I owe him boundless gratitude for something--I know not what. And this feeling of gratitude is so strong that I draw his hand, which he has laid upon mine, very slowly and softly, for I have little or no strength, to my lips, and close my eyes, from which happy tears are streaming. I have something to say, but cannot recall it, and fall to thinking it over, and when I again open my eyes the form is gone, and the room vacant and filled with a dim light, and I look around in surprise.

It is a moderately-large, two-windowed room; the white window-curtains are pulled down, and on them I can see the shadows of vine-branches waving to and fro. I watch the motion with delight; it is an image of my thoughts that float and waver thus without being able to fix themselves on any point. I look again into the room, and my eyes find an object on which they rest. It is a picture which hangs directly opposite to me on a plain light-gray wall; it represents a young and beautiful woman with a child in her arms. The eyes of the young mother, who is calm and almost sad, as though she were pondering over some wondrous mystery, are mild and gentle; while those of the boy, under his full brow, have a dignity beyond his years, and look out into the far distance with an air of majesty as if their glances comprehended the world.

I can scarcely turn my eyes from the picture. My admiration is pure and artless; I have no knowledge of the original; I do not know that it is an exquisite copy in crayons of the most celebrated painting of the Master of masters; I only know that never in my life have I seen anything so beautiful.

Under this picture hangs a little étagère with two rows of neatly-bound books. Under the étagère stands a bureau of antique form with brass handles, and on it lie drawing-materials, and, between two terra-cotta vases, a little work-basket with ends of red worsted hanging over its edge.

Between the windows and the bureau, evidently set on one side, is an easel, upon which is a drawing-board with the face inwards; and on the other side of the door a cottage piano, the upper part of which has a peculiar, lyre-shaped figure.

I do not know what it is that suddenly brings to my mind Constance von Zehren. Perhaps it is that the lyre-shaped instrument reminds me of a guitar; and indeed this must be the reason, for in nothing else does the room bear any resemblance to Constance's. As there all was neglect and confusion, here all is orderly and cheerful; no torn threadbare carpet covers the white floor upon which the windows throw squares of sunlight, and the shadows of the vine-branches play, but fainter than upon the curtains. No, I am not at Castle Zehren. In all that castle there was no apartment like this, so bright, so cheerful, so clean; and now I remember Castle Zehren is burnt down--to the very ground, some one told me--so I cannot be at Castle Zehren; but where am I, then?

I turn my eyes to the beautiful young mother of the picture, as if she could answer me; but looking at her, I forget what it was that I had intended to ask. I have only the feeling that one can sleep peacefully when such eyes are watching him; and I wonder that the fair boy does not rest his head upon the shoulder or the bosom of his mother, close his great thoughtful eyes, and sleep sweetly--oh! so sweetly!

The long sweet sleep wonderfully strengthens me. When I awake, I at once raise my head, rest myself upon my elbow, and stare with surprise at the brown furrowed face, the blue eyes, the great hooked nose, and the long gray moustache of Sergeant Süssmilch, who sits at my bed-side.

The old man, on his part, looks at me with no less surprise. Then a pleasant smile shoots from the moustache through a pair of the deepest furrows up to the blue eyes, where it stays and blinks and twinkles joyously. He brings three fingers of his right hand to his forehead, and says, "Serviteur!"

This comes so drolly from him that I have to laugh, for I can laugh now, and the old fellow laughs too, and says, "Had a good nap?"

"Eight weeks," I repeated, mechanically; "that is a long time;" and thinking of this, I pass my hand over my head. My head was naturally covered with very thick, curly, soft auburn hair, inclining to red; but I now feel nothing but short bristles, as of a brush, a brush too in which time has made considerable ravages.

"Soon grow," said the sergeant, encouragingly. "Shaved me bald as a turnip after this"--he pointed to a deep scar on his right temple, running up into his thick gray hair, and which I now noticed for the first time--"and yet I had a crop afterwards like a bear----"

"With seven senses," I added, and had to laugh at my own wit. It seems that I have a child's head on my broad shoulders.

He did not finish his favorite simile, apparently in fear lest he should set me to laughing again; but I laughed in spite of his precautions, and while doing so pulled up the sleeve of my shirt, which struck me as singularly loose. But it was not that the sleeve was wider, but my arm thinner; so thin that I could scarcely believe it to be mine.

"Well," said he, "it was very near tattoo; but I always said: weeds won't die," and he rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "Talk enough now," he added, in a tone of authority. "Strict orders, when awake, to allow no discussion, and report fact; which shall be done forthwith."

The sergeant is about rising, but I take one of his brown hands and beg him to stay. I feel myself quite strong, I say; speaking does not fatigue me at all, and of course hearing does not; and I should like to hear how I came into this condition, who the persons are that have been about me, and whose faces I have seen floating through the mist of my dreams; and if there has not been a great good-natured mastiff that guarded me, and had a way of growling deeply.

The old man looks at me attentively, as if he thought all was not yet quite right under my bristly, half-bald skull, and that it was high time he made his report. He placed my hand upon the coverlid, and said, "So! so!" smoothes the pillow, and again says, "So! so!" so to please him I shut my eyes and hear how he rises softly and goes away on tiptoe; but the door has hardly closed behind him when I open my eyes again, and apply myself resolutely to the task of solving the questions which I had addressed to the old man.

As when we look down from a high mountain upon a sea of mist, we note bright points emerging, one by one--a sunlit corn-field, a cottage, a bit of road, a little lake with grassy shores, until at last the whole landscape lies plain before us, except a few spots over which gray wreaths of vapor still float, which more slowly than the rest roll up the ravines--just so before my mental vision dissolved the night of oblivion which during my illness had covered the recent events of my life. Now I again remembered that I was in prison and how I came there; that the old man with the gray moustache was not my friend and nurse, but my keeper; that I had had thoughts of killing him, if necessary, to gain my liberty; and so everything that had happened, up to that last frightful day; but that was confused and obscure--as confused and obscure as it has ever since remained in my memory to this hour. Dark and painful; but strange to say, this painful feeling was turned exclusively against myself. The hate, the bitterness, the rancor, the desperation, the frenzy--all the demons which had dwelt in my soul, were gone, as though an angel with flaming sword--perhaps the Angel of Death, who had hovered over me--had driven them away. Even the remains of pain melted away in thankfulness that the most fearful of all had been spared me--that I could look upon my white, wasted hands without a shudder.

As I lay here, pondering these things, and my eyes rested upon that fair young mother, who bore her boy so securely upon her strong, faithful arm, my hands involuntarily folded, and I thought of my own mother so early lost--far too early for me--and how all would have happened differently if she had ever encircled me with her protecting arms; if in my young sorrows and doubts I could have sought refuge, counsel, and consolation upon her faithful breast. And I thought too of my father, who was so lonely now, whose hopes I had so cruelly blighted, whose pride I had so deeply wounded; and I thought of him for the first time without animosity, with only a feeling of deepest pity for the poor old forsaken man.

"But he will live," I said to myself, "and I am not dead; and all shall be well again. No, not all. The lost past cannot be recalled; but the future still is mine, even in a prison."

In a prison. But was this a prison in which I was?--this pleasant room with windows barred only by nodding vine-branches; a room in which everything spoke of the peacefully cheerful life of its fair inhabitant.

How I came to this idea I do not know, but I could not rid myself of it; and there were the ends of red worsted hanging from the little work-basket. What had a workbasket to do in the room of a man?

I thought and thought, but could arrive at no conclusion; the streak of mist would not move. Indeed it rather widened and spread to a thin veil, which threatened gradually to envelope the whole prospect. I did not care; I had seen it once and knew that I should see it again; knew that I should hear the voices again which now fell faintly on my ear as if from a vast distance, among which I could distinguish the muttered growl of my faithful mastiff, and the soft voice that accompanied the eyes whose gentle light had shone through my darkness.

When I again awaked, it was really night, or at least so late that the little astral lamp by my bedside was already lighted, and by its feeble glimmer I saw some one sitting by my bed whom I did not recognize, as his head was hidden in his hand. But when I moved, and he raised his head and asked, "How are you now?" I knew him at once. The low gentle voice I would have recognized among a thousand. And now, strangely enough, without having to give a moment's thought to the matter, but just as if some one had told me everything in my sleep, I knew that the house in which I had been for the last eight weeks, and in which I had all this time been tended as carefully as if I had been one of the family, was the house of the superintendent, of the man who certainly not to-day for the first time was watching by my bed, and who spoke to me in a tone of affection, as might a kind father to his son.

Leaning over me, he had taken my hand while he went on speaking; but I could only half hear his words for another voice that cried out within me, loud and ever louder, in the words of Scripture: "I am not worthy!"

I could not silence this voice. "I am not worthy!" it continually cried, until at last I exclaimed aloud: "I am not worthy!"

"You are, my friend," said the soft voice; "I know that you are, even though you know it not yourself."

"No, no, I am not," I said, in great agitation. "You do not know whom you are caring for; you do not know whose hand you are holding in yours."

And now, following that irresistible impulse which urges every nature that is upright at heart to refuse at all hazards gratitude which it is conscious of not deserving, I confessed my grievous fault; how I had been resolved to run every risk to gain my liberty; that I had not, it is true, invited the overtures of the ruffian, but nevertheless had permitted them; how I had known of the plot and of the hour when it was to be carried out, and that I did not know why in the last moment the courage to do my part in it had failed me so that I turned my hand against the man whom I had voluntarily admitted as my comrade, and whose accomplice I must necessarily consider myself.

The superintendent allowed me to speak to an end, only retaining with a gentle pressure my hand, whenever I attempted to withdraw it. When I ceased speaking, he said--and even now, after so many years, on awaking in the night, I fancy I hear his voice:

"My dear young friend, it is not what our fancies, intentions, desires, represent to us as possible or even necessary, not what we believe we can do or ought to do, not what we have resolved to do, but it is what at any given moment we really do, that makes us what we are. The coward believes himself a hero until the moment of trial convicts him of cowardice; the brave man fancies that he will prudently avoid all perils, and plunges headlong into danger as soon as a cry for help reaches his ear. You believed yourself capable of lifting your hand against a defenceless man, and when you saw him attacked by a murderer, you sprang to his assistance. And do not say that you did not know what you were doing; or if you really did not know, you were following the irresistible promptings of your nature, and were just at that moment your real self. I and mine will evermore see in you the man who saved my life at the peril of his own."

"Even were that so," he answered, "few have my opportunity for knowing that the surest, often the only way to make a man better, is to take him for better than he is. Would to heaven that this secret of my craft were always as easy of employment as with you. And if I can help, as I joyfully trust I can, in refining the noble metal of your nature from the dross with which it may yet be mingled; if I can help to enlighten you in regard to yourself, to light up the path of your life which lies but dark before you, and from which you believe you have--and perhaps really have--wandered; in a word, to make you what you can be, and therefore ought to be--that would be but dealing you out justice in return for the sharp injustice which has brought you here; and I might thus repay the debt of gratitude which I owed you before you set foot in this house, let alone before you preserved for my children their father's life."

The soft light of the lamp fell upon his beautiful pale face, which seemed to beam upon me with mild radiance like a star out of the surrounding gloom; and his gentle voice came to my ear like the voice of some good spirit that in the stillness of the night speaks to some needy and stricken soul. I lay there without moving, without turning my eyes from him, and softly begged him to speak on.

"It is perhaps selfish in me to do so," he said, "if I now seize the moment when your soul awakes to fresh life, and is disposed to look with trusting child-like eyes upon the world it has regained, to teach you to know me, and, if possible, to love me, as I know and love you--I repeat it, not now for the first time. I knew you before you came here. You look at me with surprise, and yet nothing could be more simple. I always deeply loved my eldest brother, although in reality we only passed our childhood and boyhood together, and were then separated, never again to associate, nor indeed even to see each other, for the last fourteen years. For, whatever the world and his passions may have made of him, his was originally the fairest, noblest, bravest soul that ever was bestowed upon man. You can imagine what a blow to me was the news of his death; with what painful care I strove to learn everything connected with his death and its cause; how eagerly I seized an opportunity that offered to read the reports of the trial in which the name and actions of my unfortunate brother figured so conspicuously, and in which you were yourself so unhappily involved. From these reports I first learned to know you, I have long been accustomed to inspect reports of this kind, and know how to read between the lines of the text. Never was this skill more necessary to me than in this case; for never has the juristic understanding--or rather imbecility--divested of all psychological insight, committed grosser wrong than in your case; never did the hand of a dauber produce from an easily-outlined, sun-clear, youthful face, a more hideous caricature in black upon black. In almost every feature with which the accusation furnished it, I thought I could perceive and prove exactly the contrary. And had it not been my dearly-loved brother whose fault you were to expiate--if the whole trial had been foreign to me, instead of touching me nearly, and in a thousand painful ways, I would have made your cause my own, and tried to save you, if in my power. But I could do nothing for you; I could only exert all my influence to have you brought here instead of to N., where it was originally intended to send you.

"You came, I saw you as I had pictured you to myself; I found you just as I had thought. There may have been some apparent difference, but that was not the youth who, to rescue my brother, had rushed upon ruin; who had given himself up to justice that men might not say his father was his accomplice; who during the trial had knowingly damaged his own cause by obstinately refusing all information implicating others; whose manly candor in all other points would have touched any heart but the shriveled heart of a man of acts and processes. This was a man who had been wronged under the forms of law, whose clear soul had been darkened by the gloom of a dungeon.

"It was worthy of you that you attempted no concealment of your feeling of hatred, that you proudly rejected what was offered you here, which others would have greedily seized. Let me be brief The malady that had been so long incubating, which nothing but your unusually strong constitution was able to withstand so long, at last declared itself. In the frenzy of your disturbed mind you wished to show: 'This is what you have made out of me!' and the result showed that you had remained what you always were. You were carried away for dead from the place; a physician hastily called in gave some hope, but said that only the most unremitting care could save you. Where could you receive that care but here? Who could more faithfully watch over your life than he who owed you his own? What, in such a case, were to me the rules of the house, or the talk of men? We carried you into the first room, which happened to be the best for our purpose. We--that is, my wife, my daughter, who is older than her years, the faithful old Süssmilch, the physician, whom you will learn to love as he deserves, and myself--we have fought faithfully and bravely with the death that threatened you; and the women wept, and the men shook each other by the hand when your strong nature triumphed over its enemy, and the physician said to us--a week ago--'He is saved.' And now enough; perhaps too much for to-day. If from our conversation you have received the impression, and will bear it with you into your sleep, that you are among friends that love you, that is all I wish. I hear Süssmilch coming; I wanted to relieve him to-night, but he says he cannot leave his prisoner. And now good night and good rest."

He passed his hand softly over my brow and eyes, and left the room. My soul was filled with his words. No man had ever spoken to me like this. Was it really myself? Had my gloomy soul departed during my long sickness, and given place to a purer, brighter spirit? Be it as it might, it was sweet--almost too sweet to last. But I would keep it as long as I could, as one holds fast the refrain of some lovely melody. I did not move, I did not open my eyes, when I heard by a slight rustling in the room that my faithful guardian was making his preparations for the night.

How could I do otherwise than rest sweetly, so richly blessed; than rest calmly, so faithfully guarded?

CHAPTER V.

In the shady garden, especially reserved for the use of the superintendent and his family, there was at the farthest corner a little garden-house, which stood upon the old city-wall, and in the family rejoiced in the pompous name of Belvedere, because from it a charming view might have been had, over the ramparts, of a large part of the strait and a still larger part of the island, if one could only have opened the windows. But the window-frames were very old, and rotten and warped with age; the sashes were narrow, and the regular pattern they once presented could scarcely now be discerned in the small, lead-set panes of stained glass which had once belonged to an adjacent chapel, now in ruins. The house was to a certain extent a ruin, as the wood of which it was built had not entirely resisted for so many years the influences of the sun, the rain, and the sea-breeze; and it was in consequence but seldom used, far more rarely than the space immediately in front of it, which was, in reality, the summer residence of the family, where they passed the best part of the time in fine weather.

This spot fully deserved their preference. On a level with the garden-house and the crest of the wall, and thus considerably higher than the rest of the garden, it was reached by a refreshing breeze from the near sea, while but rarely did a ray of the noon sun pierce the thick foliage of the old plane-trees that surrounded it. The spaces between the trunks of these trees were filled up with the green wall of a living hedge, which added to the cosy, secluded character of the spot, and threw into bold relief the figures of six hermæ of sandstone. Two round pine tables, painted green, stood on either side, with the needful chairs, and invited to work or to reverie.

Of the two persons who were sitting here one fine afternoon in August, about a fortnight after I had been able to leave my room, the one was occupied--if day-dreaming may be called an occupation with the other; while the other was really diligently at work. The dreamer was myself; and a light covering, which, despite the warmth of the day, was thrown across my lap, seemed meant to indicate that I was still a convalescent, to whom dreaming is allowed and work forbidden; while the other was a young maiden of about fourteen years, and her work consisted in drawing a life-size head à deux crayons upon a sketching-board. During her work she frequently raised her eyes from her sketching-board to me, and if I must name the subject of my dreams, I must confess that it was these eyes of hers.

And indeed one did not need to be twenty years old, and a convalescent, and in addition precisely the one upon whom these eyes were so often fixed with that peculiar look at once decisive and doubtful, piercing and superficial, which the painter casts upon his model--I say one did not need to be either of these, let alone all three at once, to be fettered by these eyes. They were large and blue, with that depth in them which has a surface on which play every emotion of feeling, every glancing light and passing shadow, and which yet remains in itself something unfathomable. Once already, and that not so long before, I had looked into eyes that were unfathomable, at least for me, but how different were these! I felt the difference, and yet was not able precisely to define it. I only knew that these eyes did not confuse and disquiet me, did not kindle me into a flame to-day to chill me as with ice to-morrow; but that I could gaze into them again and again as one gazes into the clear sky, full of blissful calm, and no wish, no desire awakens within us, unless it be the longing to have wings.

What possibly may have caused these large deep eyes of the maiden to appear larger and deeper, was the circumstance that they were by far the chief beauty of her face. Some said the only beauty; but I could not at that time agree with this opinion. Her features were indeed not perfectly regular, and certainly not at all what is called striking, but there was nothing ignoble about them; on the contrary, all was refined and full of character, at once bright and thoughtful, designed in soft yet well-marked lines. Especially did this apply to the mouth, which seemed to speak even when the lips were shut. And this bright, intelligent, rather pale face was inclosed by two thick plaits of the richest blond hair, which, as was then the fashion, commenced at the temples and were carried under the ears to the back of the head--almost too heavy a frame, one would have said, for the delicate head, which was usually inclined a little forward or to one side. This attitude, combined with her usual seriousness of expression, gave the maiden an appearance of being several years older than she really was. But work and care soon brush away the first lustre of youth; and she, though hardly more than a child, knew what work was but too well, and over her young life care had already cast its gloomy shadow.

CHAPTER VI.

At this moment, however, a smile played over her serious face. She looked over her sketching-board at me and said: "You can get up, if you wish."

"Have you finished?" I asked, availing myself of the permission, and going behind her chair. "Why, you are still at work on the eyes. How can you have so much patience?"

"And you so much impatience?" she asked in return, quietly going on with her drawing. "You are just like our little Oscar. When he has planted a bean, five minutes afterwards he digs it up again to see if it has grown at all."

"No, he is not right. Oscar is the smallest, and therefore I must look after him the most. Benno and Kurt can get along without me."

I had taken my seat, but several minutes passed while I sat silently watching her work. A ray of the evening sun, which pierced the thick foliage of the great plane, fell upon her head and surrounded it with an aureole.

"But she is so much older than I, and never cared much for me; and now she of course will have nothing more to do with me."

"On the Polish frontier. She has been married, these ten years, to an officer in the customs. She has a number of children."

"I am not angry with her; I hardly know her; I believe I should pass her by if I met her on the street."

"That is not well; brothers and sisters should hold together. If I thought that ten or twenty years hence I should meet Benno or Kurt or my little Oscar on the street and they would not know me, I should be very unhappy."

"By that time the boys will have long been men, and will have wives and children, and my father and my mother will long have been buried, and what should I then do in the world?"

Her voice was so serious, and her great blue eyes that looked over the board at my forehead, which she was then drawing, had so grave an expression, that I could not laugh, as I at first felt disposed to do.

"Greek is so desperately hard; I tell you, Paula, the irregular verbs--no human creature can learn them unless it be gymnasium professors, and I never can believe that they are exactly men."

"That is one of your jokes, which you must not let Benno hear: he wants to be a teacher."

"Do not do so. Why should he not be a teacher if he has a liking for it, and talent enough? I do not know anything more delightful than to teach any one something which I believe to be good and useful to him. And then it is a good position for one in Benno's circumstances. I have heard it said that when one makes no great pretensions, he can soon secure a modest sufficiency. My father, it is true, has other views: he would like Benno to be a physician or naturalist. But these are expensive professions to learn; and although my father always takes a hopeful view--but I am not sure that he always does."

Paula bent her head over her sketching-board, and went on with her drawing more assiduously than ever; but I saw that once or twice she raised her handkerchief to her eyes. It gave me pain to see it. I knew what anxiety, and that too well-founded, Paula felt for her father's health, whom she loved devotedly.

"Fräulein Paula," I said again, "you must not cherish such gloomy thoughts. Your father is not so ill: and then you would not believe what a race the Zehrens are. Herr von Zehren used to call the steuerrath a weakling, and yet he might take an undisputed place among those who account themselves robust men; but Herr von Zehren himself was a man of steel, and yet he once told me that his youngest brother was a match for two like him. And you see a strong constitution is everything, Doctor Snellius says, and so I say too."

"You mean that a miserable scarecrow, such as I sit here, has no business to be talking about strength?"

"O no; I know how strong you were before you were ill; and how soon you would be strong again, if you would take proper care of yourself, which you do not always do. For example, you ought never to be sitting here without some wrappings, and you have let the coverlid fall off your lap; but----"

"I mean that it is not quite right to say that a strong constitution is everything. Kurt there is certainly the strongest of the boys, and yet Oscar can read, write, and cipher as well as he, though Kurt is nine years old, and Oscar only seven."

She said it gently and pleasantly, without a trace of offence, and yet I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I felt as though I had struck a defenceless child.

"No, it was not at all kind," I said, with warmth; "it was a very unfeeling speech; I do not know how I could say it. But clever boys have always been held up to me as models, and the comparison always carried with it so many disagreeable allusions to myself, that the blood always rises to my head when I hear them talked about. It always makes me think how stupid I am."

"But that is nobody's fault but yours--that is, supposing it to be really the case."

"It is the case," I answered. "It is frightful how little I know. To say nothing at all about Greek, which I maintain to be too hard, and only invented by teachers on purpose to torment us, my Latin does not amount to much, and that is certainly my fault, for I have seen how Arthur, who I don't believe is a bit cleverer than I am, could get along with it very well when he tried. Your English books, in which you read so much, might all be Greek for me; and as for French--perhaps I can still conjugate avoir and être, but I doubt it. And yesterday, when Benno could not get his exercises right, and asked me, and I told him he must get them right himself--I don't mind telling you that I had not the slightest notion how to begin them--and when he afterwards got them right by himself, I felt shamed by a boy eleven years old; just as I have felt ashamed before Dr. Busch, our professor of mathematics, whenever, as he always did, he wrote under my work, 'Thoroughly bad,' or 'Quite remarkably bad,' or 'Very well copied,' or some such maliciousness."

While I thus remorsefully confessed my shortcomings, Paula looked steadily at me with her great eyes, from time to time shaking her head, as if she could not believe her ears.

"Why do you always say 'if,' Paula? Little as I have learned, I have at least learned to tell the truth, and I would never attempt a falsehood with you."

"Forgive me," she said; "I did not mean to wound you; although I can scarcely believe that you--that you spent so ill your time at school. I only meant to say that you must make it good again; you must make up for that lost time."

"Easily said, Paula! How am I to begin? Benno knows more French, geography, and mathematics than I, and he is only eleven years old, and next month I am twenty."

Paula pushed the drawing-board away from her upon the table, and leaned her head upon her hand, apparently in order better to ponder over so desperate a case. Suddenly she raised her head and said:

"He will, be sure. You do not know how much my father knows. He knows everything--understands everything."

"That I well believe, Paula; but how can that help me? He can give me no part of his knowledge, even if he were so kind as to wish it."

"True, he cannot do that; you must work yourself; but how to work the best, and how to succeed the soonest, he knows, and will tell you if you ask him. Will you?"

As to utter this "yes" required some determination on my part, I spoke it in a firm loud voice. Paula folded her hands and bent her head, as if she were inwardly praying that my resolution might be blessed. Everything was calm around; only a bird twittered, and the red sunset-rays glanced through the twigs. It may have been a remnant of weakness which still clung to me, but a strange and solemn feeling possessed me. It was as though I were in a temple, and had just pronounced a solemn vow by which I broke away from my entire past, and devoted myself to a new life and to new obligations. And while thus thinking I gazed with fixed eyes at the dear maiden, who sat still, her hands folded, her thoughtful head bent--gazed until the tears came into my eyes, and trees, sunlight, and maiden were lost behind a misty veil.

At this moment clear voices came ringing from the garden; it was Paula's brothers, who had finished their task in the house, and now were joyously hurrying to their favorite spot where they were certain of finding their sister. Paula gathered up her drawing materials, and was spreading a sheet of tissue-paper over her drawing, when the boys came bounding up the hill at full speed to us.

Paula threw back the tissue-paper. Benno looked attentively at the drawing, and then carefully compared it with the original. Kurt jumped down from my knee to examine his sister's work too. Even Oscar stuck his curly head from under her arm to see what was going on. It was a charming group, the three boys clustered around the sister, now turning their bright eyes upon me, and then fixing them on the picture.

"Now you have all seen it," said Paula, in a tone of decision. "Benno, carry it into the Belvedere."

"Hush, hush!" said Paula. "No disputes about it. He who is older is bigger, and cannot help it; and he who is younger is smaller, and cannot help it either."

"No, Paula," said Kurt, "that is not so, George is younger than father, and bigger too."

The superintendent came up the path; his wife held his arm, and he was leading her slowly. Her eyes were covered with a broad green shade. Behind them, now on the left and now on the right side of the path, turning his uncovered head first in one way and then in another, with a hat and stick that he kept changing from hand to hand, came a short compact figure with a disproportionately large head, whose perfectly bald surface shone in the light of the evening sun.

"How are you now?" asked the superintendent, giving me his hand; "has your first long stay in the open air done you good?"

Doctor Snellius had a habit of accompanying his remarks with a peculiar nasal sound which was half a grunt and half a snort, and always just an octave below his ordinary voice, which was very thin and of an unusually high pitch. This shrill voice was the trial of his life to the doctor, who was a man of great taste; and by the deep, growling sound he emitted from time to time, he strove, according to his own explanation, to convince himself that he was really a man and not a cock, as his voice would indicate.

"Can I know from that that it will do him good?--hm, hm, hm!" said Dr. Snellius. "It was a medicine like another. If I always knew what effect my prescriptions would have, I would die Baron Willibrod Snellius of Snelliusburg--hm, hm, hm!"

"Any one to hear you would think that all your science was mere illusion," said Frau von Zehren, taking her seat upon a chair which Paula had placed for her.

"Just because I do not so consider you, I do not expect from you what is probably impossible."

Frau von Zehren removed the disfiguring shade and raised her eyes with a look of thankfulness to the foliage of the trees which kindly softened the daylight for them. How lovely must those eyes have been while they were yet radiant with youth and happiness! How fair this face before sickness had wasted its beauteous features, and far too soon--for Frau von Zehren was hardly forty years of age--whitened the luxuriant hair! Pale and wasted as she was, she was still beautiful--at least to me, who, short a time as I had been near her, had already learned her angelic goodness, and how with the inexpressible devotion with which she clung to her husband and her children, her heart was full of sympathy for all who suffered or sorrowed.

"We shall soon have a visit from your friend Arthur," said the superintendent to me, drawing me a little to one side; "but I think you said he had not dealt with you in the most friendly manner."

"He has not," I answered. "I should speak falsely to say otherwise. But what brings him here?"

"He passed his examination at Easter, and is ordered to the battalion stationed here, with the rank of ensign. We shall probably see his parents also; and it may be the commerzienrath, if he condescends to manage his affairs in person. The matter in question is the inheritance of my brother, or so much of it as has thus far escaped the hands of justice and of his creditors, among whom, as you know, the commerzienrath holds the first place. The affair is rendered more difficult from the fact that all his papers were destroyed when the castle was burned. Constance has sent from Naples a formal renunciation of the inheritance, and so there remain really only my brother and the commerzienrath, as I for my part prefer to have nothing to do with the whole affair; indeed I will add that if it were not a duty to meet with dignity what is inevitable, I should look forward to the meeting with great repugnance. What will not be brought up at such a conference? What do you want, my child?"

Oscar must needs show his father an unlucky beetle that had run across his path. I remained sitting in the garden-house, sunk in painful reflection such as had not entered my mind since I had risen from my bed of sickness. Arthur! Constance! Arthur, who had so cruelly turned against me; Constance, who had so shamefully deceived me! The steuerrath, whom I knew to have been the cowardly accomplice of his brave brother; and the commerzienrath, who had traded in the recklessness of the Wild Zehren, and, in all likelihood, had hastened, if not brought about his ruin. What a tumult of emotions did not these names arouse within me! How hateful appeared to me all my past, into which these names and these persons were forever interwoven!--hateful as the island even now appeared through a dingy sulphur-yellow pane of the window at which I was standing. And now, as I turned away with a sigh, my glance fell through the open door upon the space under the plane-trees, filled with the pure bright evening light, and upon the persons that were moving in it. The superintendent and the doctor were walking, the latter first on the right and then on the left, and both in animated conversation; the two eldest boys were playing about the knees of their mother, who, sitting in her easy-chair, laughed and sported with them; Paula had taken the tea-things from the maid, and was setting the table, as they were about to take tea in the open air, as was their custom in fine weather. How deftly she did it all; how silently, that the gentlemen might not be disturbed in their conversation, and that no clatter of plates should annoy her mother's sensitive nerves! And how with it all she had time to chat with the little Oscar, who kept close at her side, and to look if I was not exposing myself too much to the wind! Yes, the bright peaceful present was fairer than my dark stormy past; and yet it seemed as though a shadow was cast across this also. If Arthur came here; if, as was to be expected, he was received into the family as a kinsman; if, with his plausible address, he wormed his way into the confidence of these unsuspicious people, and won their favor with his insinuating manners--if he, who as a mere boy had practised the wiles of the rake, should dare--and his insolence would dare anything--to pay his insidious court to Paula, his cousin! I must still have been very weak, for I trembled at this thought from head to foot, and started violently as I perceived some one coming up the garden path towards the plane-trees. I thought for a moment it must be he whom I had once loved so dearly, and now so hated.

But it was no dandy ensign glittering in his new uniform, but a lean man dressed in black, wearing an extremely narrow white cravat, and a low-crowned hat with very broad brim, and whose sleek dark hair, unfashionably long, was seen, when he took off his hat in a polite salutation, to be parted in the middle, and combed back behind his ears. I knew the gentleman well; I had seen him often enough crossing the prison-yard with slow pace and bowed head, entering this or that cell, and after a while coming out again, always in the same attitude of humility. Indeed I already enjoyed the happiness of a personal acquaintance, as he had one day unexpectedly entered my sick-room, and begun to talk about the welfare of my soul; and I should more frequently have enjoyed this felicity, had not Dr. Snellius, who came in, put a stop to it by giving him to understand that at the time the question was not that of the welfare of my soul, but that of my body, which was not likely to be benefited by such exciting topics. Indeed this difference of opinion led to a rather lively dispute at the door of my room, and, as it seemed, they came to pretty hard words; so that it was clearly a proof of the placable disposition of the Deacon and Prison-Chaplain Ewald von Krossow, that he now, after bidding the family good evening, politely saluted the doctor, and even offered me his hand.

"How are you, my friend?" he asked, in his soft voice. "But how can it be other than well with you, since I find you still in the open air, though it is already growing somewhat chilly. This is no impeachment of your better knowledge, doctor. I well know that præsente medico nihil nocet."

The doctor gave a scrape with his right foot, like a cock who is preparing for battle, and crowed in his sharpest tones:

"It was unfortunate, then, that when Adam ate that unlucky apple, there was no doctor by. The poor fellow would probably be living now. Hm, hm!"

He glared wrathfully through his spectacles at the chaplain to see if his shot had told, but the chaplain only smiled.

"I must stay where I am; I do not belong to those who are never squeamish about pushing for a good place."

"If you hold your office from above, probably the necessary understanding for it has not been forgotten."

This conversation was hardly meant for my ears, at least on the chaplain's side, who spoke throughout, even to his last exclamation, in the gentle, deprecatory tone of wounded innocence, and now, with a pitying shrug of the shoulders, turned away and joined the others.

That game-cock, the doctor, whose antagonist had so unexpectedly quitted the field, wore an air of blank surprise for a moment, then burst into a hoarse crowing laugh, shook his arms like a pair of wings, and turned suddenly to me, as if he felt the greatest desire to turn his baffled pugnacity upon me.

He took my arm and hurried me so rapidly away, that I had hardly time to bid the company good-night. His ire had not evaporated: he snorted, he grunted, he clicked with his tongue, and growled at intervals: "The scamp--the scamp--the scamp!"

"Don't you grow ironical, young man!" said the doctor, looking up at me. "High opinion! high fiddlesticks! How can there be but one opinion of such a fellow?"

"Because he is friendly to every one; and besides it does not occur to him that this is not a man but a snake. Yes, that is easy enough to do, when other honest folks are left to do the rudeness."

"Young man, I say, do not exasperate me. I tell you the thing is no trifling matter; for if I cannot drive the fellow away, he will sooner or later oust us all, and his kind friend the superintendent, the very first. He has done you an ill turn already."

"Yes, you, the superintendent, myself. He would like well to kill three birds with one stone."

"I would tell you without your asking. Sit down in your easy-chair and make yourself comfortable: it is likely to be the last time you will sit in it."

We had reached my room; the doctor pushed me into the easy-chair, while he stood before me--sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other, but rarely on both at once--and spoke as follows:

"The case is simple, and therefore plain. To this pietistic, aristocratic, beggarly mawworm, who has had himself appointed prison-chaplain to let the light of his Christian humility shine before men, the humanitarian superintendent and the materialist doctor are an abomination. To a fellow like that, humanity is a democratic weakness, and matter he does not respect, unless it is eatable. With the deceased pastor Michaelis, a man of the good old rationalistic school, we lived as if we were in paradise; he and Herr von Zehren, or rather Herr von Zehren and he, in the twenty years that they worked together, made the establishment what it is; that is, a model, in every sense of the word; and during the five years that I have been here I have done all in my power to imbue myself with the spirit of these men, and I believe that I have indifferently well succeeded. Now for this half year, since Michaelis is dead, and this pietistic snake has wormed himself into our paradise, our peace has gone to the deuce; the snake crawls into every corner, and leaves the track of his slimy nature wherever he goes. The officers are demoralized, the prisoners mutinous. Such a plot as that which Cat-Kaspar hatched--thank heaven we are rid of the rascal; he is transferred to-day to N., where he ought to have been sent at first--would formerly have been impossible. Cat-Kaspar was a pet of Mr. Chaplain, who saw in him a precious, though not over-cleanly vessel, whose purification was his allotted task; and he begged the scoundrel out of the solitary confinement in which the superintendent had judiciously placed him. So it goes on; divine worship publice, prayers privatim, soul-saving exhortations privatissime. The Judas intrigues against us wherever and whenever he can, flatters the superintendent to his face, swallows down my rudeness, and thinks, 'I shall have you both soon,' like the owl when he heard the two bulfinches singing round the corner. And he thinks he has us by the wings already. You know, the president of the council, who is just such another mawworm, is his uncle, and uncle and nephew are hand and glove. The president, who is the superintendent's immediate superior, would have removed him long ago, if Minister von Altenberg, one of the last pillars left standing from the good old times, and Herr von Zehren's friend and patron, did not support him, though with but a feeble arm, it is true; for Altenberg is advanced in years, in ill health, and may die any day. In the meantime they work as they can, and collect materials to be water to the mill of the next excellency. And now listen: Assessor Lerch, my good friend, was with the president yesterday. 'My dear Lerch,' said the president, 'you perhaps can give me some information. There is another complaint against Superintendent von Zehren.' 'Another, Herr President?' asked Lerch. 'Unhappily, another. I have hitherto taken no action in these matters, though I have not disregarded them; but this case is so flagrant that I must take it in hand and report it to his excellency. Only think, my dear Lerch, Von Zehren has been guilty of the--folly, I will call it, of allowing the young man who gained such an unhappy notoriety in connection with the smuggling case in Uselin----' and now it all comes out that the superintendent, immediately after the catastrophe--out of which the denouncer had spun a pretty story, you may suppose--did not send you to the mouldy old infirmary, where you would infallibly have died, but took you into his own house, kept you here, and still keeps you, though you have been a convalescent for three weeks now; that he associates with you as with his equal; that he has brought you into his family, and indeed made you a member of it, so to speak. Why need I go into all the particulars? hm, hm, hm!"

The doctor had crowed up to the very highest note of his upper register, and had to grunt at least two octaves lower to obtain his usual satisfactory reassurance.

"And you really hold that man as the denouncer?" I cried, angrily springing from my chair.

I could not help laughing. As if growler needed any special provocation before he made free with the calves of an intrusive clodhopper! But the affair had a serious side. The thought that Herr von Zehren, to whom I owed such limitless gratitude, whom I so revered, should through me be brought into so unpleasant a position, was intolerable.

"Yes, advise, help--when I always told you that this state of things could not go on. However, you are so far right: the thing must be helped. And in truth there is but one expedient. We must be beforehand with the viper, and so for this time we shall draw his fangs. I know the superintendent. If he had an idea that they wished to take you from him, he would let his hand be hewn off before he would give you up. Now this evening do you complain of headache, and again to-morrow evening at the same time. Your room is on the ground-floor; at this moment there is not another vacant. Intermittent--quinine--a higher, more airy apartment--day after to-morrow you will be back in your old cell. Let me manage it."

So I let Doctor Willibrod Snellius manage it; and two days later I was sleeping, if not under lock and bolt, at least behind the iron gratings of my old cell.

CHAPTER VI.

I stood behind these iron gratings on the following morning, and looked sadly out of the window. Strangely enough, I had not thought the evening before that these gratings could produce any unpleasant sensations in me now, and yet such was the case. They served as a grave reminder to me of what lately I had almost forgotten, that I was, after all, a prisoner. "It makes no difference," the superintendent said, when I took leave of him, and all had vied to make a family festival of the last day that I was to spend under their roof; but be that as it might, there was a difference. My breakfast was not now as appetizing as it had been when I sat at it under the high trees of the quiet garden with Frau von Zehren and Paula; and even though I could go, if I chose, into the garden, which seemed to give me a friendly greeting, I must after a certain time return here again.

I looked around the cell, and now first remarked what pains they had taken to make me forget where I was. There was the picture of the Sistine Madonna with the child, which I had grown to love so during my illness, and which was hung opposite my bed, just as it had hung in Paula's room. There stood upon the bureau the same two terra-cotta vases, and in each a couple of fresh roses. There was the easy-chair in which Dr. Snellius had falsely predicted that I had sat for the last time, and over the back hung a cover of crotchet-work on which I had seen Paula engaged the previous evening. There hung the same étagère with the same neatly-bound books; Goethe's Faust, Schiller's and Lessing's works, which Paula had so often urgently recommended me to read, and into which I had as yet hardly looked. They had done all they could to make my prison as endurable, as pleasant as possible; but did not the very pains they took show that it was a prison, and that the episode of my apparent freedom was at an end. Yes, they had been kind, inexpressibly kind to me, under the friendly smiling mask of Samaritan compassion to one sick unto death--a mask that must be laid aside, as soon as a Pharisee passed that way and looked askance upon the moving sight. No, no; I was and remained a prisoner, whether my chains were decked with roses or not.

Why had I not been able to break these chains? True, as I had begun, it was impossible; but why did I begin so clumsily? Why did I not keep to myself, calmly trusting in my own strength and my own craft, and in some lucky chance that must have offered sooner or later? Now, as things had happened, after I had incurred such a debt of gratitude to these people, after I had grown so attached to them, I was twice and thrice a prisoner. For the tempting pottage of friendship and love, I had bartered the first inalienable birthright of man, which is the very breath of his soul--the right of liberty. Seven years! Seven long, long years!

I strode up and down my cell. For the first time since my sickness I felt something of my former strength; it was but a remnant, but enough to bring back a part of my old roving humor, of my old restlessness. How would it be then when I felt myself all that I had ever been? Would it not, combined with the knowledge that nothing held me but my own will, drive me to frenzy? Would it not have been better if they had left me in my old slavery, with the dream that some day I should be able to break their bonds, even if this dream was never verified?

"Here is a young man who wants to speak with us," announced the sergeant. Since my sickness when "we" had come through so much together, he frequently used in speaking to me the same plural which he employed with all who, in his opinion, had acquired an entire claim on his honest heart; for example, the superintendent and all his family, including the doctor, and now myself.

"What sort of a man!" I asked, while a joyous shiver ran through me. As long as I had been in confinement this was the first time that any one had come to see me; and somehow I connected the extraordinary event of a visitor with the thoughts that had been passing through my mind.

"Looks like a sailor," answered the sergeant. "Says he has news of our dead brother."

This sounded extremely improbable. My brother Fritz had been dead for five years; he had fallen from the foreyard overboard one stormy night, and was drowned. The ship had returned in safety; there was no mystery of any sort connected with his death; and if any one now brought me intelligence of his end, there must be some other purpose involved with it.

"Can I speak with him, Süssmilch?" I asked, in the most indifferent tone I could assume, while my heart seemed to rise in my throat.

"Then let him in; and, Süssmilch, if he is a sailor he would like a glass of something; perhaps you could get me something of the kind?"

What superfluous trouble a man with an evil conscience gives himself and others! I must needs lie, always a trial to me, to get the old man out of the way; and the honest Süssmilch, who had not a thought of being present at my interview with the stranger, had to go down two flights of stairs into the cellar.

He went, after first introducing the visitor--a broad-shouldered deeply-bronzed man in sailor dress who was an entire stranger to me.

CHAPTER VII.

I gazed in mute astonishment at the stranger, whose looks and manner were, to use the mildest expression, very singular; but was really frightened when he, so soon as the door had closed behind the sergeant, without a word and with the haste of a man completely out of his senses, but still with the dexterity of a clown in a circus, began to tear off his clothes, and to my utter amazement appeared in precisely the same dress as that which now lay in its various elements at his feet, while a triumphant smile disclosed two rows of the whitest teeth in the world.

The white teeth were now visible to the very last grinder. He seized both my extended hands, but remembered at once that such friendly manifestations did not belong to his part, and hurriedly whispered:

"Into them, quick! They will fit--folds will open out of themselves--only quick before he comes back!"

"Still you have time to get out; and getting out and getting off is one and the same thing to you."

"At the worst, they can but shut me up in your place, and that will not be for long. With the locks I can easily deal, and here"--he showed me a watch-spring-saw, which he drew out of his thick hair--"with this I will cut that grating through in a quarter of an hour."

I kicked the sailor-dress, which still lay upon the floor, under the bed, for I heard the sergeant coming along the corridor. He knocked at the door, and when I opened it, handed me a bottle of brandy and a glass.

Klaus stared in astonishment when he saw the dreaded keeper turned into so obliging an attendant.

I closed the door again, and then fell on the good fellow's neck. The tears stood in my eyes.

"Dear, good Klaus," I cried, "you and Christel are the kindest hearts in the world, but I cannot accept your generous offer. I would not have accepted it under any circumstances; and as it is, it is not to be thought of. I could go away from here at an moment, but I will not, Klaus, I will not."

Here I embraced Klaus again, and gave free course to the tears which I had been repressing. I felt as if now for the first time I knew what a prisoner was, since I had declared that I wished to be one, and thus made myself one of my own choice. Klaus, who naturally had no conception of what was passing within me, constantly endeavored, while casting uneasy glances at the door, to persuade me to let him take my place; he would wager his head that he would be out in twenty-four hours.

"Klaus, Klaus!" I cried, clapping him on the plump cheeks, "you want to deceive me. Confess now, you have no expectation of getting out so soon."

I thrust Klaus into the easy-chair, sat down before him, and begged him to tell me everything. It would be the greatest kindness he could do me, I said, if he could tell me that all was going well with him; that I was by no means in so evil a straight as he imagined in his true heart of friendship; and I gave him in brief words a sketch of my adventures in the prison, my attempt to escape, my illness, and my friendly relations with the superintendent and his family.

"You see," I concluded, "that in every sense I am well taken care of; and now I must know how things have gone with you and Christel, and how you managed so soon to become man and wife. Only twenty-two, Klaus, and married already! How do you expect to get on? And your Christel has let you come away? Klaus, Klaus, I don't like the look of that."

I laughed at him, and Klaus, who now at last perceived that nothing could come of his plan to rescue me, laughed also, but not very heartily.

"'Without thee,'^[6] I said, Klaus. I am not going to put up with any breach of our old brotherhood now, or I shall think you too proud to be on terms of thee and thou with a prisoner. And how will she look when you come back without me?"

"There it is," said Klaus, "how will she, indeed! We are so happy; but one or the other of us was always saying, 'and he is shut up there!' and then there was an end of all our happiness, especially because in a manner it is Christel's fault that you are here; for that morning at Zanowitz----"

"Klaus," I interrupted him, "do you know then that for a while I believed that Christel herself gave the information to get rid of your father?"

"No," said Klaus, "she did not do that, thank God; though more than once she was quite desperate and thought of killing herself."

He wiped his forehead with his hand; I had touched a painful subject. We sat awhile without speaking, when Klaus commenced again:

"One good result it has had: 'he'"--Klaus had already adopted Christel's habit of never calling 'him' by his name--"'he' of course had to give up the guardianship of Christel, and as a person of damaged reputation, could not interfere much with me. Aunt Julchen in Zanowitz, with whom Christel stayed after that day, fitted Christel out, and we might have lived like angels, if--" and Klaus, with a melancholy look at me, shook his big head.

"And you are still in Berlin, in the commerzienrath's machine-shops?" I asked, to give his thoughts another direction.

"Of course," he said, "I have been promoted already; I am now foreman in my shop."

"And washes and irons to that extent that our whole house smells of nothing but soap and flat-irons."

Klaus showed his teeth; I pressed his hand in token of sympathy with his happiness, though I had never been especially ravished by the perfumes he so highly prized; but now more urgently than ever I desired to know how this happy young pair ever made up their minds so cruelly to risk their good fortune.

"I told you already," answered Klaus, "that we never were quite happy. Wherever we went or stood, and above all when we were in real good humor about anything, the thought always came up: if he could only be here! And four weeks ago yesterday, when we had some Bierkaltschale^[7]--no, no, we could stand it no longer."

"Yes; don't you know how you always used to have some made for you at the forge, in the summer-time, when you wanted to give yourself a treat? Christel often made it for you. Well, then, just four weeks ago we were drinking some--they have an excellent beer for it in Berlin, much better than ours, that was always a little bitter--and I was enjoying it, when Christel on a sudden let the ladle fall and began to howl, and I knew at once what she was thinking of, and then I began, and we kept on drinking and howling, and when we had finished, we both said together: It can't go on this way! So then we put our heads together----"

"And contrived a plan at last," continued Klaus, who would have turned red at my indiscreet remark, had the color of his complexion allowed it, "that is to say, Christel contrived it. She had read just such a story, only the prisoner was a king's son, and his deliverer was a knight, who disguised himself as a priest--of course that wouldn't do, but a sailor would do, Christel said, for here in the workhouse there was sure to be many a tarpaulin, and of course there would be some coming to see them. And anyhow, Christel said, a sailor's dress was the best disguise in a sea-port. So we practised the whole thing----"

"To be sure; it wasn't so easy; we went through it every night for a week when I came home from work, until Christel said at last she thought it would do at a pinch."

"Yes, but what good has it done?" asked Klaus, with a regretful look at the bed under which the disguise was lying, "when I had my ears bored to put these rings in? and when Christel every morning rubbed my face with bacon----"

"I must look like a sailor from the other side, Christel said, and for that there is nothing so good as to rub your face with bacon and then scorch it at a furnace."

"So Christel said; but what good would it do if I looked like a negro, when you won't come out?"

"It does this good, Klaus," I cried, catching the faithful fellow round the neck, "that you two have given me one of the happiest moments of my life, and which I should not have had had I taken your generous offer. God bless you both for your love to me; and when I am free again and am a rich man, I will repay it with interest. And now, my dear good fellow, you must go; I have to go and see the superintendent. And do you hear, Klaus, you go right back without wasting a minute. And one thing more: if your eldest is a boy----"

"He is to be named George; we settled that some time ago," said Klaus, showing his very farthest grinders.

I put Klaus out of the door, and was pacing up and down the room, somewhat agitated by what had just passed, when I bethought me of the disguise which I had pushed under the bed, and which, in our excitement, we had quite forgotten. I now drew it out, and could not resist the temptation to try on the jacket of rough cloth. It was as Klaus had said. In the sleeves, the back, and the skirts, there were folds so dexterously made and caught with stitches, that I had only to give a smart pull and they came out; and although I was a head taller and six inches wider across the shoulders than Klaus, the garment fitted me as if it had been made for me. So was it with the waistcoat and the trousers: all were so accurately made that--now that my illness had left me much thinner than I had been--I could very conveniently put them on over the clothes I was wearing.

Just as I had finished doing so, some one knocked at the door. It could only be the sergeant or the superintendent, who usually came at this hour. I seated myself at the table with my back to the door and called, "Come in!"

He thrust in his head and began: "We are to go to the captain at eleven o'clock to-day, because----" here he checked himself, as it looked odd that the strange sailor sat there so still and I was nowhere to be seen. He came into the room and asked: "Where are we, then?"

"Gone to the devil!" I answered without turning round, imitating as well as I could the broad Plattdeutsch which Klaus had used as a part of his stratagem.

"And now it is my turn!" I cried, rushing past the astonished sergeant out at the door, which I flung to, and turned the key.

There lay the long corridor before me: not a soul was to be seen. It was an easy thing to run down the steps and into the house-yard, and from this by a side-gate which I knew was never closed at this hour, to get into the adjoining alley. To find out Klaus's lodging would be an easy matter; probably I should reach it before him--in ten minutes we could be out of the town, and----

The sergeant was standing just where I had left him; and to judge from the confounded look of his honest face, had not been able to comprehend what it all meant. I pulled off the broad-brimmed hat, made him a low bow with a scrape of the right foot, and said: "Have the honor to place myself again under your worshipful charge."

"After that, one can take a toothpick for a barn door!" exclaimed the old man, who began now to get a glimmering of the real state of the case. "That codfish of a smoke-dried flounder! Isn't it enough to turn a body into a bear with seven senses?"

"Hush!" I cried, "I hear the doctor coming. Not a word, my good Süssmilch!" and I pushed the old man out of the door, by which Doctor Snellius entered in his usual hasty fashion, with his hat in his hand. He started when he saw me, gave a glance round the room, looked at me again, and went out without saying a word.

I pulled off my sailor-dress in a moment, thrust it under the bed, and called after him in my natural voice:

He turned back instantly, came into the room, sat down upon a chair in front of me, and stared steadily at me through his round spectacles. I fancied he looked paler; and feared that perhaps I had carried the jest too far, and offended my irascible friend.

"Something very singular has just happened to me," he interrupted me, always with the same fixed look.

"What is the matter, doctor?" I inquired, startled at his looks and the unaccustomed gentleness of his tone.

"Nothing at this moment; but I have just been the subject of a most remarkable hallucination."

"A hallucination. A complete and perfect hallucination. When I first entered your chamber, my friend, I saw, standing before me, a sailor of just your height, or possibly an inch or an inch and a half shorter, but of your breadth across the shoulders, in a rough sailor jacket, gray trousers, wide straw-hat like the traders to the West Indies wear; with exactly no, not exactly, but very nearly your features. I saw the figure as plainly as I see you at this moment--it could not have been more distinct. The illusion was so perfect that I supposed they had put you in another room, and went to ask Süssmilch what he meant by giving our healthiest room to the first comer. Do not smile, my friend; it is no laughing matter--at least for me. It is the first time that anything of the kind has happened to me, though my frequent congestions of the head might have prepared me to expect it, I know that I shall die of apoplexy; and even if I had not known it before, I should know it now."

"Strange to say, my pulse is perfectly normal; and all this morning I have felt unusually well and cheerful."

"My dear doctor," I said, "who knows what you saw? You learned men have such singular notions, and out of the merest gnat you will make a scientific elephant."

"Scientific elephant is good," said the doctor; "nobody would have expected such an expression from an unscientific mammoth like you--very good! but you are mistaken. That may apply to others, but not to me. I observe too coolly to commit gross blunders. I have told you already that my pulse is normal, exactly normal, and all my functions in perfect order; therefore the thing must have a deeper psychological cause, which just now escapes my perceptions; for the psychological cause----"

"Then at all events you have a psychological cause," said I, who was mischievous enough to be delighted at the serious scruples of my learned friend.

"I have; and I will tell it to you, even at the risk of more of your malicious grins. I was dreaming all night long of you, you mammoth, and always the same dream, though in different forms, namely, that you either were escaping, or had escaped, or were about to escape from here. Sometimes you were lowering yourself by a rope from the window, or clambering over the roofs, or leaping down from the wall, or any other neck-breaking trick that one might expect from a fellow of your physical and moral peculiarities; and you were every time in a different dress, now a chimney-sweep, now a mason, a rope-dancer, and so forth. As soon as I awaked, I asked myself what this dream could mean, and I said to myself--True, George Hartwig is now again in his prison, but the exceptional position in which he stands still continues, and so does the danger for our valued friend the superintendent, which lies in an arrangement which we must acknowledge to be not merely irregular, but contrary to the rules. For every creature is only content in the element to which it is born. The frog would spring from a golden chair into his native swamp; and the bird escapes when he can, though you cram his cage with sugar. Will it not be so with this youth, who of all men must most long for liberty? May he not in a moment of weakness forget what consideration he owes to Herr von Zehren, that the latter to a certain extent risks his position on his account, and in this moment of weakness and forgetfulness make his escape? And do you know, young mammoth, I determined that, as I also had some claim upon you, I would privately and in all friendship ask you to give me your word that if such a temptation seizes you, you will only think of your own honor. This was what I had in my mind when I came up the corridor, and I was in some degree undecided, for I thought he will have taken this resolution already, and to give his word to me will be superfluous. But now, after this singular projection of my dream into reality--a memento mori to me, moreover--I beg you earnestly to give me your word. Hm, hm, hm!"

I had ceased to laugh, long before he had reached this conclusion; and now, while the worthy doctor tuned down his voice, extended him my hand, and said with emotion:

"With all my heart I give you my word, although it is true that I have given it to myself, and that not ten minutes ago. And as for the hallucination, you may make your mind easy, doctor; here lies your memento mori."

With these words I pulled out the sailor's dress from under the bed, slipped on the jacket, and put on the hat, to make the proof more convincing.

"So you did really think of escaping, then?" said the doctor, adroitly dropping the hallucination, in order at least to preserve the dream.

"No," I answered, "but others tempted me, and I strove with them, and they fled leaving this garment behind them."

"Which you may hang as a votive offering on the temple-wall," replied Doctor Snellius, thoughtfully; "for though I do not know how it happened, I see this much, that you have escaped a great danger; and now--now for the first time you belong to us."

There was a saying in the prison that one could tell a lie to any one, but not to the superintendent.

Superintendent von Zehren had a way of looking at the person with whom he was speaking, to which none but a front of brass could have been callous. Not that one could read in his glance the endeavor to be as comprehensive and as penetrating as possible; his eye had in it nothing of the spy or the inquisitor; on the contrary, it was large and limpid as the eye of a child, and just in this lay the power which few men could resist. As he sincerely wished well to every one with whom he spoke, and on his own part had nothing to conceal, this large, clear, dark eye rested steadily upon one, with the gaze of the sun-bright gods, who do not wink like weak mortals living in twilight and concealment.

When, with this look fixed upon me, he asked me about the man whom he had sent to me that morning, I told him at once who the man was, and what was his object in coming. And I further told him in what frame of mind he had found me, and how strong the temptation had been, but that, even without the assistance of the good doctor, I had conquered it, I might venture to say, at once and for ever.

The superintendent listened to my narrative with all the signs of the most lively interest. When I ceased, he pressed my hand, and then turning to his writing-table, handed me a paper, which he said he had just received, and which he desired me to read.

The paper was an inquiry from the president, couched in polite but very decided phraseology, as to the facts referred to in a certain anonymous charge which had reached him, and the superintendent was called upon at once to put an end to an arrangement which compromised his position and character, and to treat the young man in question with the severity which the dignity of the law, of the judges, and his own, alike demanded.

"You wish to know," said the superintendent, as I laid down the paper with an inquiring look, "what I intend to do. Exactly as if I had never received this. I do not desire to know whether Doctor Snellius, whose friendship for me often gives him a sharper insight in matters that concern me, than I have myself, was playing a little comedy when he hurried you off so abruptly yesterday, but I am very glad it so happened. For it would have wounded my pride to be compelled to sacrifice you, to whom I am so much attached, to a pitiful bit of chicanery. According to the letter of the law, they are right in insisting that a prisoner cannot be a guest in the superintendent's family; and this point I should have had to yield; but beyond this I am fully determined not to yield a single step. To decide in what kind of work a prisoner shall be engaged, and how he shall employ his hours of recreation, is my incontestable right, which I will not suffer to be curtailed by a hair's breadth, and which I will maintain through all the tribunals, even though it should be brought before the king. And I am not sorry that this has happened, since it gives us an occasion to speak of our mutual relations, and to have a clear understanding of the way we shall pursue in future. If you are disposed to hear what I think on the subject, we will go into the garden. My lungs suffer to-day from the confined air of a room."

We stepped from his office into the garden. I offered him my arm, as my strength was now sufficient for this service, and we walked in silence between the flower-beds, from which the warm south wind wafted us the perfume of wallflowers and mignonnette, to the grateful shade of the plane-trees. The superintendent took his seat upon one of the benches, motioned to me to place myself at his side, and after a silent glance of gratitude at the leafy crowns of the noble trees that afforded the refreshing coolness, he said:

"If we are to believe the jurists, by whose words the students everywhere swear, Punishment is the right of Wrong. This definition, by its simplicity, recommends itself to the logicians at their desks, but I doubt extremely whether the Founder of the Faith would have been content with it. He did not declare that to be stoned was the right of the guilty woman; on the contrary, by summoning him who was without sin to cast the first stone, he showed that under the smooth logical surface of the legal code there lay a deeper principle, which only reveals itself to the eye that can see and the heart that can feel. To such an eye and such a heart it soon is clear that every wrong which is to be punished in order that it may have its right, is, if not always, almost always, a wrong at second, third, or hundredth hand; and thus the punishment rarely reaches the one who may have deserved it. So the justest judge, whether he will or not, resembles the sanguinary general who orders every tenth man to be led off to execution, not because he is guiltier than the other nine, but because he is the tenth.

"But this is not apparent to the logician, who smiles with satisfaction if he does not come into conflict with his principle of Identity and his principle of Contradiction; nor to; the judge who has before him but an isolated fact, torn from its connections, and who has to give judgment when he has not all the parts in his hand, not to mention the visible and invisible threads upon which these parts are necessarily strung. They both are like the crowd which judges a picture by its effect alone; while the connoisseur knows how it came into existence, what colors the painter had upon his palette, how he blended them, how he handled his brush, what difficulties he encountered, and how he overcame them, or why it was that he failed of his aim. And as the only true criticism is creative, which takes the secrets of art as the starting-point of its judgment, so that none but an artist can be a real critic, even so men's actions can only be judged by those to whom the old wise word applies, that nothing human is alien to them, because they have experienced in themselves and in their brethren the whole misery of humanity. But for this are necessary, as I said before, the feeling heart and the seeing eye, and an ample opportunity for training and using both.

"Who has a better opportunity for this purpose than the superintendent of a prison? He and the physician, when their views coincide and they strive together towards the same ends, alone can know what the most conscientious judge has no means of learning, how the man whom mankind have thrust out from among them for a time or forever, became what he now is; how, born thus, and of such parents, brought up in such associations, he acted thus and not otherwise at such a critical moment. Then when the superintendent, who is of necessity the confessor of the criminal, has learned his life in all its details, and the physician has discovered the defects with which he has suffered for years, when they consult upon his case, the question only is if he can be helped and how; and in the so-called prison they see, respectively, but a reformatory and an infirmary. For--and this is a point of infinite importance, which physiology will yet compel jurisprudence to acknowledge--nearly all who come here are diseased in the ordinary acceptation of the word; nearly all suffer from organic defects, and in almost every case the brain lacks the proper volume which a normal man needs for normal activity, for a life which shall not bring him into conflict with the law.

"And how could it be otherwise? Almost without exception they are children of want, of wretchedness, of moral and physical malformation, the Pariahs of Society which in its brutal egotism sweeps by with garments gathered up for fear of defilement, or thrusts them away with cruel violence from its path. The right of wrong! Insolence of Phariseeism! A time will come when this invention of the philosophers will be placed on a level with that other of the theologians, that death is the atonement for sin, and men will thank God that at last they have awaked from the night of ignorance which gave birth to such monsters.

"We are still deeply sunk in the mire of the Middle Ages, and no man can yet see when this flood of blood and tears will have passed away. However far the glances of a few brighter intellects may reach into the coming ages, the progress of humanity is unspeakably slow. Wherever we look abroad into our own time, we behold the unbeautiful relics of a past that we had believed to be overthrown long ago. Our systems of government, our nobility, our religious institutions, our official arrangements, the organization of our armies, the condition of the laboring classes--everywhere the scarcely hidden relation between masters and slaves; everywhere the critical choice whether we will be hammer or anvil. All our experience, all our observation seems to prove that there is no third alternative. And yet no greater misconception of the real state of the case is possible. Not hammer or anvil, hammer and anvil is the true word, for every man is both, and both at once, in every moment of his life. With the same force with which the hammer strikes the anvil, the anvil strikes the hammer; the ball is thrown off from the wall at the same angle under which it impinges upon it; the elements which the plant has appropriated in its growth, it must exactly restore in its decomposition--and so throughout all nature. But if nature unconsciously obeys this great law of action and reaction, and is thereby a cosmos and not a chaos, then should man, whose existence is subordinated to precisely the same law, acquire an intelligent knowledge of it, and endeavor intelligently to shape his life in conformity with it; and his worth increases or diminishes exactly in proportion as he does this or neglects it. For though the law remains the same, whether the man knows it or knows it not, yet for himself it is not the same. Where it is known, where the inseparableness, the unity of human interests, the inevitableness of action and reaction, are recognized, there bloom freedom, equity, justice, which are all but varying expressions for the same law. Where it is not known, and he fancies in his blindness that he can with impunity make a tool of his fellow-man, there flourish rankly slavery and tyranny, superstition and priestcraft, hatred and contempt, in all their poisonous luxuriance. What man would not naturally wish rather to be hammer than anvil, so long as he believes that the choice lies open to him? But what reasonable man will not cheerfully renounce the part of hammer, when he has learned that the part of anvil will not and cannot be spared him, and that every blow that he gives smites also his own cheek; that the serf corrupts the master as well as the master the serf, and that in politics the guardian and the ward are rendered equally stupid. Would that the consciousness of this might at last penetrate to the mind of the German peoples, who stand so sorely in need of it!

"So sorely in need! For I must say it that at this moment, hardly twenty years after our war of freedom, that fundamental principle of human existence is probably by no enlightened nation so thoroughly and universally ignored as by us Germans, fond though we are of calling ourselves the intellectual flower of the nations, the people of thinkers. Where is the young plant of humanity subjected with more intolerable schoolmasterly pedantry to a too early, too strict, and incredibly narrow training? Where is its free, beautiful development more systematically hindered and maimed than it is with us? The shameful wrongs that we perpetrated by aid of school-benches and church-benches, the drill-sergeant's stick, the Procrustes-bed of examination, the many-rounded ladder of official hierarchy--to think of them sends the blush of shame to the cheeks and the glow of indignation to the brow of those who can perceive it; it is justly the inexhaustible theme of derision for our neighbors. The frenzy of ruling, the slavish desire of being ruled, these are the two serpents that have coiled around the German Hercules, and are crushing him; they it is that are everywhere impeding the free circulation, and producing here a condition of hypertrophy, and there of atrophy, that cruelly injure the body of the nation; they it is that, injecting their venom into the veins of the people, poison its blood and marrow, and degrade the race itself; they it is, finally, that we have to thank for the fact that our penitentiaries and jails can no longer contain the multitude of the prisoners. For it is not an exaggeration if I say that nine out of ten that come here would never have come had they not been made anvils by force, in order that the lords of the hammer might have something to vent their courage on. And as the natural right of every man to maintain himself in the way most suitable to his powers and capabilities has been impeded in them as much as possible by hindering them systematically from becoming sound strong members of the commonwealth, they have finally been brought here to the workhouse. The workhouse is at bottom nothing but the last consequence of our conditions, the problem of our life reduced to its simplest terms. Here they must accomplish a strictly prescribed task in a strictly prescribed manner; but when were they ever allowed freely to choose their work? Here they must be silent; but when were they ever allowed to speak freely? Here they must pay implicit obedience to the lowest overseer; but without having read Shakspeare, do they not know that a dog in office is obeyed? Here they must walk, stand, lie down, sleep, wake, pray, work, idle, at the word of command; but are they not admirably trained for it?--are they not all born workhouse men? My heart aches when I think of it; yet how can I help thinking of it especially at this moment when I see you before me, and ask myself: how comes this youth with the frame of a strong man, and the frank blue eyes of a child, in this abode of vice and crime?

"My dear young friend, I would that the answer were more difficult. Would that it were not the same formula by which I can calculate the equation of your life also. Would that I did not know that the unnaturalness of our relations is like a poisonous simoon that withers the grass and even strips the leaves from the oak.

"I have endeavored from what I before knew of you, and from what you so frankly have confided to me of your earlier life, of your family affairs, of the life and customs of the citizens of your native town, to form a background upon which I might design your portrait. And how cheerless it is, lying in the dim light in which all things now seem to lie with us! Everywhere littleness, narrow-mindedness, restrictions, blind adhesion to old formulas, pedantic ceremoniousness, everywhere the free outlook into life shut out by high walls of prejudice. You have told me that you besought your father to let you go to sea, and that he steadfastly insisted that you should be a man of learning, or at least follow an official career. It was certainly not, as you accused yourself, a mere inclination to idleness or a hankering after adventures that again and again prompted this wish; and assuredly your father, whatever his reasons, did not do well so obstinately to reject it. He had lost one son at sea--very well; there is another sea, the sea of happy, active, energetic life, in which all faculties have their free play. This he should not have forbidden you; and this was really the sea for which you longed, of which the ocean with its storms was but the image, though you took it for the reality.

"Your father did not do well; yet we cannot reckon with him, rendered gloomy by domestic misfortune, too soon left alone in the world, and irritated by his son's resistance. But what can we say of your pedantic teachers, not one of whom could comprehend a youth whose character is openness itself? What of your worthy friends who raised a hue and cry over the profligate who was leading their sons into mischief, and who held it a devout work to widen the breach between father and son? Many an honest German youth has been in your case, my friend; brought up under such desperately stringent social restrictions, that he thanks heaven, when, in the far west of America, under the trees of the primeval forest, he hears no more about social order. True, in your flight from the oppressive narrowness of your father's house, you did not get so far as the American forests, but unhappily, only as far as the woods of the Zehrenburg, and this filled up the measure of your misfortunes.

"For there you met with one towards whom you must have felt yourself drawn by an irresistible attraction, as his nature in many points had a wonderful resemblance to your own; one whose ruin had been mainly due to the wretchedness of our social relations, and who had made a wilderness around; him in which he could move in accordance with his unfettered will, which he called liberty. A wilderness in the moral as well as the literal sense; for as I learn from what you have told me of his discourses, and as the result has shown, in throwing away prejudice he also cast overboard judgment, with precaution, discretion, with scrupulousness, consideration, with the faults of the German character the virtues of all; and all that at last remained to him were his adventurous spirit and a kind of fantastic magnanimity which at times, as you have yourself experienced, could be more fantastic than magnanimous.

"But be that as it may, he was a man with whom you were at once struck, because he was the exact opposite of all men whom you had hitherto met, and who still possessed chivalrous qualities enough for a youth so inexperienced to see in him his ideal. And then the free life upon the broad heaths, the lofty cliffs, the far-reaching shore--how could this do other than intoxicate and confuse a brain yet clouded with the dust of the school-room?

"But this freedom, this independence, this energetic life, were all but a glittering reflection, the Fata-Morgana of a Hesperian shore, which was destined to vanish, leaving behind a guard-house and a penitentiary.

"To make this prison a Hesperian garden to you, is not in my power, my friend; nor would I do it if it were. But one thing I hope to effect, and that is, that here, where the errors that warped your early training can no longer reach you, you may come to yourself, learn to know yourself, your aims, and the measure of your powers--that in a workhouse you may learn how to work."

CHAPTER VIII.

I will not maintain that the excellent man said all that I have put into his mouth in the last chapter, in these identical words, or upon this particular morning. It is probable that I have thrown into connection his remarks upon more than a single occasion, and perhaps have added a phrase or a figure of my own. But hardly more than this; for I too deeply absorbed his philosophy, which descended upon my thirsting soul like the fruitful shower upon a parched field; and while I attempt to repeat his thoughts, his image stands so lively in my memory, that I fancy I hear the words issuing from his lips.

And at this time I enjoyed the happiness of his converse every day and often for hours at a time. It was not in my power to keep the promise I had made to Paula, for her father did not wait for me to put the question to him. I had told him our conversation, however, at which he smiled.

"She wants to make a learned man of you," he said. "I wish to make nothing of you; I wish you to become what you are capable of becoming; and to find out your capabilities we must experiment a little. One thing is certain: you can become a first-rate hand-worker. You have shown that already; and I am well satisfied that you have gone through this brief course, for the first touches of the artist follow the last of the craftsman, and it is well that he should understand the handiwork upon which his art rests; not only because only thus is he able to see rightly and help with counsel and hand wherever help is needed, but only then is it truly his work, and belongs to him as a child to a parent not only spirit of his spirit, but also flesh of his flesh. Then how much more sharply does the eye see where the hand has been busy? Here is the ground-plan of the new infirmary; this is the foundation which you yourself helped to clear out, and for which you yourself helped to bring the stones. This wall will be built upon that foundation; it is of this height and this thickness; without a calculation you are satisfied that such a foundation can support such a wall. Do you not feel a pleasure in the neat, firm drawing in which a single line represents the work of an hour, or perhaps of many days? Paula has told me that you have an accurate eye and a sure hand. I need copies of these plans: would you like to make them for me? It is work suited to a convalescent; and the use of compass, ruler, and drawing-pen, I can show you in five minutes."

From this day I worked in the superintendent's office, copying simple outlines or the design of a front, or engrossing specifications, with a pleasure which I had never imagined could accompany work. But who then ever had such a teacher--so kind, so wise, so patient, who so well knew how to lead the pupil to confidence in himself? How grateful to me was his praise; and how I stood in need of it. I who at school had always been blamed and scolded, who looked on it as a matter of course that my work was worse than that of any of the others, and who had come to consider myself as destitute of all capacity. My new teacher taught me that my capacities were only dormant, and that I could perfectly well understand anything that I thought worth understanding. Thus I had resigned myself in mathematics to make no progress beyond the first rudiments, and now to my astonishment I discovered that these uncouth symbols and crabbed formulas were composed of simple ideas and figures, and constructed with a logical consequence which I had no difficulty in perceiving, and in which I felt inexpressible delight.

"It is singular," I said on one occasion, "that when I was with Herr von Zehren I thought there could be nothing on earth more delightful than shooting over a wide heath on a sunny autumn morning; but I now find that to correctly employ a difficult formula gives more pleasure than a good shot that brings down an unlucky pheasant."

"The whole secret," replied my teacher, "lies in giving free play to our powers and our talents in a direction which is agreeable to our own nature. For in this manner we feel that we are; and every creature at every moment seeks for nothing further. But if we can so contrive it that our activity, besides giving us the proof of our existence, turns to the advantage of others--and happily that is almost always in our power--so much the better for us. Would to heaven my unfortunate brother had caught a sight of this truth."

Of course, especially in the earlier period of my imprisonment, our conversation frequently turned upon "the Wild Zehren."

"As a boy he bore that name," said the superintendent; "everybody called him 'the Wild One,' and it was hardly possible to give him another name. In his fiery nature lay an impulse that he could not resist, to put forth his exuberant strength even to excess, to venture whatever was most hazardous, and to attempt even the impossible. You can judge the field that our paternal estate offered to such a boy. To dash on the wildest horses down the steep heights, to put out to sea in a crazy boat during a raging storm, to roam over the perilous moors by night, to climb the giant beeches of the park to bring down a bird's nest, to dive into the tarn in search of the treasure which they say was thrown into it in the time of the Swedish invasion--these were his favorite sports. I have no idea how often he found himself in danger of death; but in truth it might be said to be every moment, for at any moment the impulse might seize him to do something which put his life in peril. Once we were standing at an upper window and saw an infuriated bull chasing one of the laborers around the court. Malte said, 'I must take that fellow in hand,' sprang down twenty feet into the court as another might arise from a chair, and ran to meet the bull, whose rage had however spent itself, so that he allowed the daring boy to drive him back to the cattle-yard. It was a mere chance here that he did not break his bones and was not gored; but as chance always stood his friend, he grew more and more reckless and daring.

"Chance, however, is a capricious deity, and unexpectedly leaves its greatest favorites in the lurch. A far worse enemy to my brother were the circumstances in which he grew up. The only thing he had been taught, was that the Zehrens were the oldest race on the island, and that he was the first-born. From these two articles of faith he constructed a sort of religion and mystical cultus which was all the more fantastic that his pompous fancies contrasted so glaringly with the threadbare reality.

"Our father was a nobleman of the old lawless school, and of the wild ways of his class in the eighteenth century: a man of all men least fitted to form the character of a haughty, audacious boy like my brother. Our mother had lived at courts, and in this unwholesome sphere frittered away her really remarkable gifts. She yearned for the vanished splendors of her former life; the solitude of a country life wearied, and the rudeness with which she was surrounded, shocked her. Their life was not a happy one: as she knew she was no longer beloved by her husband, she soon ceased to love her children, in whom she fancied--whether rightly or wrongly is of no consequence--that she perceived only the traits of their father. Our father's regard was confined to his first-born alone; and when a wealthy, childless aunt asked to be allowed to take charge of the second son, Arthur, he willingly consented. Indeed I believe he would have been glad to be rid of me also, the youngest son, only no one was willing to take me. Thus I grew up as I best could; sometimes I had a tutor and sometimes I had none; no one cared for me; I should have been left entirely alone, had not my eldest brother, after his fashion, taken me under his charge.

"He loved me, who was ten years his junior, with passionate devotion, with a wild, and, as it now appears to me, a touching tenderness. Strong as I afterwards grew, I was a frail and sickly child. He, the dauntless, shielded me from every shadow of danger; he watched and guarded me as the apple of his eye; played with me, when I was well, for half-days at a time; watched, when I was sick, night after night by my bed. I was the only one who could control 'the Wild One' with a word, a look; but what could such influence avail? It was a thread that snapped, when the youth of twenty, after a scene of unusual violence with our father, left suddenly the paternal house, to enter it no more for ten years.

"He was sent to travel, as the customary phrase then ran; but the always insufficient remittances which he received from our father, whose means were daily diminishing, soon ceased altogether. He had to live as he could; and as he could not live at his own expense, he lived at the expense of others, like many a noble adventurer, to-day a beggar, to-morrow rolling in gold; to-day the comrade of the lowest rabble, tomorrow the companion of princes; with his irresistible power of fascination, conquering all hearts wherever he came, yet himself fixed nowhere, and roaming restlessly from one end of Europe to the other. He was in England, Italy, Spain, and longest in France; in the wild life of Paris he found his natural element, and he revelled in the arms of French ladies, whose brothers and husbands were devastating his native land with fire and sword.

"For five or six years we had heard nothing of him; our mother had died, and we had not known where to send him the news of her death; our father, broken before his time, was tottering to his grave; the devastation of our estates by the enemy, who had penetrated even to us, did not move his apathy--he drank the last bottle of wine in his cellar in a carouse with French officers. I could not endure all this with patience. I challenged the French colonel, a Gascon, who, seated at my father's table, with a guitar in his hands, was singing ribald songs insulting to the Germans. He laughed, and made his men take the sword from the boy of seventeen--it was a dress-sword which hung on the wall by a blue scarf as an ornament, and which I had snatched in my fury--to punish his presumption by having him shot the next morning.

"In the night appeared a deliverer whom I had least reason to expect. At the rumors of an uprising in Germany--at that time the first Frei corps was organizing--the Wild One had hurried back from the arms of his paramours and the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, and his way had led him to our native place, where just then the flames of war were most fiercely burning. He could not reach the Frei corps, which was in the citadel, so he turned to the island with the plan of stirring up a guerrilla warfare against the invaders. He came just at the right moment to snatch his brother from certain death. With a few trusty followers hastily collected, he broke into the prison under circumstances of the most daring audacity, and carried me away.

"From this time we were together for five years, and first as simple volunteers, then as officers of the line, shared perils and hardships like brothers. I was a good soldier, but my brother's name was known throughout the whole army, and again he was called 'the Wild Zehren,' as if to such a man that was the only fitting epithet. Innumerable were the stories told of his courage and foolhardiness. The general opinion was that he was seeking death; but he was not thinking of death--he only despised life. He laughed when he heard others talking enthusiastically of the regeneration of Germany; how we would rid our native soil both of foreign and native tyrants, in order to establish a kingdom of fraternity and equality in the liberated land. At that time he often had the old phrase of 'hammer and anvil' on his lips, which, as he said, expressed his philosophy in the simplest terms. 'Fraternity! equality!' he scoffed--'away with such empty phrases! This is a world of the strong and the weak; of masters and serfs. You have so long been the anvil under that giant hammer Napoleon, that now you want to play hammer yourselves. See how far you will bring it. Not far, I fear. You have only talents for the part of anvil.'

"But he did himself injustice. He was something more than the blasé cavalier of fortune which he pretended to be; he had squandered in a life of wild adventures the treasures of a heart dearer than Plutus' mine; but a fragment of this heart was yet left him, and in this fragment lived--if not genuine patriotism and philanthropy, at least the generous impulse to side with the oppressed and resist the oppressor, whether he be a brilliant conquerer or a stupid native prince ruling by the grace of God.

"And now that the conquerer was chained to the rock of St. Helena, and he saw the heroes of so many battles taking their old accustomed yoke once more upon their patient necks; when he saw that the whole proud torrent of liberty was wasting in the sand of loyal obedience, then he broke his sword, which he had gloriously carried through twenty battles, bestowed a curse upon both despots and slaves, and said that now, as before the war, the world was his home; the only home for a free-born man in a slavish age.

"I know well that his reasoning was strained and unsound; but there was a kernel of truth in it. The result has proven this; the incredibly vapid, idealess time in which we live, a time barren of thought and of deeds, a real age of the Epigoni, has completely confirmed his prediction. And now again he wandered, a homeless adventurer, through the land, only with the difference that before with insolent power he had sported with men, whom he now coldly preyed upon because he despised them. 'I endeavored to purchase with my blood a letter of indulgence for my past: it has been refused me. What now is the present or the future to me?' How often have I thought upon this expression of his to me at the moment of our parting. It has always remained with me a key to his enigmatical character.

"Again for years I heard nothing more of him. Our father was dead; our estate sequestered; my second brother, Arthur, whom his aunt had deceived in his expectations, was toiling in thankless public service; I, who had set my heart upon the regeneration of the public, and thought that I could see that the work must be begun at the very beginning, that is, at the bottom, had managed to obtain this place through my patron, Altenburg; had been here, a crippled man, for four years, and was still studying the rudiments of my vocation; Malte was nowhere heard of. Suddenly he reappeared, and with a wife who had followed the adventurer to his home. He declared his intention to take the paternal estate in hand. I afforded him every facility; Arthur sold his rights for a sum of money, the receipt of which, by the way, he still denies. The creditors were glad to get at all events something, and one of them at least consoled himself with the thought that 'omittance was no quittance,' and the hope--which has not deceived him--that the Zehren estates were as secure to him under the new master as under the old.

"We did not meet at his return; just at that time I could not well leave this place, and he, on his part, felt no desire to renew the old friendship. When we parted, I was about to contract a marriage, in which the first-born of an ancient line saw a criminal mésalliance; now for some years I had been holding an official post; and to hold any post, but especially such a post as this, was in his eyes throwing one's self away, trampling under foot the inborn right of a knight of the hammer, and making one's self a plebeian anvil. That I refused the compensation he had offered me for my interest in the estate, wounded him deeply. By so doing, in his eyes, I renounced my obedience and subordination to the first-born, the chief of the family. He could not forgive me that I had no more need of him; that I had no debts which he must plunge himself into debt to pay; in a word, that I was not like my brother Arthur, who was much more compliant in this point--too compliant, I fear.

"On the other side, what I heard of him--and he took care never to let men's tongues rest about him--confirmed me in the sad conviction that between him and me a gulf had opened, not to be crossed by even the sincere love I still felt for him. I heard of the wild life he was living with the noblemen of his neighborhood, now impoverished by the war; of the drinking and gaming bouts, of mad exploits of which he was the originator. At this time a dark rumor got abroad that he was conducting the smuggling traffic, which during the war had flourished greatly, being then encouraged by the government, but now was strongly repressed. But the worst rumors were those that spoke of the wretched life he led with his unhappy wife. He ill-treated her, it was said; he had imprisoned her in a cellar; it was unaccountable that the authorities did not interfere.

"I could not bear to hear these things, of which I did not believe a word, for the charges were in too glaringly contradiction to the naturally noble and generous nature of my brother. But I felt a natural hesitation to mix myself up in these affairs, until a letter which I received brought me to a decision. The letter was written in bad French, and the very first words informed me that the unhappy woman who wrote it must be out of her right mind. 'I hear you know the road to Spain,' it began, and ended with the words, 'I entreat you to tell me the road to Spain.' In an hour after receiving it I set out, and, after so many years, saw my father's house and my brother again. It was a painful meeting.

"My father's house a ruin, my brother a shadow--worse, a caricature--of his former self. Ah, my friend, the hammer-theory had shown itself cruel to its staunchest maintainer. How had the clumsy anvil beaten out the delicate hammer! How ignoble he had grown in the common world which he so deeply despised! 'Only despise reason and knowledge,' Goethe makes the Spirit of Lies say, 'and I have you then safe.' And I say, only despise men, and you will see how soon you grow despicable to others and to yourself.

"I told him why I had come; he led me in silence into the park, and pointed to a woman, who, in a fantastic dress, flowers and weeds in her glossy-black, half-dishevelled hair, in her hands a guitar with half its chords broken, was wandering under the trees and among the shrubbery, sometimes raising her dark eyes, as if in ecstacy, to heaven, and again dropping them, as in despair, to the earth.

"'You see,' he said, 'it is a lie that I have imprisoned her. Many another would do it, for it is not a pleasant thing to afford the public such an exhibition.'

"'Try it,' he answered. 'She would leap out of the carriage; she would throw herself into the sea. And if you took her there in fetters and by force, what would be her fate? She would be thrown into the dungeon of a convent, where they would try with hunger and blows to exorcize the devil who tempted her to give her heart to a heretic. Though I love her no longer, I once loved her, or at least she has been mine; and no priest's ungentle hand shall touch what has once belonged to me.'

"I said how terrible it was to hear him speak thus of his wife, the mother of his child.

"'That does not suit your citizen virtue,' he said. 'I would have made her Frau von Zehren, notwithstanding her father is a hidalgo of very doubtful lineage, had the child been a boy. What do I want with a girl? She cannot continue our race; let it then end with me.'

"It was indifferent to him whether these words wounded me or not; he had no desire to wound me; he really looked upon the superintendent of a prison, who had married a poor painter's daughter, as not a Zehren.

"I besought him to give me the child, if, as he said, she was nothing to him. I would bring her up with my Paula, who was then just born. Here she must perish both morally and physically; and there might be a time when he would long for a child, whether son or daughter, legitimate or illegitimate.

"'Then my last hour must have come,' he answered, turning away from me with a contemptuous gesture.

"What was here to be done? I was not here to hunt with my brother, or to join him in his carouses and gaming parties, to which he invited me, with ironical politeness. I spoke with the poor lunatic, who did not understand me, and had no idea that she had written to me, as to many others whose names she had learned by chance. I shook hands with old Christian, who had always been fond of me, and was now the only one who remembered me, and begged him to watch over the poor forsaken creature. I wandered once more through the park and greeted the scenes of my boyish sports; once more saw the sun set behind the house where my cradle had stood, and came sorrowing away. Thus might a tree feel that is torn from the earth with all its roots. But, thank heaven, if man is driven from his home, he can win himself a new one; and when the gates of our childhood's paradise are closed behind us, another world opens to us which we must conquer and possess in the sweat of our brows, but which for this reason alone is truly ours."

CHAPTER IX.

It was certainly not with the intention of stimulating me--for that was no longer needed--that my teacher in his discourses ever returned to the same theme, that free, voluntary labor, consecrated by love, the labor of all for all, was the completion of wisdom, the proper aim and highest happiness of mankind. This was the last result of his practical philosophy, to which of necessity all his reflections tended, whether their subject was the destiny of the individual or the race. And as these discourses were almost always carried on in intervals of repose from work, from which we came and to which we were about to return, they might be called significant arabesques to the earnest, and--as it now looks to me--moving pictures presented by the unresting, thoughtful master, and the industrious, eager student, in their combined occupation.

This occupation was strictly regulated. It so happened that during my convalescence, an old clerk of the office, who had long been ailing, died. As it was a fixed principle with the superintendent that all work should be done by inmates of the establishment, so far as that was practicable, he had, in spite of the opposition of President von Krossow, by means of an immediate application to the king, supported by his friend, Minister von Altenburg, obtained liberty to leave the clerk's place unfilled, and to give his work, as a special favor, to me, for which I also received certain emoluments, reduced to the proportion of other sums paid for prison-work. Deacon von Krossow congratulated me, with anything but cordiality, on my "promotion," but Dr. Snellius crowed loudly with joy, and in the family the great event was celebrated as a festival. As for me, this arrangement had lifted a load from my breast. I had now no longer to fear that the generous man who had already done so much for me, would be involved in serious inconveniences by his kindness. In the president's circle they had even talked of investigations, removal from office, of pensioning off at the very least. Now, as my relation to him bore an official character, this danger was disposed of, and I could look with a light heart through the open window by which my work-table stood, into the leafy garden, where the bees were humming around the flowers, where the birds sang in the trees, and among the flowers and under the trees Frau von Zehren took her morning walk, leaning on her daughter's arm, or in the afternoon, after school-hours, the boys played or worked in their flower-beds.

For each one, even Oscar, had his bed, which he had to keep in order; and it was always a fresh pleasure to me to see the little men with their watering-pots and other implements, which they handled with the skill of practiced gardeners. And yet the pleasure which this sight gave me, was not without a touch of sadness. It always brought to my mind my own youth, and how joyless and fruitless it had been in comparison with this, which unfolded itself before me in such fullness of beauty. Who had ever taught me to employ thus usefully my youthful strength? Who, to bring a significance even into my sports? Alas, large and strong as I was, I might have been nourished by the crumbs that fell from this bounteous table. For I had scarcely known my mother, and the deeply melancholy disposition of my father, who was naturally grave, and had been rendered still more gloomy by the loss of his deeply-loved wife, was to a vivacious high-spirited boy at once mysterious and terrible. Later I well understood what then I had but imperfect glimpses of--how deeply and sincerely he desired my welfare, and strove, according to his conscience and knowledge, to be a good father to me; but like Moses, my excellent father was slow of speech, and there was no obliging Aaron at hand to explain to me the reasons of his stern commands. My brother and sister were considerably older than myself. I was eight years old when my brother Fritz, then sixteen, went to sea, and only ten when my sister, who was twenty, was married. My brother was a lively, gay young fellow, and troubled himself about me as little as he did about anybody or anything else in the world; my sister had my father's sternness, but without his feeling. After she was called to take the place of a mother to me, she treated me always with pedantic strictness, and often with petty cruelty. So I took refuge with the old serving-woman who lived in a state of hostility with her, and who, to reward me for my partisanship, told me stories of robbers and ghosts; and when Sarah married, and with her parting kiss proceeded to give me a farewell lecture, I told her in the presence of my father, her husband, and all the wedding-company, that I wanted neither her teaching nor her kiss, and that I was glad that in future I should see and hear of her no more. This was held up as an instance of the most frightful ingratitude on my part; and Justizrath Heckepfennig, who was also present on this occasion, pronounced for the first time his deliberate conviction, which subsequent experience was only too strongly to confirm, that I "would die in my shoes."

No one can blame me, if while I looked through the window at my little friends, the wish arose in my mind that I had also been so fortunate, that I had had a father at once so wise and so kind, so gentle and tender a mother, such merry companions in work and play, and above all such a sister.

At first she always brought to my mind some old child's story, but I could not remember precisely what it was. It was not little Snow-white, for little Snow-white was a thousand times fairer than the fairest queen, and Paula was not really beautiful; it could not be little Red Riding-hood, for she, when you came to look at it, was a little stupid thing who could not tell the wicked wolf from her good old grandmother, and Paula was tall and slender, and so very wise! Cinderella? Paula was so neat that no cinders could ever be seen about her, and she had no doves at her command to help her gather the peas; on the contrary, she had to do everything for herself. I could not make it out, and concluded at last that it was no special personage of whom she reminded me, but rather that she was like one of the good fairies whom one does not see either coming or going, and only know that she has been here by the gift she has left behind; or like the friendly little goblins who, while the maids sleep, clean up parlor and kitchen, garret and cellar; and when the sleepers awake, they see that all their work is done already, and far better than they could have done it themselves.

Yes, she must be a fairy, who, out of the abundance of her kindness to those whom she befriended, had taken the form of a slender blue-eyed, blonde maiden. How otherwise could it be that from early morning to late evening she was always busy and yet never weary; that she was always at hand when wanted; that she had ready attention for every one, and that never the shadow of ill-humor passed across her sweet face, much less an unkind word from her lips? True, her look was serious, and she rarely spoke more than just what was needful, but her seriousness had no admixture of gloom, and once or twice I even heard her playfully chatting with a half-loud gentle voice, such as the fairies have when they speak the language of mortals.

"Keep away from me with such nonsense!" cried he. "A fairy, indeed! It is Lessing's old fable of the iron pot that must needs be taken off the fire with a pair of silver tongs. What does she do, then, that is so extraordinary? She is the housekeeper, the teacher of the children, her father's friend, her mother's companion, and the nurse of both. All good girls are all this: there is nothing so unusual in it; it all lies in system and order. But a fantastic head of twenty years naturally cannot see men and things as they really are. Do you marry her. That is the best means of discovering that the angels with the longest azure wings are but women after all."

I passed my hand through my hair, which was now perceptibly regaining its former luxuriance, and said thoughtfully:

"I marry Paula? Never! I cannot imagine the man who would be worthy to marry her; but this I know certainly, that I am not he. What am I?"

"For the present you are condemned to seven years' imprisonment, and have therefore fully that amount of time for considering what you will be when you are released. I trust that you will then be a worthy man, and I do not know what girl, nor what seraph is too good for a worthy man."

"What a grinning, gnashing mammoth! Do you suppose a girl like that will marry an apoplectic billiard-ball?"

Whether the doctor was provoked at the contradiction into which he had fallen in scouting, as regarded himself, the possibility which he had just maintained in reference to me--or whatever the cause may have been, the blood rushed so violently to his bald head, that he really bore a striking resemblance to the remarkable object to which he had just compared himself, and his crow rose to such an extraordinary height of pitch, that he did not even make the attempt to tune himself down.

These sayings of the doctor haunted my memory for several days. I was struck with the thought that a worthy man was good enough for any girl, and therefore that in this respect there was no reason why I should not, sooner or later, marry Paula. But then again, I knew not how, my old notions returned, and when I saw her arranging and ordering all things with her heavenly patience, I said to myself--It is not true that all girls, even the so-called good ones, are like Paula; and it is an absurd idea of the doctor that I can ever be worthy of her.

The clear atmosphere, the splendid sunsets, the dry leaves that here and there fluttered down from the trees, announced the approach of another autumn. It was the season that I had spent the year before at Castle Zehrendorf; these were the same signs that I had then so closely observed, and they awakened in my soul a crowd of memories. I had believed that these memories were deeply buried, and I now found that only a thin covering had been spread over them, which every light sighing of the melancholy autumn breeze sufficed to lift. Indeed it often seemed to me that the wounds which had been inflicted on me a year before were about to open once more. I again lived over all that time, but it was as when a waking man, in full consciousness, calls back a vivid dream. What in a dream, with the incomplete activity of our intellectual faculties, seemed to us natural and reasonable, appears to us, when awake, as a strange phantasm; and what then tormented us as incomprehensible, we can now clearly understand, because we can supply the vacant steps which our dreaming fancy has leaped lightly over. I had only to compare my position at that time with the present, to see how wild a caricature my fancy had drawn. Then I imagined myself free, and was really involved in a net of the most unhappy, the most repulsive circumstances, as a fly in the web of a spider; now I slept every night behind bars of iron, and felt as calm and safe as when one steps from a swaying boat upon the steady land. Then I believed that I had found my proper career, and now I saw that that life was only a continuation, and to a certain extent the consequence of a youth spent without plan or aim. And in what light now did the persons in whose destinies I had taken such a passionate interest, now appear to me, when I compared them with those whom I had learned to love so cordially--when I compared, for instance, the Wild Zehren with his wise and gentle brother? And, as I had begun to draw comparisons, that dejected, sleepy giant, Hans von Trantow--where now was the good Hans, if he was not dead? and there were those who insisted that he was safe enough, and they knew very well where he was--had to take his place by the side of the little, intelligent Doctor Snellius, always full of life and motion; and even poor old Christian was compared with the vigorous old Sergeant Süssmilch. But most vividly was the comparison forced upon me between the beautiful, romantic Constance, and the pure, refined Paula.

A sharper contrast could scarcely be imagined; and for this reason perhaps the image of the one always called up that of the other. I felt for Paula, notwithstanding her youth, a greater respect than I had ever felt for Constance, who was several years older, and far more beautiful. True, with the latter at first I had had a certain bashfulness to overcome in myself, but this bashfulness was of a very different nature, and I had so completely overcome it, that when I left the castle that morning, I was resolved to marry her, in spite of my nineteen years. And what surprised me was the fact that I could not think of Constance, who had so cruelly betrayed me, and whom I believed myself to hate, without the wish that I might see her once more, and tell her how much I had loved her, and how deeply she had wounded me. Where was she now? When last heard of, she was in Paris.

Was she still there, and how was she living? That she had been abandoned by her lover, I knew already; I had laughed aloud when I first heard of it. Now I laughed no longer; I could not think, without a feeling of the deepest pity, of her who had been so atrociously wronged, who now perhaps--yes, beyond a doubt--was wandering homeless and friendless about the world; an adventuress, as her father had been an adventurer. And yet she could not be altogether vile; had she not with pride and scorn renounced every claim upon her father's inheritance? Did she not know that her father had never deigned to make her mother his wife? Had she perhaps known it before? And if so, did not this fact suffice to explain the hostile position she maintained towards her father? Could she love the man who had plunged her mother into such unbounded wretchedness--who had never been to her what a father should be, and who, if the reports of his gaming companions were to be believed, had only used her as a bait to allure the stupid fish to his net? Could one judge her so severely--her who had sprung from such parents, grown up in isolation and amid such associations, exposed from childhood to the clumsy attentions or the impertinent familiarities of rude country squires--if she had violated duties whose sacredness she had never comprehended?--if she had been sacrificed by a profligate who approached her with all the temptations of wealth and his exalted rank, and with the whole magic of youth? Unfortunate Constance! Your song of the "falsest-hearted, only chosen" was cruelly prophetic. Your chosen one had indeed proved false-hearted to you. And the other, your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path, you scorned his service; and the mistrust which you felt in the strength and wisdom of the squire who had devoted himself to you, was but too well justified. Would he ever see you again?

I know that she had refused to be present at the family conference which was soon to be held. And yet, as the day drew nearer, the thought more frequently recurred to me, that she might still change her mind, uncertain and impulsive as she was, and suddenly stand before me, just as my friend Arthur one evening, as I was returning with Paula from the Belvedere, appeared before me in all the splendor of his new ensign's uniform.

CHAPTER X.

The day had been rainy and disagreeable, and my frame of mind was as dull and gloomy as the weather. In the morning the superintendent had had an attack of hemorrhage. I was for the first time alone in the office, and often looked over from my work to the place that was vacant to-day, and again listened, when a light swift step came along the corridor from the room where the superintendent was, to the nursery, where the little Oscar had been lying for a week with some infantile ailment. I was always hoping that the light swift step would stop at my door; but the fairy had today too much to do, and with all, I thought, had probably forgotten me.

It was towards evening. As I could no longer see, I had put by my work, and was still seated upon the office stool, with my head resting on my hand, when there came a light tap at the door. I hurried to open it--it was Paula.

"You have not been out of the room the whole day," she said; "the rain is over; I have half an hour to spare; shall we walk in the garden a little?"

She answered promptly, and yet her voice did not have a reassuring sound; and she was singularly silent as side by side we ascended the path to the Belvedere. I concealed my solicitude, as well as I could, by encouraging words. The little one, I said, was now out of all danger; and it was not the first attack of the kind which the superintendent had had, and from which he always soon recovered his usual strength. This was Dr. Snellius's opinion too, I added.

While I thus spoke, Paula had not once looked at me, and as we now reached the summer-house, she entered it hastily. I remained behind a moment to look at the clouds which the sunset was coloring with hues of marvellous beauty, and called Paula that she might not miss the splendid sight. She did not answer; I stepped to the door. She was sitting at the table, her face buried in her hands, weeping.

She raised her head and strove to smile, but it was in vain; again she covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.

I had never seen her before in this state, and the unusual and unexpected sight distressed me inexpressibly. In my deep emotion I ventured for the first time gently to smooth down her blond hair with my hand, speaking to her as to a child whom I was trying to soothe and comfort. And what was this maiden of fifteen but a helpless child to me, who stood by her now in the plenitude of my fully restored strength?

"You are very kind," she sobbed, "very kind! I do not know why just to-day I see everything in so gloomy a light. Perhaps it is because I have borne it so long in silence; or possibly it may be this gray, cheerless day; but I cannot keep my mind clear of dreadful thoughts. And what will become of my mother and the boys?"

She shook her head mournfully, and looked straight before her with eyes dim with tears.

It had begun to rain again; the bright tints of the clouds had changed to a dull gray; the evening wind rustled in the trees and the dry leaves came eddying down. I felt unutterably sad--sad and vexed at heart. Here again was I in the most wretched of positions; compelled to witness the distress of those I loved, while powerless to relieve it. It might be that Constance and her father had not deserved the sympathy I had felt for them; but I still had endured the grief and the pain; and this family--this--I knew well were worthy that a man should shed his heart's blood in their service. Alas, again I had nothing but my blood that I could give! To give one's blood is perhaps the greatest, and assuredly the last sacrifice that one man can bring to another; but how often does it prove a coinage that is not current in the market of life. A handful of money would bring rescue--a piece of bread--a blanket--a mere nothing--and yet with all our blood we cannot provide this.

And as I stood, leaning in the door of the summer-house, now glancing at the gentle, weeping girl, and now at the dripping trees, my heart swelling with sorrow and helpless indignation, I vowed to myself that in spite of all, I would yet raise myself to a position where, in addition to my good will, I should also have the power to help those whom I loved.

How oft in my after life have I recurred in memory to this vow! It seemed so utterly impossible; the object I proposed to attain seemed so far away; and yet that I now stand where I do I chiefly owe to the conviction that filled my soul at that moment. So the shipwrecked mariner, battling with the waves in a frail and leaky skiff, sees but for a moment the shore where there is safety; but that moment suffices to show him the course he must steer to escape destruction.

We walked side by side along the path leading down from the Belvedere. My heart was so full that I could not speak; Paula also was silent. A twig hung across the path, so low that it would have brushed her head; I raised it as she passed, and a shower of drops fell upon her. She gave a little cry, and then laughed when she saw me confused at my awkwardness.

It sounded as if she were thanking me, though I had really startled her. I could not help seizing the dear maiden's hand.

The speaker had stepped out of a hedged path that opened at right-angles to the one in which we were walking, and now stood facing us in a gay uniform, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, three white-gloved fingers raised in a foppish salute to the peak of his cap, gazing curiously at us from his brown eyes, and a half-mocking, half-vexed smile upon his face, which in the pallid evening light looked paler and more worn than ever.

"Allow me to present myself," he said--his three fingers still raised to his cap--"Arthur von Zehren, ensign in the 120th. Have been at the house already; learned to my regret that my uncle is not perfectly well; my aunt is not visible; would at least not neglect to pay my devoirs to my charming cousin."

He said all this in a drawling, affected tone, without looking at me (who had released Paula's hand at once) or taking the slightest notice of my presence.

"I am sorry that it has happened so unfortunately, Cousin Arthur," said Paula. "We did not look for you before next week."

"That was my original plan," replied Arthur; "but my colonel, who is so good as to take a special interest in me, hastened the issue of my commission, so that I was able to leave yesterday, and present myself here to-day. Papa and mamma send kind remembrances to my uncle and my aunt; they will be here the beginning of next week; hope uncle will be quite restored by that time. Am curious to see him; they say he is very like my grandfather Malte, whose picture hangs in the parlor at home. Would not have known you, dear cousin; you have not the family face; brown hair and eyes is the Zehren style."

The path was not wide enough for three to walk abreast; so the two went on before, and I followed at a little distance, but near enough to hear every word. I had lately been thinking of my former friend with very mixed feelings; but now as he strutted along before me at the side of that dear child, pouring his insipid chatter into her ear, calling her thou and cousin, and just now, either accidentally or intentionally, touching her with his elbow--my feelings were very unmixed indeed. I could have wrung Master Ensign's dainty little brown head round in his red collar with extreme satisfaction.

"I will see if you cannot speak with my mother for a few minutes at least," said Paula; "please wait an instant here; you have not spoken to your old friend yet."

Paula ran up the steps; Arthur saluted her--three fingers to his cap--as she went, and then remained standing with his back to me. Suddenly he turned upon his heel so as to face me, and said in his most insolent tone:

"I will now bid you good-day; but I request you to observe that before third parties we have no acquaintance--I presume I need not enter into details why this is so."

Arthur was a head shorter than I, and he had to look up in my face while he pronounced these severe words. This circumstance was not in his favor; rudenesses are much best said from above; and it struck me so ludicrously that this little fellow, whom I could have tumbled over with a light push, should puff himself up to this extent before me, that I laughed aloud.

"It seems you mean to insult me," he said; "happily in my position I cannot be insulted by a person like you. I have already heard on what footing you stand here; my uncle will have the choice between me and you. I do not imagine that it will be a difficult one."

I no longer laughed. I had loved this youth with more than brotherly affection; I had, so to speak, knelt and worshipped him; I had rendered him a vassal's faithful service; had good-naturedly accompanied him in all his follies, and taken--how often!--their punishment upon myself. I had guarded and protected him in every danger; had shared with him all that I possessed, only his share was always by far the larger--and now, now, when I was in misfortune and he luxuriating in the sunshine of prosperity, now he could speak to me thus! I could scarcely understand it; but what I did understand was inexpressibly odious to me. I gazed at him with a look before which any other would have lowered his eyes, turned my back upon him and went. A peal of derisive laughter resounded behind me.

But when I thought of Paula's behavior during this interview, I felt that it might well have been different. I thought she might have taken my side more openly. She well knew how Arthur had abandoned me as soon as I fell into misfortune; how he had had no single cheering word for his old companion when in prison; yes, had even openly renounced me, and blackened my name with calumny like the rest.

"That was not right--that was very ill done of Arthur," she had said to me more than once; and now--I was very dissatisfied with Paula.

I was now to have opportunities enough for dissatisfaction; for in truth, all things taken together, the time which followed was an unhappy time for me. Arthur presented himself on the following day, and was received by the superintendent in his sick-room, and by all the family, in the most friendly manner. I, who had always stood so much alone, possessed in but slight degree the family feeling, the respect for the claims of kindred, and could not comprehend that the mere accident of the identity of name and origin could in itself have such importance as was manifestly conceded to it here. "Dear nephew," said the superintendent and Frau von Zehren; "Cousin Arthur," said Paula; and "Cousin Arthur," shouted the boys. And in truth, Nephew Arthur and Cousin Arthur was amiability itself. He was respectful to his uncle, attentive to his aunt, full of chivalrous politeness to Paula, and hand-and-glove with the boys. I observed all from a distance. The superintendent still had to keep his room; and I took that for a pretext for working more diligently than ever in the office, which I quitted as seldom as possible, and where I buried myself in my lists and drawings, in order to see and hear nothing of what was going forward.

Unhappily, I still heard and saw too much. The weather had cleared up again, and a lovely latter-autumn, peculiar to this region, followed the stormy weather. The boys had holiday, the family scarcely left the garden, and Cousin Arthur was always of the company. Cousin Arthur must have had precious little to do; the colonel deserved arrest for letting his ensigns run wild in this fashion!

Alas, imprisonment had not changed me for the better, as I sometimes flattered myself. When before had even a feeling of envy or of grudging arisen in my soul? When had I ever disavowed my motto, "Live and let live?" And now my heart beat with indignation whenever, raising my eyes, I saw Arthur in the garden stroking the little moustache that began to darken his lip, or heard his clear voice. I grudged him his little dark moustache; as a prisoner I could wear no beard, and mine would anyhow have been of a very pronounced red. I grudged him his clear voice; my own was deep, and had grown very rough since I had left off singing. I grudged him his freedom, which, in my eyes, he so shamefully abused. I almost grudged him his life. Had he not wretchedly darkened my own life, which of late had been so pleasantly lightened, and was he not joyously basking in the sunshine from which he had expelled me?

And yet I had no real ground to complain. The superintendent, who recovered from his attack less rapidly than we had hoped, but occasionally came into the office, was as sympathizing and kind as ever; and after I had persistently, for one or two weeks, declined under various pretexts the invitations to join them in the garden, I had no right to be surprised if Frau von Zehren and Paula at last grew weary of troubling themselves about me, and the boys preferred their lively cousin Arthur, who taught them their drill, to the melancholy George, who no longer played with them. In my eyes, however, they had simply abandoned me; and I should have fallen into mere despair, had I not possessed two friends who held fast to me, and secretly or openly espoused my cause.

As for the sergeant, Master Ensign had got into his black book on the second day. In his familiar fashion, he had clapped him on the shoulder, and called him "Old fellow." "One is not an old fellow for such youngsters as that," said the honest sergeant, as, his face still red with anger, he told me of the affront he had just received. "One might have a major's epaulettes on the shoulders to-day, if one had chosen--will let the youngster see that one is not a bear with seven senses."

The doctor too had his complaint of the insolence of the new-comer. He was walking in the garden one evening, his hat in his hand as usual, when Arthur must show his wit in various allusions to the baldness of the worthy man, and finally asked him in the politest manner, if he had never tried Rowland's Oil of Macassar, whose extraordinary virtues he had frequently heard celebrated.

"What do you think of that?" asked the doctor. "I replied to him that I made all the jests upon my bald head myself, and desired no competition. You will say that was rude--or you will not say it, for you like this glib-tongued, insinuating, slippery specimen of his charming species as little as I do. And the Jack-Pudding will not be at the end of his part so soon, either. Our humane friend holds it his duty to practise a truly Arabian hospitality to a kinsman, especially if he be poor; and the steuerrath, I hear, is in a miserable strait. My only consolation is that this pitcher too will go to the well until it breaks."

"Will be solemnly opened to-morrow. Humanus has invited them all to take up lodgings with him. Our half-pay friend has accepted, naturally; but what I am surprised at is, that so has the other, the Crœsus, and not only for himself, but for his golden daughterkin and her governess. There are one--two--five persons, who will shortly enliven our solitude in the most charming manner. My notion is that one or two deserve to remain here forever."

Thus crowed Doctor Snellius, then hopped on another leg and tuned himself down. I, for my part, was not a little excited at the report of the speedy arrival of the long-expected guests. Already had Arthur's presence placed a restraint upon me; what would it be when all these came? How should I meet the steuerrath?--how the commerzienrath? The one that had so shamefully abused the generosity of his nobler brother, and the other that had traded so skilfully in the embarrassments in which his incautious nature had involved him. My aversion to the pair was of ancient date, and but too well founded. But why should I in any way come in contact with them? If I did not come to them, they would hardly hunt me up. To be sure, there was the little Hermine! Had she still the same corn-flower blue eyes as on that morning on the deck of the Penguin? And the sententious governess, did she still wear those yellow locks? It was a bright sunny day when I last saw them both; but the sun had set too soon, and the evening closed in rain--in rain and dark mist, through which the face of my father, pale with anger, looked threateningly at me.

"Why do you sigh?" asked Doctor Snellius, who in the meantime had been examining a ground-plan on which I had been working for the last few days. "Your progress is perfectly fabulous; I should never have believed that so neat and charming a piece of work could come from the hands of a mammoth. Good-by, mammoth!"

The good doctor shook my hand cordially and hopped out of the room. I gazed sadly after him, as sadly as if I had really been a mammoth, and knew that I was doomed to lie for thirty thousand years under snow and ice, and to be afterwards exhibited, stuffed, in a museum.

CHAPTER XI.

My wish and my hope to be allowed to keep out of sight during the family conference, were to be frustrated in the most singular manner. I was appointed to play a part, and no insignificant one, in the family drama.

The guests had arrived, and were comfortably accommodated in the superintendent's not very roomy house. In the evening all had met at the table. Doctor Snellius also being present. Early the next morning he came to me, to disburden his full heart.

The worthy doctor was under considerable excitement. I perceived that at his first word, which was pitched a full third higher than usual.

"I knew it," he said. "It was perfect idiotcy to invite this swarm of locusts; they will utterly devour my poor Humanus, who has not so many green leaves left. What sort of a company is this? You have not told me a hundredth part of the evil that even a lamb-like disposition such as mine can, and must, and will say of these people. People! It is scandalous how we misuse that word. Why people? Because they go upon two legs? Then the revolting creatures that Gulliver saw in the land of the noble horses, were people too. But the English skeptic knew better, and called them Yahoos. And such are our dear guests, or there is no such thing as natural history. The commerzienrath with his great paunch, and his cunning, blinking eyes, is one. I could but look at his short clumsy fingers; I believe the fellow has worn them off handling his gold. And the steuerrath is another, though he makes desperate efforts to appear a human being. He has long fingers, very long; but does a human being ever twist such long fingers about in that fashion, curve his back with such a cat-like pliancy, and wear such a white, smooth, smiling, false thief's face? As for the gracious born Baroness Kippenreiter, any one will believe at her first word that she has held a high place in the republic of those fascinating creatures, and only came to Europe by the last ship. She cannot deny her nature; her Yahoo origin grins unmistakably from her long yellow teeth. Hm, hm, hm!"

"Of the little beauty whom I was called to attend? Her name is Fräulein Duff? A very good name! Might be Duft [perfume], and would then be still more suitable. Mignonnette blooming in pots, and dried between flannel-jackets in a bureau-drawer; faded ribbons, tarnished leaves of albums, and a little ring of gold which did not even snap when the faithless lover deserted his Elvira. Is not her name Elvira? It must be. Amalie, you say? Certainly an error of the press; nothing about her to remind one of The Robbers--unless it be her long, languishing ringlets, which assuredly are stolen."

"She had eaten too many apple-tarts on the road. As if such a thing could hurt a little millionairess! Oh, if it had been black bread, now! I said so to the sorrowing father. 'In all her life she never tasted a crumb of black bread,' the monster replied, patting his protuberant paunch. 'Who never ate his bread with weeping,' sighed the governess, and added, 'that is an eternal truth.' The deuce only knows what she meant."

The doctor went to visit his patients; I started for the office, keeping close to the wall, and slipped into the house through the back-door, for fear of being noticed by some one of the guests. But no one saw me.

However, in the course of the day I caught sight of them from my window. First, the commerzienrath, taking his morning promenade through the garden, a long pipe in his mouth. He seemed to be pondering over important things. From time to time he stopped, and gazed long into vacancy. Doubtless, he was calculating. I observed how with his stumpy fingers he was multiplying, and then wrote the product in the air with the end of his pipe-stem. Once his face puckered into a grin of delight; what could he have reckoned out?

The next was the steuerrath. He went an hour later, with his brother, through the garden. The steuerrath was speaking very animatedly; he several times laid his right hand upon his breast, as if in asseveration. The superintendent's eyes were dropped; the subject of the conversation seemed to distress him. When they came near my window, he looked across with apparent uneasiness, and drew his brother behind a hedge. Apparently he did not wish me to witness his brother's gesticulations.

I had bent over my work again with the painful feeling that I was a superfluity and in the way, when suddenly the door leading from the office into the garden was opened, and the steuerrath hastily entered. I was startled, as even a man of courage is startled when unexpectedly a serpent glides across his path. The steuerrath smiled very benignantly, and held out to me his white well-kept hand, which he again withdrew with a graceful wave, as I showed no disposition to take it.

I made him no answer; what could I answer to a phrase in which every word and every tone was a lie?

"How would I deplore your fate," he proceeded, "had not fortune brought you here to my brother, who without doubt is one of the noblest and best of men alive, and who even now, while we were walking there, has said so many kind and affectionate things of you. I was impelled to offer you my hand, although I had a presentiment that you, like your father, would turn from one whom in truth fortune has bitterly enough persecuted."

And the victim of fortune threw himself into an arm-chair, and covered his eyes with his long white hand, the ring-finger of which was adorned with an enormous signet.

"I do not reproach him for it: Heaven forbid! I have known him for so many years. He is one of those strict men, whose horror of dereliction to duty is so great, and at the same time so blind, that in their eyes an accused person always appears a guilty one."

The last observation was too just for me not to admit it inwardly; and probably my look expressed as much, for the steuerrath said with a melancholy smile:

"Yes, you can sing a sad song to that tune! Well, well, I will not chafe the wound which pains you more than all the rest; but in truth you have only early learned what sooner or later we must all learn, that we can least expect a correct construction of our views and intentions, and even of our position, from those who stand in the closest relation to us."

In this too there was truth; and I could not refrain from looking in a more friendly manner at the man.

"I have just now had proof of this. My brother Ernest is, as I have already said, one of the best of men; and yet what trouble does it not give him to place himself in my situation. To be sure, he has always lived with so much regularity that he does not know what it is in one night to lose the half of one's receipts, which are anyhow dealt out in such stinted measure; he does not know what it is to have to compromise with one's creditors--to risk one's own subsistence and that of others, alas! and what is bitterest of all, to be dependent on the good-will of a hard-hearted man of money!"

Here the white hand wiped a tear which seemed to have accumulated in the inner corner of his right eye, and then resignedly glided to his lap, while a mild smile stole over his aristocratic features.

"Forgive me; but an unfortunate one feels himself irresistibly attracted to the unhappy, and you have always been a friend of my house, and the best companion of my Arthur. You must not take it ill of the poor youth, if pride in his new sword has turned his head a little. You know him; hardly once in ten times does his heart know what his tongue is saying; and he has already owned to me that in the notion that he owed it to his dignity as an ensign, he behaved very foolishly to you. You really must forgive him."

He smiled again, nodded to me, was about to offer his hand again, but remembered that I had refused it before, and withdrew it, smiled again, but very sadly, and went to the garden door, which he opened softly and softly closed behind him.

I looked after him with a mingled feeling of astonishment and contempt. Was this soft-speaking man, who in my presence could weep over his position, the same to whom as a boy I had looked up as to a superior being? And if his case was so desperate--and as far as I could learn it might very well be so--I might have behaved in a more friendly manner to him, might have afforded him a word of sympathy, above all, need not have repulsed his offered hand.

My face burned; it was the first time I had ever rudely repelled a supplicant. I asked myself again whether imprisonment had not corrupted me; and I was glad that I had kept so silent in regard to the relations between the steuerrath and his deceased brother, and especially that I had faithfully guarded the secret of that letter, even from the superintendent, in whom, in all other respects, I place unbounded confidence. Had the steuerrath a suspicion that I could have revealed something had I chosen? and had he come this morning to thank me for my silence?

The steuerrath appeared at once to me in an entirely different and much more favorable light We feel a certain inclination towards persons whom we have laid under obligation, if they are acute enough to let us perceive that they are penetrated by the feeling of that obligation.

The steuerrath is right, I thought; not once in ten times does he know where his tongue is running to.

As I formed this magnanimous resolution, there came another knock--this time at the door that led into the hall, and I came very near laughing aloud when upon my calling "Come in!" the commerzienrath presented himself on the threshold; not this time in dressing-gown and slippers, with his long pipe in his hand as before, but in a blue frock-coat with gold buttons, a wide black neckcloth, out of which projected fiercely, at least four inches, the long points of his high-standing collar, a flowered waistcoat loose enough not to incommode his prominent paunch, nor interfere with the display of his neatly-ironed frill, black trousers which were not so long but that one might see how firmly his two flat feet stood in the shining boots. In this very costume did this man pervade all the recollections of my earliest youth; and perhaps it was because then, in my childish innocence, I had laughed at his grotesque appearance, that now, when to say the least such behavior was far more unbecoming, I was again seized with an impulse to laughter.

"How are you now, my dear young friend?" said the commerzienrath, in the tone with which one inquires into the state of some one on his death-bed.

"I thank you for your kind inquiry, Herr Commerzienrath; I am quite well, as you see."

"You are a tremendous fellow," cried the commerzienrath, taking his tone from me at once. "But that is right; we can live but once; one must take things as they come. I said as much to your father only yesterday, when I met him upon the street. 'Good heavens!' I said, 'why do you make such a terrible matter of it? We have all been young once; and young men will be young men. Why have you stopped his allowance?' I asked. 'He is not condemned to hard labor; he has not forfeited the right to wear the national cockade; he is only imprisoned. That might happen to any one; and you,' I said, 'are such an honorable man that it would be an honor to us all to play Boston with you, even if you had four sons in the penitentiary.'"

The commerzienrath's head sank again upon one side; it is possible that at his last words my face assumed a grave expression.

"To be sure," said he, "there are many that take it more easily. There is my brother-in-law. I would not be in his shoes although his father was a nobleman of the empire and mine only an ordinary needleman. The investigation let him off, but it was with a black eye. Any one would suppose he had had enough of intriguing for his life-time; but he cannot keep out of it. Great heavens, it is a shame, the amount that his family has cost me already. Would you believe it, that I had to pay for my wife's trousseau out of my own pocket? Then the one at Zehrendorf and his drafts! By the way, did he ever tell you that he had assigned all Zehrendorf to me, years ago? Try to think; he must have mentioned it to you on some occasion or other. He was not one of those that keep their mouths close shut. And there's the steuerrath! What have I not already done for the man; and now these pretensions of his! Indemnification! A man must live; and if one has not a son, who naturally could not be set to earn his own living, still one has a daughter that one does not want to let starve. You must try to get out of here, my boy. The girl asks after you ten times a day. You have bewitched her, you rascal you!"

And the commerzienrath, who had arisen and was standing by me with his hat and stick in his hand, gave me a little poke in the ribs.

"Look there now, how you blush!" said the commerzienrath; "quite right; I like that. Respect for the ladies; don't be an idle coxcomb; a fellow of that sort is worth nothing all his life. But you must not call my Hermann Fräulein; Fräulein Duff will never allow that; she must be called Fräulein herself, though she would give her two little fingers if she did not need to be called Mamsell or Fräulein any longer."

The commerzienrath winked as he said this, puffed out his cheeks, and gave me another little poke.

"Pooh!" said the commerzienrath, "don't be tragic. We are to ourselves here. I spoke with my brother-in-law to-day about it; you must take supper with us this evening. Hermann--you know I call her Hermann--wants particularly to see you. Adieu!"

And he kissed the tips of his clumsy fingers and left the room, giving me another wink as he passed out at the door.

What was the meaning of these visits? What did the ceremonious steuerrath and the purse-proud commerzienrath want with me, a prisoner? I might have racked my brain in vain for a solution of the enigma, had not the superintendent, who came into the office that afternoon, let fall a word which gave me the key to the mystery.

"I wish the next three days were over," said he. "You would not believe, my dear George, how repulsive to me are all these transactions, which have no material interest for me. They really only want me to act as umpire, and flatter me in the hope of influencing my decision beforehand. And if I could only decide--but how is that possible in this case where the parties themselves do all they can to obscure the matter? They count upon you, my dear George, as you are the only one who was near my unhappy brother in the latter part of his life, and thus may possibly be able to give information on some points that need to be cleared up. And now come with me into the garden. Snellius and you must help me to entertain the company. My poor wife and I will really not be able to go through with it."

Smiling as he said these words, he took my arm and let me assist him down the steps into the garden and up the path to the Belvedere, from which even at a distance there reached us the joyous clamor of children. It was the first time since my misfortunes that I had gone into society. I had learned while in prison many things of which I was proud, but also one of which I was ashamed, namely, the agitation that overcame me as I heard nearer and nearer the voices of the speakers, and saw the dresses of the ladies glancing through the hedge, already thinned by the autumn winds.

I had cause to be content with my reception: the boys rushed at me, and Kurt cried that I must play with them, for Cousin Arthur kept with Hermine and Paula, and that was tiresome; and Hermine anyhow was only ten years old, and did not need to be so proud.

"Hermine is not proud, but you are too wild," said Paula, who was holding Hermine's hand, while Arthur kept a little in the background and twirled his little sprout of a moustache with visible embarrassment.

I caught up the boys and tossed each in succession high in the air, to conceal my confusion as well as I could, while I kept my eyes fixed upon Hermine. It was really not possible to find anything more dainty and charming than this beautiful creature, in her white dress, which again was trimmed with cornflower blue ribbons, as when I saw her on the steamer. And her great blue eyes looked as eagerly at me, and her red lips were half parted, as if she had suddenly caught sight of the prince of a fairy-tale.

I did not catch Paula's answer to this singular question, for I had now to turn to Frau von Zehren, who sat between her sister-in-law and Fräulein Duff on the bench. Frau von Zehren looked paler than usual, and her poor blind eyes turned with an appealing look towards me, while a painfully-confused smile played about her lips.

She offered me her hand at once, and half arose from the bench, but remembered that she must remain sitting, and smiled yet more sadly.

I wished the born Baroness Kippenreiter, with her long yellow teeth, and the governess, with her long yellow ringlets, who were both staring at me through their eye-glasses, a thousand miles away.

The superintendent had now joined us, and said: "Will you not take my arm awhile, Elise? You will be chilled; the ladies will certainly excuse you."

"Oh, allow me to walk with our dear friend," cried the born Kippenreiter, springing up with decision. The superintendent slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"I am strong whenever duty calls," cried the born Kippenreiter, drawing Frau von Zehren away with her.

"That is a grand expression!" sighed Fräulein Duff. "Happy he who can say that of himself!" and the pale governess shook her yellow locks in a dejected way, then turned her dim eyes on me, and lisped:

"Richard--ah, just as in the old story! Alas that the Blondel is wanting! But do not despair; faithfully seek, and thou shalt find at last; that is an immortal truth."

"And still this charming quality of taking an interest in the welfare of others, with all his own misfortunes! That is beautiful! that is great!" whispered the governess. "I must, indeed I must, make an attempt to creep into your heart----"

She laid the tips of three fingers upon my arm and pointed shyly with her parasol in the direction which the company, who had now left the place under the plane-trees, had taken.

"And how do you live here?" she again whispered, as we descended into the garden. "But why need I ask--calm and free from care as William Tell. Life here is an idyll. Do not talk to me of a prison! The whole world is a prison; no one knows that better than I."

"I should have thought, Fräulein Duff, that the education of so charming a creature----"

"Yes, she is charming," replied the pale lady, with a flush of real emotion, "lovely as a May morning, but you can understand--the undisturbed happiness of life--that this child should have such a----"

"Only think! he calls her Hermann, and asks three times a day why she is not a-- Fi donc! I cannot utter it. Oh, it lacerates my heart that such rough hands should clutch the delicate chords of this virgin soul! The world loves to blacken whatever is bright and fair; who knows not that? but at least her own father--but I am the last who should complain of him. He has--you are a noble soul, Carlos; I cast myself upon your breast--he has awakened hopes in me which would render giddy a soul less strong than mine. To acquire a million is great; to throw it away is godlike--and to be the mother of this child, I often think, must be heavenly; but what will you say to my always talking of myself? what will you say to your satirical friend?"

Fräulein Duff stepped a pace backward, shaded her eyes from the rays of the evening sun with her transparent hand, and said with a coquettish smile:

"Carlos, you are playing false. Confess now you want to escape me by this serpentine turning. There is but one here to whom this description applies, but he is a giant--in intellect! It is immense--sublime! it really overcame me! And you call such a giant your friend, and yet complain that you are in a prison! Oh, my dear friend, who would not willingly exchange his freedom for your imprisonment, to win such a friend as this!"

Fräulein Duff pressed her handkerchief to her eyelids, and then gave a loud shriek as she felt herself seized fast from behind, and turning saw Hermine's little spaniel, who had fastened his sharp teeth in the skirt of her dress, and looked at her with a malevolent expression in his great black eyes. At the same moment the whole company came up, so that the governess had suddenly quite a concourse of spectators to her combat with the little long-haired monster. I endeavored to release her, and only made matters worse; Zerlina would not let go, and shook and tore with all her strength; the boys pretended to help me, and secretly urged her on; no one could keep from laughing, and the commerzienrath literally roared. Nothing remained for Fräulein Duff, under these circumstances, but to swoon away, and fall into the arms of Doctor Snellius, who just then came up, attracted by the noise.

"Do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen," said the commerzienrath, "this happens three times every day."

"Barbarian!" murmured the fainting damsel, with pale lips, and raised herself from the arms of the doctor, who, despite the sublimity attributed to him, wore at this moment a very sheepish look. Fräulein Duff strove to cast, through the tears that dimmed her water-blue eyes, an annihilating look at the mocker, declined the doctor's proffered arm with the words, "I thank you, but I need no assistance to the house," and hastened away, holding her handkerchief to her face, while Zerlina capered around her little mistress with joyous barkings and triumphant flourishings of her bushy tail.

"I think she will lose her wits one of these days," said the commerzienrath, as a sort of explanation of the scene which had just occurred.

"So much the more should you spare her, especially in the presence of others," said the superintendent.

I had seized this opportunity to make my escape from the company, and was wandering about in the farther walks of the garden, when I saw Paula and Hermine approaching at a little distance. Paula had laid her hand on the little maid's shoulder, who, in her turn, had wound one arm round her cousin's waist. Hermine was looking up in Paula's face, and speaking with great animation, while Paula smiled in a friendly manner, and said from time to time something which seemed to call forth vehement opposition from the little maid.

The lovely child of ten years, with her glossy brown hair, and her great sparkling blue eyes, her bright little face beaming with animation, and the slender maiden of fifteen, with the gentle smile on her delicate lips--both these beautiful figures illuminated by the ruddy glow of an autumn sunset--how often has this picture recurred to my memory in later years!

And now they caught sight of me. I heard Paula say: "Ask him then yourself," and Hermine answered, "And so I will!"

She let Paula go, came springing up to me, stood before me looking fearlessly at me with her great eyes, and asked:

"Do you see, Paula," said the little maid, turning to her with a triumphant look. "I told you so! I told you so!" and she clapped her hands and sprang about like a little Bacchante, and then ran scampering over the flower-beds, Zerlina following her with loud barkings.

"It seems that Fräulein Duff keeps comparing you to Richard the Lion-heart," replied Paula, with a smile.

"Yes, because you are blond, and so tall and strong, and a prisoner; so Hermine has taken it into her head that you must be able to conquer lions. Whether she is in earnest or in jest, I doubt whether she knows herself. But I wanted to thank you for joining us in the garden to-day. It was kind of you; for I could see that you were not at ease in the company."

I said this not without some bitterness, with a reference to her friendship to Arthur; but I felt ashamed of myself when she raised her sweet, gentle eyes to my face and innocently asked:

Happily I was spared the necessity of an answer, for Doctor Snellius came up at the moment, calling "Fräulein Paula! Fräulein Paula!" while he was yet at a distance.

"I must go in," said Paula; "there are many things to see to; and I beg you do not look so angry. You have been of late not so friendly as usual; are you displeased with me?"

I had not the courage to answer "Yes!" when I looked into the earnest fade that was lifted to mine.

"That she is, God bless her!" said Doctor Snellius, who had caught the last words.

He looked after her as she hastened away, and a deep and sorrowful shade passed over his grotesque face. Then with both hands he draped his hat over his bald skull down to his very ears, and said in a tone of irritation:

"The devil take it! She is far too good; she is so good that she can only meet with trouble. The time is past--if; there ever was such a time--when all things worked together for good to the good man. One must be bad--thoroughly bad; one must flatter, lie, cheat, trip up his neighbor, regard the whole world as his private inheritance which by neglect has fallen into alien hands, and which is to be won back again. But to do this one must be brought up to it, and how are we brought up? As if life were one of Gessner's idylls. Modesty, love of our neighbors, love of truth! Let any one try it with this outfit! Is the commerzienrath modest? Does he love his neighbor? Does he love the truth? Not one whit And the man is a millionaire, and his neighbors pull off caps when they meet him, and fame proclaims him one of the noblest of human-kind, because from time to time he tosses a thaler that will not go into his crammed purse, into a poor man's hat. But you will say he has his punishment in his own breast. Much of it! He considers himself a thoroughly good man, a splendid fellow, full of humor, and when at night he lies down in his bed to snore his eight hours, he says, 'This you have honestly earned.' Away with your starving, hectic honesty!"

"But while I was declaiming you kept on smiling, as if you would have said: 'But you are dishonest.' Do you see, that is just my vexation. With this wretched bringing-up of ours, one is filled so with honest notions that one cannot be a scoundrel, however good his intentions, but has to keep honest, in spite of his better insight. And if we cannot get over this, how can women?"

The doctor looked fixedly in the direction in which Paula had disappeared, and then took off his great, round spectacles, the glasses of which seemed to have become dim.

"Has made me a formal proposal," said Doctor Snellius, hastily putting on his spectacles, "and here comes somebody who will make you one. Beware of this Greek in uniform."

The doctor clapped his hat upon his head and hurried away, without returning the very friendly salute with which Arthur approached us from a side path.

"I am glad that he is gone," said Arthur, coming to my side and taking my arm just as in old times; "I have something to say to you, or rather I have something to beg of you; my father has already done it, it is true; but it can do no harm if I repeat it. You know what I mean."

"I behaved like a fool, I know," the ensign continued; "but you must really not think too hardly of me. I thought it was due to this thing here----" and he gave his sword a kind of toss with his left leg.

"Arthur," I said, stopping and withdrawing my arm, "I am not quite so clever as you, but you must not consider me an absolute fool. You separated yourself from me, long before you had that toasting-iron at your side. You did it because you had no further use for me, because it suited your purpose to join the hue and cry against me, because--"

"Well, yes," interrupted Arthur, "I don't deny it. I was in such an infernally dependent position that I had to howl with the wolves. If I had spoken out my real feelings, Lederer would have surely plucked me at the Easter Examination, and my uncle would never have paid for my ensign's outfit."

"And now," I said, "it seems the wind blows from another quarter, and we must trim our sails accordingly."

"Oh, hang it!" said Arthur, laughing, "you must not bring a fellow to book in that way. I often say things that I cannot maintain. You always knew that was a weakness of mine, and yet you used to like me. I have not changed, and why are you angry with me all at once? You may believe that I am still the same, notwithstanding my new caparison, which, by the way, I am not likely to wear so very much longer. It cost no end of trouble to get me the appointment; the colonel told me himself that he only did it out of regard for my uncle, who was his comrade in the war for freedom, and that on this account he would shut his eyes a little to his duty, and take no notice of the reports that were afloat about my father. But even as it is I am not out of the woods yet. Papa's affairs are in such a frightful condition that no creditor is willing to give him the least delay; and unless things now take a favorable turn, he is ruined, and I of course with him; my name will be struck off the list of candidates for promotion."

"Well, I don't precisely know myself," Arthur replied, decapitating some weeds with the scabbard of his sword. "Uncle Commerzienrath has to pay over to papa his share of the inheritance, left by my grandfather, which papa has never received; and also what is coming to us from Uncle Malte's estate. But the old Judas will pay nothing; he says papa has been paid already five and ten times over. As I said, I don't understand it; I only know that I never received a groschen of cash from my uncle, and I even envy my servant-fellow, who at least has enough to eat."

I took a side look at my old friend; he did look extremely pale and thin. My own appetite had long since recovered its vigor, and not to have enough to eat, struck me as a most serious misfortune.

"But that is the least," continued Arthur, in a querulous tone. "'Your father is always running in debt,' the colonel said; 'as soon as I see that you are following in his footsteps, we shall have to part.' But I ask you now, how with a couple of groschen a day can one avoid running into debt? To-morrow I have to meet a little note which a villain of a Jew swindled me out of. I spoke of it to papa and to mamma, and they both say they have not money enough to take them home, not to speak of giving me any. I must get out of the scrape as best I can. Very well; I will get out of it, but in another way."

"I have about so much in the cashier's hands here; and if it falls a little short, he will give me credit."

"Will you really do that, you dear good old George?" cried Arthur, seizing both my hands and shaking them again and again.

"But don't make such a fuss about it," I said, trying with very mixed feelings to escape the ensign's rather too exuberant gratitude.

CHAPTER XII.

The two brothers Von Zehren, with the commerzienrath, were occupied for an hour the next morning in a conference which was the object of this family gathering. The session must have been a lively one. The room in which they were was just above the office, and although the house was solidly built, I had more than once heard the shrill voice of the commerzienrath. I felt a sort of disquiet, as if my own fortunes were the matter at stake. Had I not been, by the strangest combination of circumstances, held as it were perforce in connection with this family? I had taken an active part, as a friend and confident, in the most important events connected with it; and my own fate had been entirely determined by these events and my relation to various members of the family. If Arthur had not wanted to have me with him at the oyster-feast on board the Penguin that morning--if I had not met the Wild Zehren at Pinnow's that evening after the scene with my father--if----

"The gentlemen upstairs would like to see us," said Sergeant Süssmilch, thrusting his gray head in at the door.

"Well!" said I, laying the pen from my hand, not without a little quickening of my pulse.

"Well, I had hoped that they would not want me," I said, getting down from my stool with a sigh.

"Want you for what?" asked the veteran, stroking his long moustache and looking at me half angrily.

"It is a long story," I answered, adjusting my necktie at the great inkstand on the table, which offered me a very distorted reflection of myself.

"Which one need not tell an old bear with seven senses, as he would not be able to understand it," answered the sergeant, with a little irritation in his tone.

At this moment, in the upper room, two voices were raised so high, and two chairs were simultaneously pushed back with so much violence, that the sergeant and I gave each other an expressive look. The sergeant came close to me and said in a confidential hollow tone:

"Fling both those fellows down the steps, and when they get down to me, I will pitch them out of the house."

"We'll see about it," I answered, shaking the hand of the old Cerberus, who had growled these last words apparently from the pit of his stomach.

When I opened the door of the room upstairs, a peculiar spectacle was presented to my gaze. The superintendent alone, of the three gentlemen, sat at the round table, covered with papers of all sorts. The commerzienrath stood with one hand resting upon the back of his chair, and with the other gesticulating vehemently at the steuerrath, who, like one who is eager to speak, and whose adversary will not let him get in a word, stamped about the room, stood still, raised his hand, tried to speak, then shrugged his shoulders and stamped about the room again. No one appeared to notice my entrance but the superintendent, who beckoned me to him, and then called the commerzienrath's attention to my presence, but it did not interrupt his harangue.

"And so," he went on, "I am to lie out of my money for eighteen years, not receiving a groschen of interest, to have such chicanery played on me at last! You are a man of honor, Herr Superintendent; a man of honor, I say; and in the whole matter, from the beginning until now, have behaved as nobly as possible, but that gentleman there----" and he pointed his clumsy finger at the steuerrath with an energetic gesture, as if there had been any possibility of mistaking the person meant--"that gentleman, your brother and my brother-in-law, seems to have a very peculiar way of looking at money-transactions. Oh yes, it would suit me exactly to have my goods paid for two or three times over, only there happen to stand certain passages in the law of the country----"

"Brother-in-law!" exclaimed the steuerrath, taking a stride towards the speaker, and raising his hand in a threatening manner.

The commerzienrath sprang with great agility behind a chair, and cried: "Do you expect to intimidate me? I stand under the protection of the law----"

"Don't scream so, Herr Commerzienrath," I said, laying my hand upon his right shoulder, and forcing him down into his chair.

I had noticed that the superintendent's pale cheeks were growing redder and redder at every word of the furious man, and the marks of pain under his eyes were becoming more and more apparent.

The commerzienrath rubbed his shoulder, looked at me with an expression of astonishment, and was silent, just as a screaming child suddenly stops its crying when something very extraordinary happens to it.

"I invited our young friend to come up, because I really did not know how the question which is the matter of immediate dispute could be better or more promptly decided; for no one can give us surer information on this point than he. We want to know, George, what there was in the house at Zehrendorf: the furniture, the plate, and so forth; and we should like some account of the condition of the farm buildings, and as correct an inventory as possible of the live stock and other property, if you can inform us on this point. Do you think you can do so?"

While I spoke, the little gray eyes of the commerzienrath were fixed immovably upon me, and I remarked that as I proceeded with the description, his puckered face cleared up more and more, while the steuerrath's grew longer and more confused in the same proportion.

"You see, brother-in-law, that I was right," cried the commerzienrath, "that----"

"You agreed to leave the management of the matter to me," said the superintendent; and then turning to the steuerrath: "It appears, Arthur, that George's account agrees with the inventory which the commerzienrath had taken three years before, except such trifling differences as the lapse of time amply explains----"

"And so," cried the commerzienrath, "the money which I lent your deceased brother upon it, could scarcely have been too little. As my brother-in-law has not yet given us the proof that the sum which the deceased paid him, in the year 1818, through my hands, was not an indemnification for his interest in the estate, he must consent to admit that even during the life of his brother, I was the legal proprietor of Zehrendorf, and that his pretensions are illusory, entirely illusory----"

And the commerzienrath threw himself back in his chair, puckered up his eyes, and rubbed his hands as if with satisfaction.

"I should have thought," began the steuerrath, with an appearance of annoyance, "that these things were not precisely suitable to be discussed in the presence of a third person----"

"Excuse me, my dear Arthur," said the latter, "you not only were willing but even desirous that we should call in our young friend here; of course it was to be expected that in his presence many things----"

"----would be spoken of, which would not be particularly agreeable to the Herr Steuerrath," said the commerzienrath, turning over his papers with a malicious smile.

"And I must further request," cried the steuerrath, "that these matters be handled in a more becoming tone. If I pledge my word as a nobleman that my deceased brother more than once assured me that he had parted with only a small, the very smallest part of the Zehrendorf forest----"

"So!" cried the commerzienrath; "is that your scheme? First it was the house, then the inventory, now it is the forest--here is the bill of sale."

"I beg you," said the steuerrath, pushing away with the back of his hand the paper which the commerzienrath extended to him across the table; "I have already taken note of it. This bill, moreover, is not indisputable."

"It is the handwriting of our brother," said the superintendent, in a reproachful tone.

"But expressed in such general terms," replied the steuerrath, shrugging his shoulders.

"Was I to have every tree separately described?" cried the commerzienrath. "It is unheard of, the way I am treated here. I do not speak of you, Herr Superintendent. You are a man of honor, every inch of you; but when I am told here every moment that I must respect the word of a nobleman, and a paper like this is not of more validity, which is a nobleman's word too, and written with his own hand----"

"Perhaps our young friend here can give us information on this point too," said the superintendent. "Do you remember, George, to have heard anything from the mouth of our deceased brother bearing upon the point at issue?"

The steuerrath cast a quick, anxious look first at me; the commerzienrath stealthily watched me, and then the steuerrath, as if to detect the signs of any secret collusion between us; the superintendent fixed his large, clear blue eyes upon me with a look of inquiry.

I told the gentlemen the expression which the Wild Zehren had used when he came to my room the morning before his death, that of the whole majestic forest no part belonged to him, not even enough to make him a coffin.

My voice faltered as I told this. That morning when I beheld for the last time the lovely park glittering in the glorious sunshine, the portrait of the strange man who knew himself utterly ruined, and gave so passionate an expression to his knowledge--his attitude, his words, the tone of his voice--all came back to me with irresistible force; I had to turn away to hide the tears which sprang to my eyes.

"The question is decided for me now, if it were not so before," said the superintendent, rising and coming to me.

"And for me too," cried the commerzienrath, with a triumphant look at his adversary.

"But not for me," said the steuerrath. "However disposed I am to place the fullest confidence in the veracity, or, more accurately, in the good memory of our young friend here, his recollections differ too widely from what I have heard from my brother's lips for me to abandon the ground I have taken. I am sorry to have to be so obstinate, but I cannot help it. I owe it to myself and to my family. The last eighteen years of my life are a series of sacrifices made to our eldest brother. But a few days before his tragical end he appealed to me in the most moving terms to advance him a considerable sum of money; I ran about the whole town to get it for him; I came to you also, brother-in-law, as you doubtless remember. You refused me--and, by the way, not in the most delicate manner. I wrote to my unfortunate brother that I would assist him, but he must wait. I adjured him to take no desperate resolution. He did not regard my entreaties. Had that letter only not been lost!"

"You have no further occasion for me, Herr Superintendent?" I said, and, without awaiting his answer, left the room, and hastened to the office in a state of agitation, at which now I can but smile. What had happened of so much consequence? A man, speaking of matters of importance, had been guilty of an audacious lie. Later I discovered that this is not of such rare occurrence, and in matters of business lying has a sort of charter; but I was then very young, very inexperienced, and, I may add, innocent, or my emotion at this moment could not have been so violent. I stood in the presence of a thing to me at once horrible and incomprehensible. I could not grasp it. I felt as if the world was being lifted from its pivots. Once before something like this had happened to me--when I heard of Constance's flight, and learned that she had deceived me and lied to me; but there was then still a kind of palliation for her in my eyes; the passion of love, which I could understand. But this I did not understand. I could not conceive how, for a few wretched hundred or thousand dollars, one could calumniate the dead, defraud the living, and roll one's self in the mire. But one thing became clear to me at that moment, and all my life since I have held to the conviction that truth is not a mere form, by the side of which another might have place, but that it is like nature, the foundation and the essential condition of human existence; and that every lie shakes and upheaves this foundation, as far as its influence reaches.

Since then I have discovered that this influence is not so extremely wide; that as water naturally seeks its level, so the moral world continually strives to keep truth erect, and to cancel the injurious effect of falsehood.

But on this morning this consolatory thought did not present itself to calm the agitation in my heart. "Liar, hateful, disgusting liar!" I murmured over and over to myself, "you deserve that I should have you placed in the pillory; that I should reveal the real contents of the last letter you wrote to your brother."

I think that if this state of things had continued, I should not have been able to resist the impulse to revenge Truth on her betrayer, however foreign to my nature was the part of informer. But I now heard the gentlemen coming down the stairs, and the next moment the superintendent entered the office. His cheeks were now as pale as they had before been flushed; his eyes were glassy, as those of one who has just undergone an agonizing operation; he tottered to a chair, and sank into it as I hastened to support him.

After a minute he pressed my hand, assumed an erect position, and said, smiling:

"Thank you; it is over now. Excuse this weakness, but it has affected me more powerfully than I had thought. Such a dispute about yours and mine is always the most disagreeable thing in the world, even when one looks upon it as a mere spectator; how much more then when the dust raised is thrown directly into one's face! Well, the matter is ended. I had proposed a compromise before, and they have agreed to sign it. My brother, for a very moderate indemnification, gives up all his claims, which your last words deprived, with me, of all remains of credit. He calls himself a beggar; but alas! he is not one of those beggars who might take their place by kings."

The pale man smiled bitterly, and continued in a low tone, as if talking to himself:

"Thus the last remnant of the inheritance of our ancestors passes out of our hands. The old time is past--it has lasted too long! I regret the forest; one does not like to see the trees fall through whose foliage the earliest morning-ray greeted our childish eyes, and under whose branches we played our childish sports. And now they will fall; to their new possessor they are but wood, which he will convert into money. Money! True, it rules the world, and he knows it; he knows that the turn has come for him and those like him, and they are now the knights of the hammer. It is the old game in a somewhat different form. How long will they play it? Not long, I trust. Then----"

He raised his eyes to me with a long loving look----"then will come our turn, ours, who have comprehended that there is such a thing as justice, that this justice cannot be trifled with, and that we must cleave to and desire with all our souls this justice, which is equity. Is it not so, George?"

CHAPTER XIII.

Doctor Willibrod and I had hoped that, now that their business was at an end, the burdensome guests who had so long made the superintendent's house their home, would take their leave; but our hope was to be only partially fulfilled.

"I do not wish to travel in the company of a man who has made me a beggar," said the steuerrath.

"Fudge!" said the commerzienrath, coming into the office that afternoon, in travelling dress, to bid me good-by; "he has been a beggar all his life. Would you believe it? five minutes ago he was begging from me again; he has not the money to take him home, I must advance him a hundred thalers. I gave them to him; I shall never see them again. By the way, I must see you again. Really I like you better every time I see you; you are a capital fellow."

"Make capital? Very good!" said the jovial old fellow, and poked me in the ribs. "We shall see, we shall see. Your very first movement when you leave this place must be to my house. Will soon find something for you; am planning all sorts of improvements on the estate--here the commerzienrath shut his eyes--distillery, brick-yard, turf-cutting, saw-mill--will find a place for you at once. How long have you still to be here?"

The commerzienrath puffed out his cheeks. "Whew! that is an awful time. Can I do nothing for you? Could I help you up there? A little cash in hand, eh?"

"I am greatly obliged to you, but cannot expect any advantage from your exertions."

"Pity, pity! Would have been so glad to prove my gratitude to you. You have really done me a great service. The man would have given me much trouble. Would a little money be of service to you? Speak freely. I am a man of business, and a hundred thalers or so are a trifle to me."

"If we are to part as friends, not another word of that," I said, with decision.

The commerzienrath hastily thrust back the thick pocketbook which he had half drawn out of his pocket, and for the greater security buttoned over it one button of his blue frockcoat.

"A man's free-will is his heaven. Come anyhow and bid my Hermine good-by. I believe the girl would refuse to start if you do not come to the carriage. Perhaps you will not do this either."

"Assuredly I will," I answered, and followed the commerzienrath to the space in front of the house, where already the whole family was assembled around the great travelling-carriage of the millionaire. While in his ostentatious way he was boasting of the convenience of the carriage and the beauty of the two powerful brown horses, who were lazily switching their long tails about, and at intervals bidding farewell to the company with clumsy bows and awkward phrases, Hermine was flitting from one to another, laughing, teasing, romping in rivalry with her Zerlina, that seemed to be continually in the air, and kept up the most outrageous barking. In this way she passed me two or three times, without taking the least notice of me. Suddenly some one touched my arm from behind. It was Fräulein Duff. She beckoned me, by a look, a little to one side, and said hurriedly and mysteriously:

Fräulein Duff seemed so agitated; her locks, usually so artistically arranged, fluttered to-day in such disorder about her narrow face; her water-blue eyes rolled so strangely in their large sockets--I really believed for a moment that "the good lady had quite lost her modicum of wits.

"'From the clouds must fortune fall,
From the lap of the Immortals.'

"That is an eternal truth, which here once more is proven. She confessed it to me this morning with such passionate tears; it rent my heart; I wept with her; I might well do it, for I felt with her.

"'And I, I too was born in Arcady,
But the short spring-time brought me only tears.'"

Fräulein Duff wiped her water-blue eyes, and cast a languishing look at Doctor Snellius, who with a very mixed expression of countenance was receiving the thanks of the commerzienrath.

"'The rind may have a bitter taste,

But surely not the fruit.'

"Good heavens! what have I said! You are in possession of the secret of a virgin heart. You will not profane it. And now, let us now part, Richard. One last word: Seek truly and thou shalt find! I come, I come!"

She turned away, and waving the company a farewell with her parasol, hurried to the carriage, in which the commerzienrath had already fixed himself comfortably, while Hermine held her spaniel out at the door and let it bark. Startled at Fräulein Duffs extraordinary communication, I had kept in the background; the wild little creature had not a single look for him whom, according to Fräulein Duff's report, she loved. She laughed and jested, but at the moment when the horses started, a painful spasm contracted her charming face, and she threw herself passionately into her governess's arms to hide the tears that burst from her eyes.

"Rid of these," said Doctor Snellius; "hope to-morrow we shall send the others after them."

But the doctor's hope was not fulfilled on the morrow, nor yet on the next day. Fourteen days passed, and the steuerrath and the born Baroness Kippenreiter were still the guests of the superintendent.

It was in truth a genuine calamity that had befallen the house of the excellent man; and we three allies bemoaned it, each in his own way, but none louder and more passionately than the doctor.

"You will see," he said, "these people will take up their winter-quarters here. The house is not large, but the hedgehog knows how to make himself comfortable with the marmot; they are well cared for, and as for the friendliness of intercourse--though they care less for that--there is no lack of it. How can Humanus have the patience? He must have a Potosi at his disposal. For he suffers, very seriously suffers, under the hypocritical spaniel-like humility of this brotherly parasite, as does his angelic wife under the sharp claws and yellow teeth of the born Kippenreiter. Good heavens! that we should breathe the same air with such creatures--that we must eat from the same dish with them! What crime have we committed?"

"You want to provoke me, but you are right. Doubly right; for the born Kippenreiters not only say it but act accordingly, and forbid us, whenever they can, the air that they breathe and the dishes out of which they eat, without in the least caring whether we suffocate or starve; indeed most likely with the wish that these events may come to pass."

"Don't talk to me of this good-natured folly," he cried, in his shrillest tones. "Whoever is weak or good-natured, or both--and he most likely will be both--has been hammered by the strong and evil-disposed, as long as the world stands; and he will continue to be hammered until water runs up-hill and the lamb eats the wolf. Hammer and anvil! Old Goethe knew the world, and knew better."

"And what would you do, doctor, if some poor relations took up quarters with you, and became burdensome to you in time?"

"I? I would--that is a stupid question. I don't know what I would do. But that proves nothing--nothing at all; or at the most only that I, spite of all my rhodomontades, am only a wretched piece of anvil. And finally--yes, now I have it! We are neither relations nor connections of theirs; we have no consideration to observe, and we must drive them off."

"That is it!" said the doctor, and hopped from one leg to other. "I am ready for anything--for anything! We must spoil their life here, embitter it, drench it with gall: in a word, make it impossible."

"How? You lazy mammoth! Devise your own scheme. The born Kippenreiter I take upon myself. She thinks that she has a diseased heart, because she has a bad one. She is as afraid of death as if she had tried a week's experiment in the lower regions. She shall believe me."

On the very same day, Doctor Willibrod Snellius commenced his diabolical plan. Whenever he was within hearing of the born Kippenreiter he began talking of the circulation of the blood, of veins, of arteries, of valvular defects, inflammation of the pericardium, spasm of the heart. He knew, he said, that such conversation must be wearisome to her ladyship, but he was writing a monograph on the subject, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. Indeed he could not deny that it was not entirely without a motive that he had drawn her attention precisely to this point. He could not and would not positively assert, without a previous and thorough examination, that the valves of her ladyship's heart were not performing their functions regularly; but there were certain symptoms of which probably she might have experienced one or another, and prudence was not merely the mother of wisdom, but often the bestower of, if not a long life, at least one lengthened by several years.

The gnädige was by no means a person to whom I felt an especial inclination, and yet I sometimes felt a kind of pity when I saw how the unhappy victim twisted and writhed under the knife of her tormentor. How could she escape him? As a lady who piqued herself upon her culture, she could not well avoid a scientific conversation; as a guest of the house she owed consideration to a friend of the family; and in reality this topic, which she dreaded as a child dreads goblins, had for her a frightful fascination. She turned pale as often as Doctor Willibrod entered the room, and yet fixed her small round eyes upon him with the agonizing look of the bird that sees a serpent gazing into its nest; she could not resist the attraction, and in a minute she had beckoned the fearful man to her and asked him how far he had progressed with his essay.

"It is enough to drive one mad," said Doctor Willibrod; "soon she will not be able to live without me and my tales of horror. I told her to-day of the case of a lady, exactly of her age, her mode of life, habit of body, and so forth, who, while conversing with her physician about congestions of the heart, was struck with one; she smiles upon me with pale lips, and is on the verge of fainting--I suppose she is going to ring for her carriage--and what is the result? 'You must tell me more about it to-morrow,' she says, and dismisses me with a gracious wave of her hand."

"She is sword-and-bullet-proof, doctor," I said. "You will not be rid of her so easily."

"But we must be rid of her, rid of the whole pack," cried the doctor. "I am resolved upon it as man, as friend, as physician."

I laughed, but in my heart I was entirely of the doctor's opinion. The presence of these people was a too intolerable burden for the family of the superintendent. How could I avoid seeing it, when I had so attached myself to these noble and good souls, that I had for everything that concerned them the piercing eyes of the deepest and most reverent affection? I saw how the superintendent's face wore every day a graver look; how he forced himself to answer the everlasting "Is it not so, dear brother?" or, "Is not that your opinion, dear brother?" I saw the painful contraction which passed over the beautiful pale face of the blind lady, when the harsh voice of her talkative sister-in-law smote upon her sensitive ear; I saw how Paula bore these, in addition to her other burdens, with silence and patience; but I also saw how heavy a task it was.

I was sitting one day in the office, pondering all this in my indignant heart, as I cut up a quill under pretence of making a pen, when through the window which I had left half open to admit one of the rare sunbeams, my ear caught the hateful metallic voice of the born Kippenreiter.

"I am sure you will do me this kindness, dear Paula; I certainly would not ask you, for I know how young girls are attached to their own rooms, but mine is really too triste with its perpetual outlook upon the prison-walls; and then I am afraid it is damp, especially at the present season of the year, and with my heart-complaint the least rheumatism would be the death of me. I can count upon it, dear Paula, can I not? Perhaps even to-day? That would be delightful!"

"Well, then, dear child, to-morrow. You see I am content with anything. And then there is another thing I want to mention, and that is the wine we have at dinner. Between ourselves, it is not particularly good, and does not agree with my husband at all. He is a little spoiled in this. I know you have better in the cellar; we had some of it when we first came; did we not now?"

"Yes, aunt; but unfortunately there are only two or three bottles left, which I am keeping for my father----"

"Even if there are only two or three bottles, they are better than none. Good heavens! there's that man at the window again! One cannot take three steps here without coming across him."

These last words were probably not intended for my ear, but my sense of hearing was acute, and the voice of the gnädige very distinct in its metallic ring. That they referred to none other than myself was unquestionable; for beside the fact that I was a man, and standing just then at the window, the gnädige had stared at me with her fixed round eyes, in a very ungracious manner, and then turned sharply upon her heel.

But it made little difference to me that I displeased the gnädige, or how much I displeased her; I thought only of the poor dear girl who wiped the tears from her cheeks as she walked up the garden path alone, after her aunt had left her. In a moment I was down from my office-stool, out of the room, and had hurried to her side.

"Yes; and you must not do it. It is the only one that has a good light, and----"

"Do you really take it for granted that they are going to remain here all winter?"

Paula tried to smile; but great as usually was her self-control, this time she could not succeed. Her mouth twitched painfully, and her eyes filled again with tears.

"It is only on my parents' account," she said, excusing herself. "My father just now needs rest so extremely, and you know how my mother suffers when she has to entertain them for hours at a time. But you must not give any hint of it, George; not even the least."

And she laid her finger impressively on her lips, and her great blue eyes looked up anxiously at me.

I murmured something which she probably took for acquiescence, for she gave me a friendly smile, and hastened into the house, from which resounded the shrill voice of the gnädige, who with the whole power of her lungs--which were evidently in a healthy state--was calling out of the window to the steuerrath, who was standing in the rear of the garden among the yellowing leaves on the sunny espalier, and eating one of the few peaches which the superintendent's unwearying care had won from the ungenial climate.

With long strides, betokening no good to the steuerrath, I walked up the path directly to him.

"Ah!" said he, without desisting from his occupation, "my wife has sent you, I suppose. But see for yourself if there is another decent peach on the whole espalier. And the trash is anyhow as sour as vinegar."

"Well, at all events it is better than nothing; an official on a pension learns that lesson."

I accompanied this explanation with a contemptuous laugh, which rudely startled the steuerrath from the delusion that he was delighting me with his genial conversation. He looked at me with the expression of a dog who is undecided whether to fly from his enemy or seize him by the leg.

"At any other time I will listen to you with pleasure," said he; "but at this moment I am rather hurried----"

"Leave this place," I repeated, and I felt the angry blood mounting to my cheeks--"and that at once; in three days at the furthest."

"Young man, I believe you have lost your senses," replied the steuerrath, making an effort to assume a dignified look, which his lips, pale with apprehension, woefully belied. "Do you know to whom you are speaking?"

"Give yourself no trouble," I said, contemptuously. "The times in which you appeared to me I don't know what awe-inspiring wonder, are long past. I have no further respect for you, not the slightest; and I will not have you stay here any longer; do you hear? I will not have it!"

"But this is unheard-of!" cried the steuerrath. "I will tell my brother what insults I am exposed to here."

I could not bring myself to pronounce it, I had so long kept it sealed up in my breast. I had two more years of imprisonment for keeping it secret; it was a poisoned weapon which I was about to use against the miserable man; but I thought of the weeping face of the dear maiden, and then I looked into the face of the evil man before me, distorted with hate and rage, and I dragged out the words through my clenched teeth--"I would mention the letter which you wrote him"--I pointed in the direction of the island--"upon which he undertook his last expedition--of the letter which proves you an accomplice, yes, the chief criminal; and which would have ruined you had I not kept the secret."

The man, while I spoke, seemed to shrink into himself, as if he had trodden upon a poisonous serpent; with straining eyes he watched every movement of my hands, expecting every instant that I would carry them to my breast-pocket and produce the fatal letter. "The letter you speak of and which you have possessed yourself of by unlawful means, proves nothing," he stammered--"proves nothing at all. It is indifferent to me whether you show it to my brother, or to any one else--any one else----"

The steuerrath almost bounded into the air. His fright had never given room for the thought that the letter might have been lost or destroyed. How differently the affair stood now!

A smile of defiance passed over his face, which once more began to assume its natural color.

"What are you talking of, and what do you want?" he cried, with a hoarse voice that singularly contrasted with his usual oily speech. "The devil only knows what kind of a letter it was that you saw--that you pretend to have seen. The whole affair looks exceedingly like a lie--and a very bungling one at that. Stand off, sir! don't dare to touch me, or I call for help!--and you will have to your seven years, seven years more. Do not dare to touch me, I say!"

My looks were probably threatening enough, for he had retreated before them to the wall, and squeezed himself, trembling, against the espalier. I stepped up close to him' and said in a low tone:

"I shall do you no harm, for--miserable wretch as you are--I still respect in you your two brothers; the one whom you hounded on to his death, and the other whose precious life you shall not embitter another hour. If no one else believes my word that I read and burned that letter, he will believe it--you know he will believe it. And if the morning of the third day finds you here, he shall learn whom he has so long been entertaining under his roof. You know him. He can pardon much, and does pardon much; but to be the victim of such a shameless lie as that which you have imposed upon him, upon the commerzienrath, and all the world--that he will never pardon."

The man knew that I was right; I saw it in his face, which grew absolutely sharp and thin with alarm at being thus helplessly in my hands.

And it was high time; one minute later and my victory would at least have been doubtful. For from the garden came help for the crushed one. It was the born Kippenreiter, who came calling out to us from a distance to save her two or three peaches.

A prudent general undertakes no new battle which may jeopard an already hard-won victory. I had not quailed before the wrathful looks of the steuerrath; but at sight of the yellow teeth of the born, I felt something which I should call fear, if the respect we owe to the sex could ever allow such a feeling to enter the breast of a man.

But be that as it might; when I heard the light-brown silk dress of the gnädige rustling close at hand, I considered the moment especially suitable for hastening, as rapidly as I could with politeness, along the paths strewn with dead leaves to my office, after first casting a last impressive look upon my adversary, and saluting with a silent bow his rustling reinforcement.

I had given him two days respite, so the decision under all circumstances must speedily be made.

Strange enough! I was convinced that I had acted only from the most disinterested motives, and yet my soul was filled with disquiet, and my eye and ear were on the alert for any sign that might tell me what I had to hope or to fear. The next day passed--as far as I could see, all things remained as they were; Paula's room, the same in which I had lain sick, was emptied of its furniture; I saw her easel and her portfolios of sketches carried across the hall, and gnashed my teeth to see it.

But on the following morning the superintendent came into the office with an unusually grave face, and after giving me some papers, with his hand already upon the latch, turned and said:

"Tell me, George--you are quite disinterested in the matter--have you noticed anything in my behavior, or in that of any member of my family, that could give my brother or his wife reason to suppose that they are not welcome here?"

I was drawing at the time, and had just then a very delicate bit of pen-shading to do, so I could not raise my head from the drawing-board as I answered the superintendent:

"I should trust not," he said, and his voice had a grieved tone. "It would give me pain, great pain, if I thought that if I thought that my brother could say, or even think, 'He cared nothing for my misfortune; he drove me away when his house was my only asylum.' For this, or very near it, is the case. His pension is very small for a man accustomed to his style of living; the compromise-money, even with our contribution, is little enough; and, besides, he has debts and must work for his living, and how was he to learn that in the wretched routine of official life? They have certainly not brightened our home--truth compels me to admit it--but he is my brother and my guest, and I would rather he were not going."

Perhaps his noble nature looked for some reassuring answer from me, but the fine lines of my bit of shading happened just then to be closer than ever, and I had to bend my head still lower over the drawing-board. He sighed deeply and left the room.

I drew a long breath as the door closed behind him, and the next moment I saw, in the black mirror of the corpulent inkstand on the office-table, my tall figure reflected in grotesque distortion, and performing, with arms and legs, movements which apparently represented a joyous dance of victory.

In my fright I forgot one leg which I had elevated in the air, and upon the other I made a pirouette which, had it been performed in public before connoisseurs, would have brought down the house.

Arthur afterwards became a connoisseur in these things, but he could not have been one at this time, for his face, as he threw himself into a chair, was by no means radiant with delight, and the tone of his voice was as dolorous as possible as he went on, resting his curly head upon his hand:

"To be sure, you have every reason; you have gained your point; from to-morrow you are again sole master here."

I had by this time brought my other foot down to the floor, and took occasion to plant myself firmly before my antagonist, for such I considered Arthur. But I was mistaken. Arthur had not come to pick a quarrel with me.

"I have my own reasons," he said, "for preferring that the old people should be away from here. The old man, you know, has become really disreputable since his misfortune; he sponges upon the first man he meets. By the way, I can pay you now the twenty-five you lent me the other day. Last night I had a fabulous run of luck--we had a little play at Lieutenant von Serring's quarters. Sorry I haven't the money about me, but you shall certainly have it to-morrow. What I was going to say is this: The old man carries it too far; sooner or later he would have compromised me hopelessly. The colonel watches me frightfully close. So no hostility, George! You have driven him away--don't deny it; I have it from mamma. She is furious with you; but I told her she might congratulate herself that you were so discreet and said nothing more about that business of the letter. So I did not come on this account, but merely to ask you how I stand with you."

"Let us have no quibbles about it, old fellow," said the ensign, tapping the sole of his left boot with the point of his sword, which lay across his right knee: "I have estimated you far too low. I see now that you are cock of the walk here, and I wish to be on good terms with you, not to quarrel. If uncle did not help me a little I should either have to starve or quit the service, and my colonel, moreover, would know why I can no longer visit here. You are a good fellow, and will not ruin me."

"And I am not such a bad fellow, after all," the ensign went on. "I am a little wild, I know; but we are all so at our years, and so would you be if you had the chance, which you certainly have not in this cursed hole. But people can always get along with me, and they are all fond of me here: my uncle, my aunt, the boys, and----"

"Look here, George; I would not tell you if I did not have the fullest confidence in your honor, notwithstanding--in short, I ask your word of honor that you will say nothing about it. I fancy that--but, as I said, you must keep it a secret--I fancy that I am not quite indifferent to my pretty cousin: she said as much to me yesterday, and even if she had not----"

And the ensign twisted the blackish down on his lip, and looked around the room apparently for a looking-glass, but there was none there. His only substitute would have been the great inkstand, which at this moment I would most joyfully have dashed to ten thousand pieces against his pretty head.

The ensign gave me a look that seemed to say: Do you see now what a lucky dog I am? and ran out of the door, which he neglected to shut after him.

I remained quite stupefied, and stared through the open garden-door at the long walk which they were pacing up and down, she walking in her usual composed manner, and he fluttering about her. Once they stood still; she looked at him, and he apparently in protestation, laid his hand upon his breast.

An indescribable sense of pain entered my bosom. I knew this feeling well; I had once before experienced it, at the moment when I heard that Constance belonged to another; but it was not then so poignant as now. I could have buried my face in my hands and wept like a child. I did not for a moment think that Arthur very probably lied to me or to himself, and perhaps both. His confidence, Paula's call, the walk in the garden, always empty at this hour--all came in such rapid succession, and agreed so well, that it was but too probable. And Arthur was such a desperately handsome fellow, and could be so amiable when he chose--I ought to know that best, I who had so dearly loved him! And had not Paula been changed towards me ever since he had been in the house? Was she not more reserved--less communicative? I had noticed it for some time; it had pained me before I knew what had produced this change--now I knew it!

Vanity of vanities! What claims had I? To what could I pretend, an outcast, condemned to long years of imprisonment?

My head sank upon my breast. I humbled myself deep in the dust before the fair and dear maiden, who ever floated before me like a heavenly being.

Then I sprang up indignant. Could she be all that I worshipped her for, if she loved this man?

Here was a terrible contradiction which apparently was easy to solve, and which I infallibly would have solved, or rather would have altogether escaped, had I been a grain wiser or more vain; but in which, as I was neither wise nor vain, I involved myself for years.

"Signs and wonders are coming to pass," said Doctor Willibrod, rushing breathlessly into my cell one evening, where I sat in dejected meditation before the stove, and watched the sparks that ran up and down the glowing plates. "Signs and wonders! They are about to strike their tents and shake off the dust from their feet. Hosanna!"

The doctor threw himself into a chair and wiped his bald scalp, upon which the drops of perspiration were standing.

"Heaven is mighty in the weak," he went on in a tone in which his internal excitement was perceptible. "Who would have believed that a little David like myself would be able to pierce the brazen skull of this Goliath of shamelessness; and yet such is the fact! The gnädige can endure the air here no longer; she made the last trial when she moved into Paula's chamber. The trial did not succeed, and she must go. Hosanna in the highest!"

"She did indeed; and her spouse confirmed it, and spoke of hypochondriacal notions to which even the most sensible women are subject, and to which a gallant husband must make some concessions. Finally he drew me on one side, and on the score of temporary deficiency of funds, borrowed a hundred thalers from me to enable him to start at once."

The doctor sank into a devout silence; I think that something like a hymn of praise arose from his heart.

"Do you know, they are going!" resounded a deep voice behind us. It was the sergeant, who came in with a lighted lamp.

"Carriage to be ordered at Hopp's livery-stable to-morrow morning at the stroke of nine," continued the veteran. "Eight would not be too soon, one would think."

And he joyously rubbed his hands, and declared that he felt like a bear that itched in all his seven senses. But suddenly the laughter vanished from the thousand wrinkles of his face, and leaning over the back of the doctor's chair he said in a suppressed voice:

"Now we must drive away the young one, doctor; clean away! the brood is worse than the old ones, in my opinion."

"In my opinion too," said Doctor Snellius, springing up. "I have given the old ones their dismissal; you must do it for the youngster, mammoth; by heaven must you!"

I made no answer; my gaze was fixed on the glowing plate, but I saw it as through a veil which had somehow fallen over my eyes.

CHAPTER XIV.

And as if through a veil I see the years as they come and go, the following years of my imprisonment. Though a veil which time has woven with invisible spirit-hands, but not so thick but what every form and every hue is more or less distinguishable as I gaze backward.

Clearest of all is the fixed background in this long act of my life-drama. Even now, after so many years, I can almost always, by closing my eyes, recall the scene to its minutest details. Especially are there two lights under which I see it most clearly.

The one is a clear spring morning. A blue sky spreads above, the pointed gables of the old buildings soar as high into the free air as if the idea of a prison only existed in the dull brain of a hypochondriac who had not yet quite had his sleep out; about the projections of the gables and upon the high roofs twitter the sparrows; and even now, I cannot tell why, but the twittering of sparrows in the early morning makes the world for me a couple of thousand years younger; I fancy the scamps could not have been more joyously and impudently noisy about the hut of Adam and Eve in Paradise. The sun ascends higher; his beams glide down the old ivy-covered walls into the silent court; and the gatekeeper, who is just crossing it with a great bunch of keys, and is a crabbed old fellow usually, whistles quite cheerily, as if even he, who best knew, in this fresh morning-world could not believe in locks and bolts.

The other light is an evening in late autumn. Over in the west, behind the level chalk-coast of the island, the sun has set; the heavy clouds hanging over the horizon still glow with a thousand tints of sombre purple. Cooler blows the wind from the sea, and louder comes the noise of the waves, although looking from the Belvedere, out over the rampart, one cannot see the surf. Now the wind begins to rustle in the tall trees of the garden, and companies of dry leaves flutter down to those which rustle under my feet as I walk back to the house. I would be, on this as on every evening, welcome in the family circle; but I could not bear to have so many eyes looking kindly into mine. My eyes have been gazing gloomily--yes, with despair--at the evening clouds, and the old demon has awakened in me and whispered: Two more years, two long years; when one leap would take you down there, and the first skiff carry you into the wide world. And you will go back to your prison, to the narrow walls where nothing detains you but your own free will. Your free will! That has long since ceased to be free! You have sold it--go! go! pass the house--back to your cell; away out of this fading world of vapor, and get behind lock and bolt!

Sunshine of spring mornings, mist of autumn evenings; but far more morning sun than evening mist! Yes, when I think well upon it, I must admit that altogether morning sun was the rule, and evening mist only the exception. For how any portion of our life--or, indeed, how the background upon which this portion is defined--shall appear in our memory, really depends upon the fact of its having been bright or gloomy in our souls at that time. And in my soul at this time it was growing gradually brighter and brighter, like the increasing light of dawn; one knows not how it is, but what was lying before us confused and indistinguishable, now stands in the fairest order.

The wish of my fatherly friend has long been accomplished: in the workhouse I have learned to work. Work has become a necessity for me; I count that day as lost on the evening of which I cannot look back upon a vigorously prosecuted or a completed work. And I have acquired the workman's faculty in every craft; the quick comprehension of what is to be done, the accurate eye, the light forming hand. In the establishment nearly all handicrafts are exercised; and I have tried them nearly all, one by one, and for the most part soon surpassed the old gray-bearded adepts. The superintendent likes to repeat that I am the best workman in the establishment, which makes me at once both proud and humble: proud, for praise from his lips is to me the highest honor I can attain upon earth; humble, for I know that I owe it all to him. He has guided into fixed paths the rude strength that knew neither aim nor limit, and wished to spend its fury in the mastery of rough masses of stone; he has, above all, taught me to regard the share of sound understanding which nature has bestowed upon me, and which they did not know how to deal with at the school, as a precious possession which may even take the place of a bit of genius; or, as he often expressed it with a smile, is perhaps a bit of genius itself. He has never tormented me with things which he soon found out would not suit my brain; he soon discovered that I could never express myself with clearness and fluency in any other than my native German speech, and spared me the learning of foreign languages, except so far as was absolutely necessary. He knows that a sublime passage in the Psalms produces in me the deepest emotion; that I can never satiate myself with reading Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing; but ne never urges me to go beyond this, and discuss the literature of the day with him and Paula. But in recompense he allows me to drink full draughts from the inexhaustible well of his mathematical and physical knowledge; and his favorite recreation is to have me model a machine, or portion of a machine, which his inventive genius has devised, under his eye and guidance, in the little workshop which he fitted up for himself many years ago.

Under his eyes, for his hands are and must be idle the while. Already any physical exertion, however light, covers his body with a cold sweat, and might even seriously endanger his life.

"I do not know what I should do without you," he says, looking at me from his chair, with a sad smile on his face. "I live upon the superflux of your strength: your arm is my arm, your hand is my hand, your deep full respiration is my own. In the course of a year you will leave me; so I have but one year to live; for a man without arm, hand or breath is dead."

It is the first time that so hopeless an expression has fallen from his noble, pallid lips, and it gives me a painful shock. I have always seen him so full of courage, so entirely occupied with the duties of the day and the hour, living his life so completely, I look at him with alarm, and for the first time I really see the devastations which these six years have wrought in his form and in his face.

Six years! I have to think to convince myself that they are really six years, so little has changed in all this long time! So little? When I consider it, perhaps not so little either. The grape-vines, which only nodded over the window when I lay sick in Paula's chamber six years ago, have now climbed over almost the whole building; the great honeysuckle-arbor behind, where the peaches were trained against the wall, which I had at that time built and planted with the boys, has grown to a dense luxuriance, and is a favorite resort of Paula's, who from here can see the house, which cannot be done from the Belvedere.

The summer-house at the Belvedere has got rather a bad name, which would not have happened had not Benno by this time grown six years older, and read Faust, and so of necessity must have "a high-vaulted, narrow, Gothic room," which he can "cram full of boxes, instruments, and ancestral chattels;" for which purpose the ruinous summer-house with its pointed windows of stained glass seems to him by far the most suitable locality. Benno is now convinced that his father, who preferred to see in him the future physician or naturalist, is quite right; and Paula, who wished to make a philologist out of him, altogether wrong; and Benno must know, for he is at the glorious age of seventeen, in which there are but few whom we do not overtop by a head at least, in an intellectual point of view.

By so much he overtops his younger brother Kurt, in a literal sense; and Kurt has definitively abandoned the idea of rivalling his senior, who has in so marked a degree the high slender stature of the Zehrens, and will evidently be even taller than his tall father. But Kurt has no cause to complain: he has the deep chest, the long powerful arms, and, under thick curly hair, the broad brow, of the workman. He is very modest and unpretending; but his look is singularly fixed and piercing, and his lips firmly compressed when he is pondering over a mathematical problem, or trying to learn some dexterous manipulation at the lathe, in which he always speedily succeeds.

Kurt and I are great friends, and as nearly inseparable as possible; and yet to tell the honest truth, the twelve-year-old Oscar is my darling. He has the large luminous brown eyes of the Zehrens, which I used so to admire in my friend Arthur when he was a boy; he has Arthur's slender figure and graceful manners--I often seem to see in him Arthur again, as he looked fourteen years before. That ought not, really, to be any recommendation to me; but when he comes bounding to me, throwing back his long locks, and with joy and life sparkling in his great eyes, I cannot help spreading my arms to him. Often I ask myself if it really is this likeness which makes Oscar still keep his place as his sister's favorite. Paula, it is true, still says, as she used to say, that there is nothing of the sort; that Oscar is the youngest, and therefore needs her most, and the fact that he happens to have so decided a talent for painting and drawing, and so is peculiarly her pupil, is a mere chance, for which she is not responsible.

Just so Paula spoke six years ago: I distinctly remember that summer afternoon when she made that large chalk-drawing of me under the plane-trees--as distinctly as if it had been but yesterday. And when I look at Paula, I cannot believe that I have known her for six years, and that she will be twenty next month. Then she looked older than she really was, while now she looks just as much younger. She is perhaps a very little taller, and her figure is fuller and more womanly, but in her sweet face is so much childlike innocence, and even her movements have still the bashfulness, sometimes almost awkwardness, of a very young girl. But when any one looks into her eyes, he cannot venture to take her for any other than she really is. These eyes do not blaze with bold fire; their glances are not shy or languishing like those of a boarding-school girl fresh from a secret reading of her favorite gilt-edged poet--they are luminous with a calm, steady, vestal fire, unmindful of the world, and yet compassing the world, as the artist's eye must beam.

And Paula has become an artist in these six years. She has had no teacher, except a decayed genius who was in the workhouse for a short time, and afterwards was supported by the superintendent's charity to the time of his death, which happened long ago. She has attended no academy, has hardly seen a work of art, except two or three fine old family-portraits, and a magnificent engraving of the Sistine Madonna, which adorn the walls of the superintendent's house. What she is, she has become of herself, by means of her wondrous eye, which looks into the heart, not merely of men, but of all things; by means of her hand, which could not be so delicate and slender if her soul did not flow to its very finger-tip, and render it a plastic instrument; and by means of her diligence, whose energy and unweariedness appear absolutely incomprehensible when one reflects what a weight of labor, besides, rests upon these tender shoulders. But she devotes every leisure moment to her beloved art; and she knows how to find leisure at times when others would solemnly declare that they did not know whether they were on their heads or their feet. The wealth of her collection of studies of all kinds, sketches, designs, copies, is wonderful. There is not an interesting head among the prisoners or convicts that has escaped her. To sit to the young lady is an honor and favor much sought after and much envied throughout the whole establishment, and proud is the man who can boast of it. But her chief model is the old Süssmilch, whose grand head with its short gray locks, and furrowed energetic face, is really a treasure to an artist's eye. The old fellow figures under all possible characters: as Nestor, Merlin, Trusty Eckart, Belisarius, Götz von Berlichingen--even as Schweizer out of The Robbers; mere studies all for great historical pictures of which the brave girl is dreaming in the future. In the meantime but one of these has appeared upon canvas: Richard the Lion-heart, sick in his tent and visited by an Arab physician. The scene is from Scott's Talisman. In the background is an English yeoman, who looks sorrowfully at his sick lord, and a young Norman noble, who, with hand on his sword, fixes a keen and suspicious look upon the physician. Richard the Lion-heart is myself, as she sketched me, when a convalescent, at the Belvedere; in the Arab physician, a singular, fantastic, gnome-like figure--Dr. Willibrod declares he discovers his own likeness, though the Arab wears no spectacles, and his head, though bald without doubt, is wound about with the green turban of the Hadji; the yeoman is Sergeant Süssmilch, drawn to the life, though he has accommodated himself to another costume; the knight, with short brown hair and bright brown eyes--a handsome, graceful, youthfully elastic figure--is Arthur.

Is it an accident that just this figure is most fully elaborated, almost to completeness, and that it is made so lovely?

I have no means of answering this question, except what I draw from my own foreboding soul. Arthur, who has long been a lieutenant, and has been stationed this spring at the military school in the capital, has often visited the house, it is true, but the frequency of his visits diminished with every year, and I could not say that he had sought to draw any nearer to Paula. But there must have been some reason that towards me, who had done him no injury, who always treated him in a friendly manner, however little heart I had sometimes for it, he became constantly more and more reserved, and at last avoided me as far as possible. The money which he owed me, and which in the course of years had increased to a sum by no means insignificant for my circumstances, could not be the cause, for I had given it to him willingly and cheerfully--he is always in difficulties, and resolved to blow out his brains--never asked for repayment, but always assured him that I was in no hurry for it; no, it cannot be the money. Does he fear a rival in me? Good heavens! I can hardly be a dangerous rival. Who could fear a prisoner, whose future is a book with seven seals, and scarcely containing one pleasant chapter? Can he never forgive me that Paula is always as kind and friendly to me as ever? Have I not deserved that, who do all I can for her, and read her lightest wish in her eyes?

I do not know; as little do I know if it is chance that Paula, from the hour that Arthur went to Berlin, painted no more on the picture. And yet for this purpose she needs him least of all, for his knightly copy only lacks a few touches. I ponder the reason over and over. And as I venture once to ask Paula about it, she answers, not without some hesitation, which is a rare thing with her:

This leads to a question which seems even worse than the first, and which I had better leave unmeddled with, if I were prudent.

But I am not prudent, and cannot get it out of my head; and as my head can make nothing of it, I lay it before Doctor Willibrod in a quite casual manner, as if nothing really depended upon the answer:

"Why should I have any opinion in the matter?" cries the doctor. "What does it concern me why Paula does not choose to work on the thing any longer? Since nature herself has not thought fit to finish me, I do not care whether I am finished in the picture or not."

I see that I make no progress in this way, so I venture to hint that perhaps Arthur's absence has had an influence upon Paula's feelings in the matter.

"Does the cat come to the porridge at last?" crows Doctor Willibrod. "Oh, he thinks that we have not long seen how he licks his paws! And the porridge is so sweet--so sweet! just like the thought that such a girl can give her heart to such a fellow. 'It is impossible,' says Master Tom, and his whiskers bristle with distress. Why, impossible? What is impossible? Is the life of her father anything but a protracted sacrifice? Is she not her father's daughter? When one is once well under way, a little more or less makes no difference; and the lamb offers itself up to save the wolf. Oh, it is a merry business, that of saving wolves! But still merrier is it to stand by and look patiently on--not to seize a club and rush in--oh by no means! but merely to ask from time to time: 'Don't you think, respected sir, that the wolf will eat the Iamb at last?' Get away from me all of you that wear human faces!"

Doctor Willibrod crows so high, and looks so exactly like the apoplectic billiard-ball we have heard of, that I am sorry to have begun the conversation, and that too so unskilfully. I now recollect that lately the doctor has always seemed curiously excited whenever in any way Paula's name happened to be mentioned. Often he speaks of her in such a way that one would think he hated her, if one did not know that he worships her. If any one reproaches him with it, he lays the blame on the heat of the weather. The fiend himself, who is used to a warm climate, might perhaps keep cool in such a temperature, he says, but no one can blame mere men if they now and then lose their wits a little at eighty degrees in the shade.

And really during the latter part of the summer the heat has grown absolutely intolerable. Day after day the sun traverses a cloudless steel-blue sky, and its beams prostrate everything they touch. The grass has long been burnt up; the bastion and ramparts are yellow-brown; the flowers have prematurely withered; the foliage rustles from the trees before the time. All living things creep about with heavy gaze fixed upon the earth, and the air quivers as above a heated oven. The health of the town has been seriously affected, and we are glad that the boys who now have holiday, are on a visit to some friends of the family at a neighboring country-place. The state of things in the prison is by no means satisfactory to the superintendent and the doctor, who vie with each other in attention to the sick, though the doctor steadily maintains that it is the height of folly to risk one's skin for the sake of other people.

"And then beside, when, like Humanus, one has but half a lung, and a blind wife and four children, and not a shilling of capital--what will come of that?"

I remember that the doctor put this question to me in this very same conversation, and that I repeated it to myself an hour later as I stood alone before the Belvedere, and, without either seeing or hearing, stared out at the evening sky, which I could see from over the rampart extending down to the sea. I did not see that over the sky, which for weeks together had shown not the slightest haze, a vapor had now spread itself through which the evening light had a ghastly, pallid look; I did not hear that strange wailing sounds were passing through the air; I did not even turn round when a deep voice close at my ear growled out the very question which I was occupied in trying to solve:

It was the old Süssmilch, who coming to my side pointed with his right hand to the sulphurous glare in the west.

I felt that the oppressive sultriness, which was weighing down my soul as well as all nature, must expend itself in a storm.

CHAPTER XV.

And there came a storm such as had not raged along this coast--which yet throughout the year heard many a fierce gale sweep over its low beach of sand and chalk--within the memory of man.

It was about midnight, when I was awakened by a crashing as of thunder, making the old house quiver to its foundations, and followed by a rattling and clattering of falling tiles, and of slamming doors and shutters, like the crackle of musketry following the heavy discharge of a battery.

This was the storm that had so long been announcing its coming. My first thought was of those in the house in the garden. With a single bound I was out of my bed and dressed, as the sergeant thrust his gray head in at my door.

"Already up?" said he; "but this is enough to rouse a bear with seven senses. He will be awake, too."

The old man did not say who would be awake; between us two it was not necessary.

"Right," said the old man. "I will stay here the while. Somebody will be needed here who has his head on his shoulders. It is a most diabolical state of things; worse than eight years ago; and then the men would not be kept in their dormitories. A little more and we should have had murder done."

During this brief conversation, the tremendous shocks had been twice repeated, and, if possible, with still greater violence. Add to this a howling and an uproar--we had to speak almost in a shout to make ourselves heard. This was in the room--what must it then be outside?

This I learned a minute later, as I crossed the prison court. A pitchy darkness lay like a thick black pall over the earth; not a star, not the faintest gleam of light. The hurricane raged between the high walls like a beast of prey that finds himself for the first time in a cage. Despite my strength and the momentum of my heavy frame, I had to struggle with the monster that flung me this way and that. Thus I fought my way through the thick darkness, among the tiles that came clattering from the roofs, to the superintendent's house, out of the windows of which here and there a light was visible.

In the lower hall I met Paula. She was carrying a lighted taper in her hand, and its light fell upon her pale face and large eyes, which filled with tears as she saw me.

"I knew you would come," she said. "It is a fearful night. He insists on going over to the prison; and he has been so very unwell lately. I dare not ask him to stay. Indeed, he must go if his duty commands. It is very kind of you to come."

The tears that had glistened in her eyes now slowly rolled down her pale cheeks.

"Do not laugh at me," she said, "but for several days I have felt as if some misfortune were about to happen."

"We have all felt so, dear Paula. It is merely a bit of egotism to fancy that a thunder-storm which is now hanging over thousands and thousands is to smite precisely us."

I meant to say this very courageously; but my voice quivered, and at the last words I was forced to turn away my eyes.

The superintendent stepped out of his room. Before he had gently closed the door, I caught a glimpse of a white figure which he seemed by gentle words and gestures to be urging to remain in the room. It was Frau von Zehren. Had she also the feeling that some calamity was impending? Perhaps even more strongly than we. Who among us who see, hears the faint spirit-voices that whisper and murmur through the night of the blind?

A deep melancholy lay upon his features; but it instantly gave place to a surprised smile as he saw us both standing there. It was as when one walks through a dark rocky ravine whose sombre shadows spread a gloom over his face, and suddenly, at a sharp turn of the dusky path, he sees the open valley at his feet, and a wide flood of golden sunlight streams all about him.

Did he really see us? Did he, out of the rocky gorge, catch a gleam of sunny vales in the future? I have often asked this question of myself, when thinking of the happy spirit-like look with which at this moment the father saw his beloved daughter at the side of the man who was dear to him as a son.

"You will go with me, George," he said; "I must go through the prison. It cannot be but that the excitement which has been growing on us all lately has also seized the poor prisoners. And with them excitement means howls, and shrieks, and gnashing of teeth. Do you remember that September night, eight years ago, Paula? It was not so terrible as this, and the men were like maniacs."

Paula nodded assent. "I remember it well, father," she said. "How could I help it? You suffered so much from the consequences afterwards. Here comes Doris with the lantern," she hastily added, while a flush of shame suffused her cheeks at having for a moment attempted to dissuade her father from his duty.

She took the great lantern with its two lighted candles from the hands of the frightened girl, and gave it to me. The superintendent gave her a kind look from his large grave eyes, buttoned up his coat, fixed his hat firmly on his head, and turning to me said: "Come, George."

We stepped out into the raging, thundering night. In my left hand I carried the lantern; my right arm I gave the superintendent. I had thought that I should have to carry or almost to carry him, as he had been completely prostrated by the heat of the last few weeks; and indeed his first steps were heavy and tottering as those of a man who has for the first time risen from his bed after a long illness. All at once he let go my arm and stood firm and erect:

We were just passing under the windows of one of the great dormitories, in which fully a hundred prisoners were shut up at this hour. The light-colored wall was faintly defined against the darkness; from the windows came a feeble light; the storm raged against the wall and whistled shrilly through the gratings; but louder than the howling and whistling of the storm were the horrible noises that came from the interior of the building. Such sounds might come from lost souls in the night of Tartarus.

"Quick, George!" said the superintendent, hastening on before me with such rapid strides that I had difficulty in keeping up with him. We passed through the open door into the wide hall, where we found the sergeant in lively dispute with the inspector and half-a-dozen overseers.

"He will tell you that I am right," I heard the brave old man cry. "One must be a bear with seven senses; not able to tell a tooth-pick from a barn-door! In the name of three million devils, light all the lanterns!"

The men stepped respectfully back, only the Inspector said sullenly: "There is no reason for breaking the regular rule of the house, Herr Superintendent; and the men know that there is no reason; but they take advantage of the chance--that is all."

"Perhaps not quite all, Herr Müller," said the superintendent. "We two, you and I, have not been sitting with a hundred others in a locked room in the dark--or as good as in the dark--and in a night like this when it is as if the end of the world had come. Fear, like courage, is contagious. Follow me, you and Süssmilch, and two others to light the lanterns."

He did not name me: he may have thought it a matter of course that I would follow him. We turned into the corridor and reached the door which led to the great ward, the windows of which we had passed. "Light! light!" they were still shrieking inside, and heavy blows fell upon the oaken door, which cracked at intervals as if they were trying to burst it open.

The man cast a stealthy look at the inspector, who looked sullenly at the ground.

With hesitation the man placed the key in the lock, and drew the heavy iron bar from the staples. With hesitation he threw back the first and then the second bolt. As he laid his hand upon the third, he gave a furtive glance at the superintendent, upon whose lips played a smile.

In an instant Martin had thrown back the bolt; the doors were opened. The frightful spectacle that was then presented to my eyes I shall never forget, though I should attain the age of the most patriarchal raven.

Three or four feet behind the door was another, a grating of iron, reaching as high as the ceiling; and behind this grating was a frightful entanglement of men piled upon one another, conglomerated together--here a pair of arms thrust out, there a pair of legs, as out of a heap of corpses, flung together into a promiscuous grave upon a field of battle; with the difference that this mass moved, writhed internally, and out of it, here and there and everywhere, glared living eyes, terrible, fierce, desperate, maniac eyes.

"Men!" cried the superintendent, and his usually soft voice rose with a power that overbore the tumult, "are you not ashamed of yourselves? Would you rush upon destruction to avoid a danger which nowhere exists but in your own heads, and in the darkness around you?"

Was it the courageous voice? Was it the look of the man? Was it the effect of the strong light which was thrown upon the mass from the lanterns of the turnkeys? the coil disentangled itself, arms found their way to bodies, legs stood again upon their feet, even the eyes lost their frenzied glare, and here and there a man, either dazzled or ashamed, cast them down.

They fell back: the grating was opened; the superintendent entered, and we followed.

"Now see, children, how foolish you are," he continued, in a friendly tone. "There you stand in you shirts, freezing, shivering--you really ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Get to bed again, or else dress yourselves and sit up; I will have your lanterns lighted, so that each one of you can see what a chicken-heart his neighbor is, and what a bold fellow he is himself."

The men looked at one another, and over more than one face that had been distorted with terror there came a smile. In the rear two laughed out loud.

"That is right," said the superintendent, "laugh away; no devil can hold his own against an honest laugh. And now good-night, children, I must look after the others."

By this time the overseers had let down and lighted the four great lanterns that were drawn up to the ceiling. A cheerful brightness filled the large room. Outside, the storm was raging and howling as before; but a kindly word falling into these dark spirits had appeased the storm within.

And we traversed the echoing corridors, in which this night the noise from without overpowered the sound of our steps. Wherever we came we found the prisoners in a state of the most fearful excitement--excitement beyond all proportion to the causes which produced it; everywhere the same; sometimes vented in wild curses, and sometimes in the most piteous supplications; but everywhere the cry of the poor wretches for light, only more light in the fearful night. But everywhere the superintendent succeeded in quieting the wild creatures with his calm words, except the occupants of one ward, who either would not or could not be quieted. This ward lay in a wing of the building which was more exposed to the violence of the blast than any other, and here, in consequence, the storm burst with all its fury. The terrific detonations, like peals of thunder, with which the tempest burst against the ancient walls, the furious howling with which it whirled around the angles, after striving frantically for minutes together to sweep the obstruction out of its path; the wailing, lamenting, gasping, sobbing tones that came, no one knew how or whence--all was frightful enough to fill the soul of even a free man with secret horror. And even while the superintendent was speaking to them, a chimney on one of the higher buildings adjacent was blown down, and in falling broke through the roof of this wing, sending clattering down hundreds of tiles, increasing the uproar, if not the danger. The men demanded to be let out; they would come out at every cost; they were resolved not to be buried alive.

"But, children," said the superintendent, "you are safer here than anywhere else; there is not another part of the building so strong as this."

"Very well for him," muttered a square-built, curly-headed fellow; "he can go home and sleep in his soft bed."

"Your mattress, friend," he repeated. "Lend it to me for to-night: I will see if it is so hard, and if it is such dreadful sleeping here."

A deep silence suddenly succeeded the wild tumult. The men looked at each other in confusion; they did not know whether this was jest or earnest. But the superintendent did not move from the place. He stood there silent, thoughtful, with head depressed; no one, not even I, ventured to speak to him. All eyes were turned to the audacious fellow, who looked as if he had been condemned to death, and was about to be led to execution. His mutinous spirit was broken; silently he went and took up his mattress and brought it to the superintendent.

"Lay it there, my friend," said the latter. "I am tired; I thank you for providing me a resting-place."

The man spread out the mattress upon the floor; the superintendent laid himself upon it and said:

"Now lie down, all of you. You, Herr Müller, go to the infirmary and see if I am needed there. You remain with me, George."

The inspector went, with the turnkeys; the door was closed and locked; we were alone.

Alone among about eighty convicts, for the most part the worst and fiercest criminals in the whole prison.

The lanterns that hung from the ceilings cast a dim light over the rows of beds which were arranged along the walls, and in three long lines, extending the length of the ward. The men had either lain down, or were crouching upon their beds. The man who had given his mattress to the superintendent might have done the same, for there were some half-dozen of vacant beds in the ward; but he seemed afraid to occupy any one of them, and crouched upon the bare floor in a dark corner. I stood with folded arms against the stone pillar which supported the centre of the roof, looked at the strange spectacle before me, and listened to the storm which raged without with unabated fury. The superintendent lay quite still, his head supported by his hand. He slept, or seemed to sleep; and yet I fancied that from time to time a shiver shook his frame. The room was warm, but we had been thoroughly drenched by the rain in crossing the court; he had no covering, and had just risen from a sick bed. What will be the end? I sighed in the depth of my heart.

Suddenly a man near me, who had several times turned his head towards the superintendent, arose from his bed, walked softly with bare feet to me, and whispered:

"He must go home. Why should he lie here freezing for the sake of that shock-headed rascal? It shall not be our fault."

"No, it shall not be our fault," murmured other voices. In a moment a crowd has collected around me, and increases every moment. Not one of these men was sleeping, any more than myself. All had the same thought in their rude hearts. They want to repair their misbehavior, and do not know how to go about it. One finds a way at last:

They rush to the corner where the fellow is crouching, a dozen strong hands lift him to his feet; they drag him to the superintendent, who raises himself from his hard couch as they approach. The light of the nearest lantern falls full in his pale face, shadowed by his dark hair and beard. A happy smile plays about his mouth, and his large eyes beam with strange light.

"I thank you," he said, "I thank you. The hours which your kindness bestows upon me shall be devoted to you. But one thing more, children! This man here is myself: what you do to him, you do to me."

The man had sunk upon his knees before him; he laid his hand, as in blessing, upon his bushy head; and then we turned to the door. I cast a look back: not one of the men had moved from his place. All eyes are fixed upon the superintendent, who is leaving the ward, supported by my arm. But I doubt whether all see him; for in many eyes are glistening tears.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was two o'clock when we re-entered the house. At the first touch of the bell Paula appeared in the hall; but the superintendent only gave her an affectionate smile and a pat on the cheek, and kept on to his chamber, whither I followed him. He did not speak to his daughter, because he could not speak. His face was of a corpse-like paleness, and deep red spots burned in the hollows of his cheeks. With a motion of his hand he asked my assistance, and I helped him to undress. As soon as he was in bed he turned his eyes upon me with a look of gratitude, and then closed them in death-like exhaustion.

I took my seat by his bedside, and could not avert my eyes from the pale, noble face. A sublime calm lay upon it; even the red spots had vanished from the cheeks; no movement betrayed that in this breast, that scarcely moved, a heart was beating, that under this lofty brow dwelt a spirit; I felt as though I was watching by a corpse.

Thus solemnly and slowly passed the hours of that night. In all my life I have never met with a stronger contrast than that of the calm face of that sleeping man with the wild fury of the storm that raged without with unabated violence. Well might he sleep; the mightiest pinion of an earthly storm could not soar to the blessed heights where his spirit was floating.

Involuntarily my thoughts recurred to the night when the smuggler, who had just become a murderer, lay wounded in my arms in that hollow in the ruin, writhing, cursing God, himself, and all the world. And that man was the brother of this? It seemed incredible that one mother could have brought forth two such different beings; that the same sun could shine on two men so unlike; and then again it seemed to me that both, the wild one and the gentle, the hater and the friend of men, were one and the same person; as if I had once already seen the pale face before me; as if it were the same face upon whose brow, pallid in death, the morning sun shone, as it rose ruddy out of the sea after that night of horror in the ruin on the cliff.

But these thoughts were but the wild fancies of one overcome by weariness. I must indeed have really slept for a while, for as I raised my head again the gray twilight was glimmering through the lowered curtains. The superintendent was still lying there as he had lain all night, his eyes closed and his white hands folded over his breast. I softly arose and crept out of the room. I had to breathe fresh air; I felt that I must try to shake off the weight that pressed upon my heart.

As I crossed the silent hall I was surprised to see that the hand of the great clock at the foot of the stairs pointed to eight. I had supposed, from the dim light, that it was not more than five or six. But as soon as I stepped out of doors, I saw why it was no lighter. The black pall which had lain over the earth in the night was now changed to a gray one--a pallid twilight, that was neither night nor day. And the fury of the storm was still unabated. As I turned the sheltering corner of the house, I had to plant myself firmly on my feet in order not to be dashed to the earth. Thus, crouching down, I made my way through the garden, now a scene of devastation. There lay trees torn up by the roots, and others broken off but a few feet from the ground. The path was strewn with branches and twigs, and the air filled with whirling leaves. Only the old plane-trees at the Belvedere still resisted the storm, and their majestic boughs were lashed wildly about by the blast. I made my way to the Belvedere, the only spot from which one could obtain a view, though but a limited one, of the stormy quarter. I feared that the old summer-house would not have been able to resist the tempest; but there it still stood--doubtless the high bastion had protected it. I hurried into it for shelter; and as I hastily threw open the door I saw Paula standing at one of the narrow windows, on the side facing the sea.

"You here, Paula?" I cried in alarm. "You here in this weather, when the house may come down at any moment!"

I saw that by her pale cheeks and the dark circles round her eyes. She looked away from me, and pointed out of the window at which we were standing, which now was but a window-space, for the storm had blown in all the stained panes except one in one corner.

And it was terrible indeed. Sky and sea of a leaden gray, and between sea and sky whirling white specks like snowflakes driven by a November wind. These white specks were gulls, and their dismal cries reached us at intervals. Upon the high bastion, opposite us, the storm had beaten down the tall grass which used to nod so lightly in the wind, as flat as if heavy rollers had passed over it; and over the long, low rampart from time to time appeared streaks which at first I could not account for. Could they be the crests of waves? The thing seemed impossible. The rampart, as I knew, was more than twelve feet high, and in front of it was a wide sandy beach, on which a popular bathing-establishment had been erected. Over the rampart a glimpse of the sea might always be caught, but it was at a considerable distance; but these streaks, if they were waves, were not dancing out at sea; I saw plainly how they rose, fell, tumbled over, and beaten to foam and spray flew over the rampart. It was the surf, and the surf had risen to the crest of the rampart!

It was the very question which I had asked myself yesterday evening at this identical place, though in another and very different sense. I was then only thinking of her who now stood before me, and looked up to me with large, terrified eyes; but in my spirit, confused by the sleepless night I had passed, nature and human destiny mingled inextricably together:

"Paula," I repeated, and my voice trembled and my hand sought hers, "if the storm of life ever rages around you as that is raging--will you turn to me for help and protection? Will you, Paula? say!"

A bright flush reddened her pale cheeks; she drew her hand, which I did not venture to detain, out of mine.

"You are one of those good men, George, who desire to help all, and upon whom, therefore, all think they have claims."

She opened her lips to speak; but I was not to learn if the unfavorable construction I had given her words was the right one or not, for at this moment a blast smote the summer-house, tearing off the roof, and driving in the remaining sashes, that fell in shivers around us. I caught Paula around the waist and sprang with her out of the house, which fell with a crash the instant we had quitted it. Paula gave a shriek of terror, and clasped me convulsively. My heart bounded with joy when I thus held the dear maiden in my arms; but she released her hold immediately.

"What weaklings we women are, after all!" she said. "You men must think that we exist for no other purpose than to be protected by you."

As she said this there was an indignant expression in her large eyes and her brow; but her lips twitched with hardly-repressed weeping.

We went--or rather, struggled--back to the house. No further word was spoken between us, nor did she take my arm, which I, for my part, did not venture to offer her. Would she have rejected the arm of another as well? I asked myself.

With a sadness that I had never felt before, I was sitting an hour later in the office. How could I work with this disquiet in my heart, with this weight upon my brain, and on such a day as this? But "first do your work, everything else will come in in its place," was the word of the superintendent, and in accordance with this word I seated myself at my work, and copied lists and examined accounts without making a single error in my figures. I had well spent my long apprenticeship: I could now say that I had learned to work.

It was noon when I went to the superintendent to place the papers I had prepared before him for his signature. When I reached the ante-room of his cabinet I stopped, for through the half-opened door I heard some one speaking within.

"It is a grand opportunity," said an unctious voice, which of late years had been less frequently heard in the superintendent's house--"a glorious time, a time of the Lord, who reveals himself in storm and tempest, to awaken the heart of sinful man from its obduracy. Let us rightly understand this time, Herr Superintendent, and not let the Lord appeal to us in vain."

"You will excuse me if I do not share your view, Herr von Krossow. I have this night had an example of the frenzy to which superstitious terror drives these wild souls. If you wish to explain to the men these phenomena of nature, I am most willing to aid you in the undertaking; but I see no advantage in a general prayer-meeting, and must therefore, I regret to say, decline to permit it."

The superintendent said this in his calm, convincing manner, but it did not seem to convince his antagonist. A brief pause succeeded, and the soft voice began again:

"I forgot to mention that the president, from whom I have just come, and to whom I imparted my intention, entirely agreed with my views, and even expressed the wish that the bells might be rung in all the churches, and the congregations assembled for prayer. He cannot fail to feel it very sensibly if here--just here--his authority is--what shall I say?--disregarded."

"I am afraid," replied the superintendent, "that many more will find themselves to-day compelled to refuse the customary respect to the authority of the president; I fear that the bells will be rung, not to call the people to the churches, but to summon them to work. Unless the storm soon abates there will be much work and hard work to do before night."

At this moment, through the roar of the storm, was audible a lamentable tone as if coming from the clouds, followed by other dismal sounds of wailing and crying, and suddenly the door leading into the hall was thrown open, and the doctor rushed breathlessly in.

"It is as we expected," he panted, hurrying past me into the superintendent's room, into which I followed him in excitement which had something better in it than mere curiosity.

"It is as we expected," he repeated, taking off his spectacles and wiping from his face the wet sand and other drift with which he was covered from head to foot. "In an hour, or two hours at most, the water will be over the rampart, unless a breach first happens, which is to be feared, in more than one place."

"They are sitting with hands in their laps--is not that enough? I hurried to the chief of police and to the president to entreat them to send every man that could use his arms to the rampart, and to order back the battalion, which marched out to parade two hours ago, because no countermand arrived--can you conceive such madness!--and is now struggling and buffeted upon the road, unless the storm has blown them all into the ditches long ago, which is more probable. Under all the circumstances they cannot be far, and would soon be back if a couple of mounted couriers were sent after them. They are more wanted here than in the ditches. All this I laid before the gentlemen. What do you suppose the chief of police answered me? He had been a soldier himself, and knew that an officer must obey his orders. It was not to be supposed that the battalion would be recalled at his request. And the president--that pretended saint--what is it? O, Herr von Krossow, you here? I am sorry that you have had to hear the opinion I have of your uncle; but it is out now, and I can neither help myself nor him. I cannot see that the sanctity is anything but a pretence, which in such a calamity talks of the judgments of God, and that it is vain to kick against the pricks."

"I shall not fail, as in duty bound, to notify my uncle of the friendly opinions which are so frankly expressed of him here," said Herr von Krossow, seizing his broad-rimmed hat with hands that trembled with rage, and hastening out of the door.

"A pleasant journey to you!" cried the pugnacious doctor, running a few steps after him, like a cock whose adversary has left him master of the arena. "A pleasant journey!" he called once more through the open door, which he then, snorting wrath and scorn, flung furiously to.

"What does that matter?" asked the superintendent. "But that you should be physician here matters much, and to me most of all. We must try to repair this in some way."

The superintendent walked up and down the room with slow steps, his hands clasped behind his back, as was his custom; the doctor stood first upon one foot and then upon the other, looking greatly ashamed and confused.

"What is it?" asked the superintendent of a turnkey, who entered at that moment with an agitated face.

"Mostly from the Bridge-street, Herr Superintendent. They say they will all be drowned. And since the prison stands so much higher----"

Without a word the superintendent left the room and crossed the court. We followed. He had on a short silk coat he usually wore in the house, and was without hat or cap. As he strode on before us, the storm, which was furious in the court, dishevelled his thin, dark hair, and the ends of his long moustache fluttered like pennons in the wind.

We reached the gate which the growling porter was ordered to open. The previous evening the opening of a prison door had exhibited to me a frightful spectacle, and I now had to behold a most moving and pitiable one, which has remained no less indelibly impressed on my memory.

There were outside probably fifty persons, mostly women, some men, both old and young, and children, some even in the arms of their mothers. Nearly all were carrying in their hands, or had placed upon the ground, some of their little possessions, and these apparently the first that came to hand, caught up in haste and alarm. I saw a woman with a great wash-tub on her shoulders, which she clutched as firmly as if it would fall to pieces if let go; and a man carrying an empty bird-cage, which the wind was whirling about. The gate was no sooner open than they all rushed into the yard as if pursued by furies. The turnkey wished to oppose their entrance, but the superintendent took him by the arm.

We had stepped on one side, and let the mad torrent pour by us, and it now spread over the court, and in part rushed up to the door of the building.

"Let the women and children enter," he said, to his subordinates, "also the old and the sick. You men may go in to warm yourselves, but in ten minutes you must all be here again. This is no time for men to be sitting behind the stove."

A young woman with a child in her arms, who had rushed in after the others, went up to the superintendent and said:

"I want my husband! Why do you keep him locked up? I can't carry all the brats at once! If I don't find the rest, you may drown this one too!"

She was just going to lay the child on the ground, when she suddenly turned upon the doctor, who was standing by, pushed the child into his arms, and sprang out of the gate. The woman had wonderfully long blond hair, which had fallen loose, and as she rushed off in frantic haste it fluttered behind her in a thousand strings.

"Get rid of your little burden," said the superintendent, smiling, to the doctor. "You must take command here in my place. Look after the women and children, my friend, and see that the men are through with their dinner in a quarter of an hour; then let them come out here, all of them, without exception, but the sick."

The doctor cast an inquiring look at his chief. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across his grotesque physiognomy, and holding the wailing child close to his breast, he ran with his queer tripping steps into the house to carry out the orders he had just received.

"Stay here, George," said the superintendent to me, "and talk to the people, as thou knowest how. I shall be back in ten minutes."

He went: I remained staring after him. What was the meaning of this? For the first time he had called me thou. His eye had been steadily fixed upon me; it was not a trip of the tongue, and yet he had not spoken it intentionally; I felt this instinctively; I felt, indeed I knew, that it was because at this solemn moment the little barriers which conventional life had thrown up between us, in this man's eyes, shrivelled up into nothing. And I knew what was in his mind: I knew that he was preparing himself for a battle of life and death, and that he had gone to take farewell of his family. A shudder ran through me; my breast swelled high; I raised my head proudly.

They crowded around me, bewailing their great peril; how the water had been rising since yesterday midnight at the rate of nearly a foot an hour; that had now been going on for twelve hours, and the rampart in the lowest part was only twelve or thirteen feet high; that the Bridge-street and Sweed-street next to it were but very little above the ordinary level of the sea, and if the rampart gave way, all were lost. Master-Pilot Walter, who understood these things well, had always said something would happen; but there was no money for anything of the sort--that was all spent on the bastions and casemates on the land-side.

"And they have clapped my two boys into uniform," said an old man, "and now they are out on the road and cannot help us."

"He is a good gentleman," he said; "every child knows that; but what can he do?"

Here the superintendent came again out of the house, and at the same time out of three several doors which opened from the different wings of the main-building streamed forth the convicts, and work-house men, about four hundred in number, all more or less stalwart men, in their gray working-jackets, the most already provided with spades, picks, axes, ropes, and whatever else likely to be of service, that they had been able to find in the establishment. The men were headed by their overseers.

Thus they came on in military order and step. "Halt! Front face!" commanded the overseers, and the men halted in three companies, steady as a battalion under arms.

"This way, men!" cried the superintendent, in a sonorous voice. The men obeyed. All eyes were fixed upon him, who stood with his head bent down as if reflecting. Suddenly he looked up, his eye flashed around the circle, and with a voice that rose strong and clear above the storm, he cried:

"Men! Each one of us has had some one hour in his life which he would give much to be able to recall. To-day a great good fortune is granted you: every one of you, whoever he may be and whatever he has done--every one of you may now buy back that hour, and become again what he once was, before God, himself, and all good men. You have been told what you are wanted for. It is to risk your lives for the lives of others--for the lives of helpless women and children! I make you no vain promises; I do not say what you are about to do will make free men of you; on the contrary, I tell you that you will return here just as you left. Neither freedom nor any other reward awaits you when the gate closes behind you this evening after your work is over--nothing but the thanks of your superintendent, a glass of stiff grog, and a comfortable rest upon your beds, such as an honest fellow deserves. Will you stand by me on these conditions? Whoever will, let him raise his right hand and give a hearty Aye!"

Four hundred right hands flew up, and from four hundred throats came the shout AYE!

At once the crowd, which had been joined by the fugitives from the town, was divided into three companies, of which Süssmilch was to command the first, I the second, and a convict named Mathes, formerly a ship-builder, and a very active, intelligent man, the third. The overseers had fallen into the ranks with the rest.

The short street upon which the principal prison-gate opened was soon traversed, but at the old and rather narrow gate at the end of the street we met with a singular resistance, which, more than anything hitherto, exhibited the might of the storm. The old gate was in fact only an open arch in the wall, and yet it took us longer to get through it than if we had had to burst heavy doors of oak plated with iron, so violently did the blast press through the narrow opening. Like a giant with hundred arms it stood without and thrust back like a helpless child each one that endeavored to force his way; only our combined exertions, holding each other's hands and clinging to the rugged surface of the arch, enabled us to force the pass. Then we hastened along the way, between the high bastion on one side and the town-fosse with the prison-buildings on the other side, until we reached the place where our help was needed.

It was that low rampart which immediately joined the bastion, over the crest of which I had so often cast a longing eye from the Belvedere towards the sea and the island. Its length was perhaps five hundred paces, and then came the harbor with its high stone breakwaters reaching far out into the sea. At the first sight I perceived why this place was exposed to such terrible peril in a storm like this. The sea, driven in by the force of the storm, was caught between the high bastion, that rested upon immense foundations of solid masonry, and the long breakwater, as in a cul-de-sac, and as it could escape on neither side, it spent all its force upon the barrier that here barred its way. If the rampart gave way, the whole lower part of the town was gone. No one could avoid seeing this who looked from the rampart into the narrow streets on the water-side, where the ridges of the roofs for the most part scarcely reached the height of the rampart, so that one could see over them into the inner harbor which lay on the opposite side of the harbor-suburb, where now the masts of the ships were swaying like reeds in the wind.

I think that I did not take more than a quarter of a minute to have a distinct comprehension of the situation as I have just described it, and indeed no more time was allowed me. My senses and feelings were too powerfully seized by the sight of the danger we had come to contend with. I, who had passed my whole life upon the coast, who had been tossed for days together by the waves in small or large craft, who had watched, from the shore at least, many a fierce storm with unwearied attention and sympathetic terror--I thought that I knew the sea; and now saw that I no more knew it than any one knows a bomb, who has not seen one explode and scatter death and destruction around. Not even in my wildest fancies had I ever approached the reality. This was not the sea which was an expanse of water forming greater and smaller waves; this was a monster, a world of monsters rushing upon us with wide-open jaws, roaring, howling, ravening for prey; it was no longer anything definite or distinguishable--the destruction of all form, of all color--chaos that had broken loose to engulf the world.

I believe there was not one of the whole company who was not similarly affected by the sight. I can see them now standing there--the four hundred as they had rushed to the crest of the rampart, with pale faces, their terrified eyes now turned upon the howling chaos, then upon their neighbors, and then upon the man who had led them here, and who alone was able to say what was to be done, what could be done.

With the true eye of love that thoughtfully gazes into the past, I see him in so many situations, and always do I behold him noble and good; but at no moment better and nobler than in this, as he stood upon the highest point of the rampart, one arm wound round the strong flag-staff which he had hastily erected, as firm upon his weakened limbs as the bronze statue of an ancient hero! And hero-like was the look of his eye which in one glance took in the danger and the remedy; hero-like was the gesture as he raised his hand, and hero-like was the voice which in clear incisive tones gave the needful orders.

One detachment was ordered into the low streets to bring up all the empty casks, boxes and chests they could find; another to go with spades, baskets and wheelbarrows upon the bastion, where there was earth in abundance; another into the adjoining glacis with ropes and axes to fell the trees which for years had been awaiting the enemy which--though in an unlooked-for form--had now come; another into the neighboring dock-yards to summon the ship-builders to help us, and to procure, either by persuasion or force, twenty or thirty large beams which we absolutely needed. Before half an hour had elapsed, the work, so well directed, was in full activity. At one place, baskets of earth were lowered into the rents which the sea had made in the rampart; at another, posts were driven in and wattled with boughs; at another, a wall of timbers was built up. And all worked, and hurried, and dug, and shovelled, and hammered, and wheeled, and dragged great loads, with a diligence, with an energy, with a cheerful, dauntless courage, that even now the tears start to my eyes as I think of it; when I think that these were the men whom society had spurned out; the men who, perhaps for the sake of a few groschen or a childish craving, had become common thieves; the men whom I had so often, with disgust, seen sulkily slouching across the prison court to their work; the men whom the storm of yesterday, beating against the walls of their prison, had driven to a frenzy of terror. There lay the town at their feet; they might rush into it, rob, burn, and murder to their heart's content--who was to hinder them? There lay the wide world open before them; they had only to escape into it; who could restrain them? Here was a work more difficult and more toilsome than any they had ever done; who was it that compelled them to it? This was the storm before which they had yesterday trembled in its most appalling form; why did they not tremble now? Why did they go, jesting, laughing, into the very jaws of death, when they had to secure and bring in a great mast which had been drifted in from the harbor, and which the waves were driving like a battering-ram against the rampart? Why? I believe if all men answered this why as I answer it, there would no longer be masters and serfs; no longer would men sing the sad old song of the hammer that would not be an anvil, for--but wherefore answer a why that only the world's history can answer? Wherefore lay the secrets of our hearts before a world which passes by indifferent, unnoticing, or only noticing to mock!

Whoever looked on at this work--how these men let the skin be torn from their flesh and the flesh from their bones in their terrible work--did not laugh; and those who looked on were the poor people of the water-streets--women and children for the most part, for the men had to help in the work--who stood below sheltered by the rampart, and with frightened and astonished faces looked at the gray-jackets, whom they had usually only watched with timid, suspicious glances as they passed through the streets in small parties led by overseers from out-door work. To-day they were not afraid of the gray-jackets; to-day they prayed that heaven's blessing might go with the food and drink that they brought to strengthen and refresh those who were exhausted with the toil. No, they were not afraid of the four hundred; gladly would they have seen their numbers doubled and tripled.

But there were men living far out of the reach of the danger, whose lives or property were nowise at stake, and who thus were in a position acutely to feel the irregularity and illegality of these proceedings.

I remember that, one after the other, the Chief of Police von Raubach, President von Krossow, the Lieutenant General and Commandant of the Fort, his excellency Count Dankelheim, came storming our leader with entreaties, commands, threats, to place his dreaded brigade under locks and bolts again. I remember that they came together in the evening to make a combined attack, and I have still to smile when I recall the cheerful calm with which the good, brave man repelled the assault.

"What would you have, gentlemen?" he said. "Would you really prefer that hundreds should lose their lives and thousands their property, rather than that a dozen or a couple of dozen of these poor rascals should decamp and gain the liberty which they have honestly earned to-day? But I shall bring them back when the danger is over. Before that time no man shall move me from here, unless he does it by force; and happily no one of you is able to do that, gentlemen! And now, gentlemen, this interview must terminate; night is coming on; we have at most only a half hour to make our preparations for the night. I have the honor to wish you good day!"

With these words he waved his hand towards the three high functionaries, who made an extremely poor figure as they stole off, and then turned all his attention where he was needed.

Where he was needed at this moment more than ever; for just now, at the approach of night, it seemed as if the storm had rallied all its force for a last and decisive assault.

I feared that we should have to succumb; that our desperate toil of six hours was all in vain. The giant-waves no longer were hurled back; their crests were torn off and flew far over the rampart into the streets. Shrieking with terror, the crowd below fled in all directions; scarcely one among us workmen could hold his place on the summit: I saw desperate fellows, who had played with the danger hitherto, now turn pale and shake their heads, and heard them say: "It is impossible: nothing more can be done."

A small Dutch ship which had been moored in the roadstead broke loose from her anchors and was hurled about in the frightful surf like a nutshell, now tossed aloft, now engulfed in the trough of the sea, but driven with every wave nearer the rampart we were defending. We saw the despairing gestures of the crew, who were clinging to the spars and rigging: we almost fancied that we heard their cries for help.

"Can we do nothing--nothing?" I cried, turning to the superintendent with tears of anguish in my eyes.

He shook his head sadly. "This one thing, perhaps," he said, "that when she is thrown up thus high we may try if we can grapple her so that the surf may not sweep her back. If it does not succeed they are lost, and we with them, for she will make a breach in the rampart which we cannot possibly fill. Let them drive in strong posts, George, and make fast one end of our thickest rope to them. It is but a feeble possibility; but there is still a chance. Come!"

We hastened to the spot on which the ship, now but a few hundred feet distant, was driving. The men had left the crest of the rampart, and were sheltering themselves as well as they could; but now, when they saw their leader himself take an axe in his hand, they all came up and worked with a sort of fury, compared with which all that they had hitherto done was child's play.

The posts were planted, and the rope fastened. Four of the strongest men, of whom I was one, stood upon the rampart watching the right moment.

And what we thought scarcely possible, succeeded! An enormous wave came rolling up bearing the vessel with it. The wave breaks--a deluge bursts over us, but we stand firm, clutching the posts with the grip of desperation; and as soon as we can see again, there lay the ship like a stranded whale, high upon the rampart. We spring to it; a hundred hands are busy at once making fast the ropes to the masts; a hundred others in releasing the pale men--five of them from the yards. All is done before the next wave breaks. Will it carry off our prize? It comes, and after it another, and another; but the ropes hold; each wave is weaker than the last; the fourth does not reach the crest; the fifth falls far behind. In the fearful incessant thunder, which for so many hours has been deafening our ears, there comes a sudden pause; the pennons on the rocking masts of the ships in the inner harbor, which have been flying towards the east, now droop, and then fly out to the west; the wind hauls, the storm is over, the victory is ours!

The victory is ours. Every one knows it in a moment. A cheer, that seemed as if it would never end, bursts from the throats of these rude men. They grasp each other's hands; embrace each other--Hurrah! and Hurrah! again and again!

When I looked for him--him whom all had to thank for all--he was no longer standing on the spot where I had seen him last. But I see the men running to the place, and I run with them; I outstrip them all, driven by a fear which gives me wings. I force my way through the assembled crowd, and find all with bowed heads gazing at a man who lies upon the ground, his head upon the knees of the old sergeant. The man is pale as death, and his lips are covered with bloody froth, and all around him the earth is drenched with fresh blood--his blood--the heart's blood of that noblest of living men.

But the hero could not die yet: he has one duty more to perform. He summons me with a look, and I bend over him as he moves his lips, from which no sound now issues. But I understand him. I clasp both arms around him and raise him up. Thus he stands erect, leaning upon me, the lofty kingly form. They can all see him--the men whom he has led here and whom he is going to lead back. He glances at his hand, which hangs helpless, white as wax, at his side; I raise it, and it points in the direction of the way that we had come at noon. There is not one who dares disobey this dumb, solemn command. They assemble, fall into rank and file; the sergeant and I bear their dying leader; and thus we return in long, slow, sad procession.

Night has come on; and but a few occasional gusts rush by to remind us of the frightful day we have all passed through. The convicts are sleeping upon the pillow of a good conscience, which the superintendent had promised them. Their superintendent sleeps too, and his pillow is as soft as death in a good and great cause can make it.

CHAPTER XVII.

It was a year after these events that a solitary traveller was ascending the slope of one of the hills of the heath which surrounded the town of Uselin on the land side. He journeyed slowly, like one who is wearied with a long march, and laboriously dragged his feet through that coarse sand with which the sea loves to bestrew its threshold. But the traveller was not by any means weary; he had journeyed but few miles that day, and for him twice the exertion had been but child's play. The little bundle which was slung from a stick over his shoulder could not overburden him; and yet he went slower and slower as he approached the three pines which crowned the summit of the hill; indeed he stopped from time to time and pressed his hand upon his heart, as though his breath failed him for the few steps that were yet to be taken. And now he stood on the summit under the pines; the stick with the bundle slipped from his grasp, and he stretched out his arms toward the little town which from the strand glittered in a light blended with the glitter of the sea. Then he threw himself--tall and powerful man as he was--upon the heather under the pines, weeping and sobbing like a child, but presently half raised himself, and lay for a long time, propped by his elbow, steadily gazing at the little sea-port at his feet, with its peaked gables and steep roofs reddened by the sunset.

What thoughts were passing through the mind of this solitary man? What emotions were filling his heaving breast?

Many a poet who has carelessly brought his hero into a similar situation probably finds the answer to this question no such easy task; but fortunately for me I myself am the wanderer lying under the pines, and since that time not so many years have flown that the place, the hour, and what they brought me, could have escaped my memory.

A host of memories from the years when the man was a light-hearted boy, and all that he saw around him now but the scenes of his wild sports: the town, from the depth of the half-filled-up fosse to the tops of the spires; the gardens, fields, meadows and heaths that surrounded it as far as these very hills; the harbor with its ships, and the glistening sea on which he loved to row in a frail boat when the towers, as now, glowed ruddy in the evening light.

Hither and thither strayed my looks, and everywhere they encountered objects that greeted me as old acquaintances; but they did not dwell long upon any one; just as when we search a well-known book for some especial passage, turning leaf after leaf, and every line that meets the eye is familiar, and yet we can not light upon the place we are looking for.

But in truth it was so small and lowly, the old one-storied house with the painted gable on the narrow harbor-street, and the street lay so low, covered by the larger houses of the higher part of the town,--how could I expect from this spot to distinguish the little house with the narrow gable?

And yet for what other purpose had I made the journey hither, the sixteen miles from the prison--my first journey after regaining my freedom--but to see that house, and, if fortune would permit, perhaps through a crack in the shutter to catch a glimpse of its occupant? For to go to him, to gaze into his eyes, to throw my arms about his neck, as my heart yearned to do--this, after what had happened, I dared not hope. In the short notes with which he had answered my letters, there had never been, during all the seven years of my imprisonment, one single word of love, of comfort, of forgiveness.

And my last letter, written a week before, in which I congratulated him in advance on his sixty-seventh birth-day, told him that this would be the day of my liberation, and asked if I--now another, and, I hoped, a better man--might venture to come to him on that day--this letter, which I had written with wet eyes and a trembling hand, had never been answered.

The red glow had at last vanished from the high roofs and peaked gables, from the fluttering pennons of the ships in the outer harbor, and from the two church-towers; a light mist arose from the meadows and fields which stretched from the hills upon the heath to the city. The mail-coach came along the road lined with stunted fruit trees; and I watched it as it slowly passed tree after tree, until it disappeared behind the first houses of the suburb. Here and there upon the narrow foot-path between the fields were seen the figures of laborers moving toward the town, and these also disappeared. The twilight faded away; denser grew the mists in the hollows; nothing living was to be seen except a brace of hares sitting up on their haunches in a stubble-field, and a great flock of crows, which came croaking from the pine-forest where I used to play "Robbers and Soldiers" with my comrades, their black bodies flapping distinct against the lighter sky, as they bent their course to the old church-towers.

I arose, hung my bundle once more over my stick, slowly descended the hill and took my way through the misty fields to the town. In an obscure spot in the suburbs I stopped again for awhile--it was not dark enough for me yet. I neither feared nor had reason to fear any one. Even before my great enemy, Justizrath Heckepfennig, or those redoubtable public servants Luz and Bolljahn, had I met them, I need not have cast down my eyes, or stepped aside; and yet it was not dark enough.

Now the night breeze rustled louder in the half-stripped boughs of the maple against which I was leaning, and looking up I saw a star twinkling through the sprays--now it would do.

How hollow sounded my footsteps in the empty streets, and how heavily beat my heart in my anxious breast! As I passed the Rathhaus, Father Rüterbusch, the night-watchman, was standing, bare-headed and without his weapons, at his post, and looking pensively at the empty table and barrel-chair of Mother Möller's cake stand, while above us the clock in the tower of St. Nicholas's church struck eight. Was Mother Möller dead, that Father Rüterbusch thus gazed at the empty barrel, and had not even a glance for his old acquaintance from the guard-house?

Dead? Why not? She was an old woman when I last saw her--just the age of my father, as she told me once when I was spending my pocket money at her stall. As old as my father! A chill wind blew through the hall; I shivered from head to foot, and with a rapid stride, almost a run, I hurried over the little market-place down the sloping streets leading to the harbor.

Here was the Harbor-street, and here was the house! Thank heaven! A light was glimmering through the shutters of both windows on the left. Thank heaven once more!

And now would I do and must do what on that other evening I wished to do and should have done, and yet did not: go in and say to him "forgive me!"

I grasped the brass knob of the door--again it felt cold as ice to my hot hand. The door-bell gave a sharp clang, and at its summons appeared at the door of the right-hand chamber--just as on that evening--the faithful Friederike. No, not just as on that evening; her little figure, bent with age, was dressed in black, and a black ribbon fastened the snow-white cap with its broad ruffle, which formed a ring of points around her wrinkled face. And out of the wrinkled face two eyes, red with weeping, stared at the strange visitor.

"George! good heaven!" the old women cried, tottering towards me with uplifted hands.

She grasped both my hands, and gazed at me, sobbing and speechless, with quivering lips, while the tears streamed down her furrowed cheeks. She had no need to speak: I did not ask what had happened: I only asked "When?"

"A week ago to-day," sobbed the old woman. "He did not even live to see his birth-day."

"I do not know. Nobody knows. Doctor Balthasar says he cannot understand it. He has never been quite well since you have been away; and kept growing worse and worse, though he would never own it; and two weeks ago he took to his bed, and kept perfectly still, looking always just before him, only that sometimes he would write in his house-book, and that on the very evening before; and when I came in the morning he was dead, and the book was lying on the bed, and I took it myself and showed it to nobody when they came and sealed up everything. I thought I ought to keep it for you: he used so often to say your name to himself when he was writing. What he wrote I don't know; I cannot read; but I will get it for you."

She opened the door into my father's room. It was neat as ever--painfully neat, but even more uninhabitable. The white slips of parchment, fastened with seals over the keyholes of the secretary and the old brown press in the corner, had a spectral look to me.

"I know of nothing--nothing whatever. And there still lies my letter--unbroken! He never read it!"

I sank into the chair that stood by the writing table. I had never sat in this chair, had scarcely dared to touch it. A king's throne had seemed less venerable to me. This thought at once struck me, and was followed by many, many other painful thoughts: my head sank into my hands: gladly would I have wept, but I could not weep.

The old woman returned with the book of which she had spoken. I knew it well; it was a thick quarto volume, bound in leather, with clasps, and I had often seen it in my father's hands of an evening when he had done his work; but never had I ventured to cast a look into it, even had I had the opportunity, which but rarely happened, as my father always kept it carefully locked up. Now it lay open before me: one after another I turned the thick leaves of the rough coarse paper, their pages covered with the neat, pedantically straight hand-writing of my father, which I knew so well. The hand had not changed, although the entries extended over more than forty years, and the ink on the first pages was entirely faded. Only upon the last did this steady strength seen to fail. The traces of the pen grew ever more angular, feebler; they were but the ruin of what had formerly been; the last word was just legible and no more. It was my name.

And everywhere upon the first leaves, those of some twenty-seven years back, stood my name.

"To-day a son has been born to me--a sturdy little fellow. The nurse says she never saw in her life so stout a babe, and that he is like St. George. So he shall be called George, and shall be the joy of my life and the staff of my old age. May God grant it!"

"George comes on finely," was on another page. "He is already larger than the Herr Steuerrath's Arthur, who is not small either. He seems to have a good head of his own. Though only three years old, it is wonderful what ideas he has. He must soon go to school."

"Clerk Volland is full of praise of my George. 'He might get on better with his learning,' the old man says; 'but his heart is in the right place; he will be a fine man some day. I shall not live to see it, but you will, and then do you remember that I said so.'"

And so it went on, page after page--"George that splendid fellow! My noble boy, George!"

Then came other times. George's name was not now in almost every line, and George was no longer the splendid fellow and noble boy. George would not do right, neither in school, nor at home, nor on the street, nor anywhere. George was a good-for-nothing! No, no; that was too much to say; only he could do better if he would, and he certainly would do better--he certainly would!

Then came many pages and George's name was not mentioned at all. Many a family event was noted; my mother's death; the terrible news of my brother's loss; that his daughter Sarah had again--for the third--for the fourth time--presented him with a grandson or a grand-daughter; that he had been promoted to an accountant's place; that his salary had been raised; but George's name appeared no more.

Not even upon the last leaves, which again had references to "him;" that "he" was so well liked by all in the prison, and that the Herr Superintendent von Zehren had asked today again if "he" was not yet found worthy of his father's forgiveness.

"I have tried to-day to write to him what the feelings of my heart are; but I cannot bring myself to it. I will tell him all when he comes back, if he cares for the love of an old broken man; but write it I cannot."

"It is not true! It certainly is not true. Six years and a half he has behaved well, yes, exemplarily, and in the second half of the seventh to become worthless at once! I hear little good of the new superintendent. The one that is gone was a noble-spirited man, and he was always full of praise of him--no, no, whatever they may say of him, my boy is not worthless, not worthless!"

"In a week he will be free; he will find me upon a sick bed if he finds me at all. For his sake I wish it; for it would be a great sorrow to him to see me no more. I have thought all these years that my boy did not love me, or he would never have given me so much pain; but I had just now a dream that he was here and I held him in my arms. I said to him, George----"

I stared with burning eyes at the blank which followed, as if there must appear upon it the words which my father had said to me in his dream; but gaze as I might, the words appeared not, and at last I saw nothing more for the flood of tears that burst from my eyes.

"You must not cry so, George," said the good old woman. "I know he always loved you more than the rest--very much more. And if he died of grief and heart-break on your account, why he was an old man, and now he is dead and with our Heavenly Father, and he is well there, much better than here, though the good Lord knows that I have had no other thought these twenty years than to make it all right with him."

"I know it, I know it, and I thank you a thousand times," I cried, seizing her brown withered bands. "And now tell me, what are you going to do, and what can I do for you?"

She looked at me and shook her head; it probably seemed strange to her that George, just out of the prison, should offer to do anything for her.

"Poor boy," she said, "you will have enough to do to provide for yourself, for what he has left does not amount to much; he was too good; he would help everywhere that he could, and he bought a place in the Beguines for me, for the year or two I may still be spared. This will come out of it, and Sarah made fuss enough when she heard it. They thought they would get it all'; but it is to be divided equally between you both. I have that from his own mouth, and I can swear it, and will swear it, if they raise any dispute, because he left no will."

"Good heavens!" cried the old woman, clapping her hands together, "there they are already!"

She hurried out of the room, leaving the door open after her. I remembered that I had never loved my sister--that I had parted from her with unfriendly feelings long years before, and that in the interval I had by no means learned to love her--but what difference did that make now? Now, when she and I had lost our father, when we might lean and take each other's hand across his grave?

I went into the little hall, which was nearly filled by the newcomers--a tall, lean, pale woman in black; a short, fat, red-faced man, in the uniform of an officer of the customs; and so far as I could make out at a glance, a half-dozen children, from ten or twelve years old to an infant, which the tall, pale woman clutched more firmly as I appeared at the door, and looked at me with a hostile rather than a startled look in her large cold eyes. The short, fat man in uniform stepped between me and the group of mother and children with a confused expression in his face, and, rubbing his plump hands in an embarrassed manner, said:

"We were not expecting you--ahem!--brother-in-law ahem! but we are very glad to meet you here--ahem! My dear wife will only put herself to rights a little--ahem! In the meantime, suppose we go into our late father's room, where we can talk over matters undisturbed. Don't you think so, my dear?"

The little man turned upon his heel to face his dear wife, who, instead of answering, pushed the children before her into old Friederike's little room. He turned back to me, rubbed his hands with still more embarrassment than before, and said again "Ahem!"

We entered my father's room. I took my seat in his chair, but my brother-in-law was too disturbed in spirit to be able to sit down. He paced up and down the room with short quick steps, stopping for a moment every time he passed the door, with his head thrust forward a little on one side, listening if his dear wife had called him, and every time, to fill up the pause with propriety, he said "Ahem?"

It was a long detail that the little man went into during his restless wandering from door to stove and from stove to door, and what he said was as clumsy and awkward as himself. It seemed that he and his dear wife had cherished a half hope that I would never be discharged from prison, especially since I had been detained half a year over my time for alleged breaches of discipline. He rejoiced exceedingly, he said, that his fears and those of his dear wife had not been justified; but that I must admit that it was a hard thing for a public officer to have a brother-in-law who had been in the House of Correction. Did I think, now, that an officer with such kindred was likely to gain promotion? It was frightful, unpardonable, so to speak, and if he could have foreseen it----

The little man suddenly gave me a furtive look. I was standing perfectly still, looking steadily at him, was a giant in comparison with him, and had just come out of prison. It seemed to strike him that it was not altogether prudent to take this tone with me, so now there came a long litany of the dolorous life that a petty subaltern with a large family has to lead on the Polish frontier. True, in conformity with the wishes of his dear wife, who wanted to nurse her old father, he had procured his removal to this place; but now the old gentleman, who no doubt would have taken it kindly of them, must needs die, and living here was so much more expensive, and then the journey had cost so much with all these children, and the baby was only sixteen weeks old, and though the inheritance was left, still two was a heavy divisor when the dividend was not large, and----

"Do you know this book?" I asked, laying my hand on the cover of my father's diary.

"Give me this book, and I make no other claim upon my father's estate. It is his diary, which has no interest for you. Do you consent?"

"Certainly--that is, ahem! I don't know whether my dear wife--we must first see about it--," answered my brother-in-law, rubbing his hands in an undecided way, and looking askance at the book out of his little puffy eyes.

I now commenced on my side pacing up and down the room, while the husband of his dear wife seated himself at the table, to submit this mysterious book to a closer inspection.

It seemed to excite no especial interest in him by the ordinary process of reading; so he tried another plan with it, taking it by the two covers and letting the leaves hang down, which he shook vigorously for half a minute. As this proceeding also led to no result, he gave up the matter as hopeless, laid down the book again, and said "Ahem!"

"Yes, certainly--to be sure--so to speak--of course; that is, we must put it down in writing--only a couple of lines--just by way of a memorandum--we might have it afterwards drawn up by a notary----"

The little man glanced at the paper and glanced at me, while I tied up the book in my bundle, and took bundle and stick in my hand. Either he did not know what to make of me, or--as from the expression of his countenance was more probable--considered me simply insane; in either case he was beyond measure glad to be rid of me.

He checked his invitation to see his dear wife. I muttered something that might pass for an excuse, left the room, pressed old Friederike's hand as I passed through the hall, and stood in the street.

I have but a dim recollection of the hour that followed. It is not a dream, and yet it seems like a dream, that I went to the grave-yard in the mill-suburb, roused up the old sexton, who was just going to bed; that I kneeled by a recent grave, and afterwards gave the old man, who stood by me with a lantern, money to cover the hillock next morning with fresh sods; that I went back again, and near the gate passed the villa of the commerzienrath, where all the windows were illuminated, and I could see couples gliding past them in the dance to a music which I could not hear, and that I thought the little Hermine might be among the dancers, and then remembered that the pretty child would now be seventeen years old, if she were still alive.

I felt an irrepressible sadness; it seemed as if all the world had died, and I was the only living being left, and the shades of the dead were dancing round me to inaudible music.

Thus I went back with unsteady steps to the town, and passed along the empty silent streets towards the harbor, mechanically following the way which I had always taken when a boy.

The sea-breeze blew in my face, and cooled my fevered brow, and I inhaled deep draughts of the invigorating air. No, the world was not dead, nor was I the only living being left; and there was a music, a delicious music, sweeter to me than any other: the music of the wind whistling through spars and cordage, and the waves plashing upon the harbor-bar and before the prow of the ship. Yes, there were still those who loved me, and whom I with all my soul could love again.

Upon the wharf, where the steamboat for St. ---- was now lying at her moorings, there was standing a crowd of people. It struck me that I could best commence my journey to the capital by this steamer.

Considering this, I was standing at the head of the pier, when a litter, such as is used to transport the sick, was carried past me towards the crowd. The litter was without the usual cover, which had probably been forgotten in their haste, or, as it was night, not considered necessary.

"The fireman of the Elizabeth has broken his leg." growled one in reply, in whom I now recognized my old friend, officer Luz.

"And we are to take him to the hospital," said the other, who was no other than the redoubtable Bolljahn.

"No, eight," said Bolljahn, who was not the man to drop a disputed point so soon.

They had brought the man out of the ship to the pier. He was a remarkably large and powerful man, whom six found it no easy task to carry, and who, strong as he was, groaned and cried with pain. The two men put down the litter; the bearers set about lifting the man into it, very awkwardly as it seemed, for he screamed with anguish. I thrust a couple of gapers aside and came up. They had laid him upon the ground again; I asked him how he wanted to be placed, and took hold myself with the others, showing them what to do.

They carried him off, and I went a little distance with them to see how they got on. Was he warm enough? Yes he was. Did they carry him well? Well, they might shake him a little less.

"Here is something for you too," I said, putting a piece of money into the hand of each of my old acquaintances, "and now carry him as if he were your brother or your child;" and then I bent over the injured man and whispered something in his ear that it was not necessary for Luz and Bolljahn to hear, and gave him something which it was equally unnecessary for them to see; and then I turned again to the group which was standing by the gang-plank of the steamer, discussing the remarkable accident.

At this moment the captain came out upon the gang-plank, and called to the group:

"Will any one of you take Karl Riekmann's place for this trip? I will pay him good wages."

The men looked at each other. "I can't, Karl," said one, "can't you?" "No, Karl," said the one addressed, "but can't you, Karl?" "Neither can I," said the third Karl.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A gray foggy morning succeeded to the cold windy night. It was six o'clock when the Elizabeth left the wharf, and I had been busy with the fires since three. I soon fell into the work, and scarcely needed the instructions of the lumpish, growling engineer. I had to laugh once or twice involuntarily when the man, seeing me attend to this or the other matter about the engine without directions, stared at me with a look half of surprise and half of vexation. I had told him that I was an entire novice at this work, and this was the literal truth; but I had not told him, nor was there any necessity that I should, that I had thoroughly studied marine steam-engines with the best of teachers, and had familiarized myself with even the minutest parts on an excellent model. And if in a few hours I had mastered the work of a regular fireman, in even a less time I had acquired the appearance of one. To save my own clothes I had laid them in part aside, and put on a working blouse of my unlucky predecessor, which fitted me perfectly; and what with handling the coal and the effects of a stream of smoke which drove into my face for quite ten minutes from the refractory furnace while I was making up the fires, even my friend Doctor Snellius, who piqued himself so greatly upon his physiognomical memory, would not have recognized me. But I cared little for this, for happily I had other things to occupy my attention.

I say happily, for it was ill with me in both head and heart. The death of my father, who had died without my being able even once to press his stern honorable hand, the meeting with my sister who put her children out of my way as if they were endangered by my presence, the prospect of the future which looked all the darker the more I thought over it--all this would have completely overwhelmed me had not the honest furnace been there in which the coals glowed so splendidly and the flames danced so merrily, while the sturdy engine worked on manfully and unresting. Only free work can make us free, my teacher had said to me. I had believed him at his word, but to-day for the first time I comprehended it, as I felt how the hard work which I had here to perform lightened more and more the load upon my heart, and the clouds passed away from my brow.

A kind of joyful pride took hold of me as I felt myself at home here; and I thought of that day eight years' before when I took that fateful trip on the Penguin and visited my friend Klaus in the engine-room, and to my wine-heated brain the engine appeared a machine only fit to crush the life out of me. The good Klaus! He had trouble enough with me that day, and care enough about me; and I should give him both trouble and care now if I should go to him to learn with his help to be a good workman. Some care I should give him, not much; I had found out this morning that I could stand more firmly on my own feet than I had supposed.

Far more firmly than my present superior, the bearded engineer, stood upon his. He stood by no means firmly, the honest fellow, and his watery eyes as well as the sleepy expression of his far from handsome face, and the vulgar perfume of alcohol which he diffused about him, made it obvious that his unsteady gait was not altogether due to the rolling of the boat. The worthy man was not exactly drunk--a regular engineer is never drunk, even though he sits up to two or three in the morning in a tavern drinking Swedish punch with his colleagues from the Swedish mailboat--but neither was he sober; so far from it that I on my side began to look at my superior with suspicious looks when, standing by his lever, he sank into deep meditation, which often bore a striking resemblance to a peaceful slumber.

"A warming-plate wanted on the forward deck; quick, Herr Weiergang!" called the steward down to the engine-room. Herr Weiergang nodded at me: it was a matter that concerned me especially. I knew what was wanted. I had been often enough on steamboats in rough weather when the motion of the boat rendered it impossible for those ladies who readily suffered from sea-sickness to remain in the cabin, and the sharp north-east wind and the spray made the exposure upon deck disagreeable and sometimes intolerable. Intolerable, if the honest fireman were not at hand with plates of iron cast especially for this purpose, which he has heated on the boiler and obligingly places under their half-frozen feet.

To-day I was the honest fireman. It struck me rather oddly; in all my life I had never done this service; had never dreamed that I should ever have to perform it. Had I to do it then? Certainly: I had undertaken the duty of the injured man, and this was part of his duty. So in five minutes I was on deck, holding a well-heated iron in my hands, which I had protected by a bunch of oakum.

It was now about noon, and the first time I had been on deck. The atmosphere was gray and dense with mist; one could scarcely see a hundred paces ahead. The wind was contrary, so that, though it was not violent, the boat pitched heavily, and a cold fine spray from the waves that broke against the bow swept continually over the deck.

The deck was nearly deserted, or at least seemed so, as the ten or twenty passengers were crouching in every corner, behind the paddle-boxes, the deck-cabin, and wherever any projection offered a little shelter.

"Here, my friend, here!" cried a voice that had a familiar sound to me, and turning suddenly around, I gave so violent a start that I had nearly dropped the plate. There stood a man, who, though he had now a gray old-fashioned overcoat with wide sleeves over his blue frock-coat with gold buttons, and wore his cap not pushed back from his forehead, as usual, but pulled down over his eyes--could be no other than my old friend Commerzienrath Streber.

"Here, my friend!" he cried again, and pointed with his right hand, while with his left he held fast to the capstan, to a lady crouching with her back towards me upon a low chair behind a great coil of cable at the bow of the vessel. The lady drew a large plaid cloak, lined with some soft and fine material, close around her slender figure, and turned her face, which was framed in a swan's-down hood, towards me.

It was a sweet lovely girlish face, upon whose cheeks the sea-breeze had kissed the delicate pink to a bright glow, and whose deep-blue brilliant eyes contrasted singularly with the gray water and the gray air. It had been seven years since I saw this face last. The child had become a maiden; but the maiden had still the face, or at least the mouth and eyes of the child, and by this mouth and these eyes I knew her. I started involuntarily and had to grasp the plate firmly to save it from falling on the wet deck, while I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. It was certainly a severe trial to appear before the maiden who had been my little friend in other days, in such a costume, and with a face embrowned with soot.

But this dress and this sooty covering were what saved me; she looked up at me with a little surprise but without recognizing me.

"Lay it here, my friend," she said, leaning back a little in her chair, and raising the edge of her skirt a little, so that I had a glimpse of the daintiest little feet in the world, resting on their heels to keep them from the wet deck.

I kneeled, and did what was required, no more and no less; perhaps rather less than more, for she said:

"You can bring me another by and by, if you have time; you do not seem to have time just now."

"And for me, if I may venture to ask," cried a thin voice from a corner between the deck-house and the mast, where out of some half-dozen shawls and wrappings peeped out a red nose, and in the wind fluttered a yellow curl which could belong to no one but Fräulein Amalie Duff.

"And for me!" "And for me!" cried a half-dozen other voices from as many other piles of mufflings, whose owners, with the promptness of desperation, had comprehended the advantage of a hot iron plate on a wet deck.

"But for me first!" screamed the commerzienrath, getting alarmed at the competition. "You know who I am, don't you?"

I did not deem it necessary to assure the Herr Commerzienrath that I knew him more than well enough, and hastened away from the deck, which was getting hotter to me than my furnace. I went below in a very unenviable frame of mind, and the thought that presently I must go on deck again brought great beads of perspiration to my forehead; but when I thought the matter over I found that my agitation was merely occasioned by very ordinary vanity. I hated to appear before the pretty girl as a sooty monster--this it was and nothing more; and while I was thus thinking as I stood by the boiler, the plates upon it had long reached the needful temperature, and the steward had called down three times to know if I was not ready with those confounded irons.

"Be ashamed of yourself!" I said to myself; "the poor things up there are freezing because you happen to have on a ragged blouse, and a patch or two of soot on your face. Shame upon you!"

And I was ashamed of myself, and went up the ladder and boldly marched direct to the place where the poor half-frozen governess was crouching in her wet wrappings.

Raising her water-blue eyes to me with the expression of helpless misery, she said, while her teeth chattered with cold, "You good man, you are my preserver!"

"Why do you not stay in the cabin?" I asked. I had no need to speak in Platt-Deutsch, or to disguise my voice, which either the sharp north-easter, or my embarrassment, or both together, made unnaturally deep and rough.

"Then sit over there by the paddle-box, where you have some shelter. You have here the worst place on the whole deck."

"O you good man!" said the governess. "It is indeed an eternal truth that there are good men in every clime."

"'Among monsters the only feeling breast,'" murmured the governess, hanging on my arm.

"Where are you going, dear Duff?" cried a joyous voice behind us, and Hermine, who had sprung from her seat, came running up, apparently to help her friend, but if this was her intention, she could not carry it out for laughing. She clapped her hands and laughed until her white teeth glittered between her red lips. "Pluto and Proserpine!" she cried. "Düffchen, Düffchen, I always said they would carry you off from me some day!"

And she danced about the wet deck in wild glee, just as she had danced with her little spaniel about the deck of the Penguin eight years before.

"Are you ever coming to me, you fellow?" cried the commerzienrath, who, squeezed into a corner, had watched my attentions to the governess with very ill-pleased looks.

"Ladies must always be served first, Herr Commerzienrath," smilingly remarked the captain, who was coming aft from the forward deck.

"O, you can talk: you are used to this abominable cold," growled the commerzienrath.

I went below again, but not to stay long. The cry for warm plates had grown general, and a hard job I had of it to satisfy the impatient clamors from all quarters. The weather had in the mean time grown rougher, and the fog increased in density. I observed that the captain's jovial face grew graver and graver, and once I heard him say to a passenger who had the appearance of a seafaring man:

"If we were only well out of the cursed channel once. With this wind the largest ships can come in; and we can not see a hundred paces ahead."

I knew enough of seamanship fully to comprehend the captain's uneasiness; and I had another anxiety of my own besides.

My superior, namely, the engineer Weiergang, had visibly with every hour sunk deeper and deeper into meditation upon the felicities attending the copious indulgence in Swedish punch; and though he still mechanically stood at his post and performed his duties about the engine, where now, as the vessel was going steadily ahead, there was but little to do, I still did not leave the engine-room without considerable uneasiness. How easily might it happen that the narrowness of the channel should render a complicated manœuvre necessary, and was the nodding figure there in a condition to carry it out?

I had gone on deck with another plate, intended for no other than the blue-eyed, vivacious beauty. She had resumed her old place at the bow, and gave me a friendly nod as I approached.

"But you speak our Platt." she said quickly, and looked sharply at me with a surprised expression.

I felt that the coating of soot on my cheeks must be very thick indeed to hide the flush which I felt burning in my cheeks.

An immense dark mass loomed out of the gray fog. A feeling of terror, not for myself, seized me. I, too, shouted with my whole strength, "Ship in sight!" and following an impulse which flashed upon me like lightning, I bounded across the deck to the hatch leading to the engine-room, while the captain upon the paddle-box was shouting through his trumpet like mad--"Stop her! Back her!" an order which evidently was not obeyed, for the boat rushed through the water with undiminished speed.

How I got down the steep ladder I do not know. I only know that I flung the drunken engineer out of the way, pushed the lever to the other side, and simultaneously threw open the throttle-valve and let on the full head of steam.

A mighty shock followed, making the whole boat quiver as it struggled in the waves, produced by the reversed wheels. The push I had given him, and, perhaps still more the violent jar of the boat, had awakened the drunken engineer. In his confusion he rushed upon me like a madman to force me from my post, so that I defended myself against him with difficulty.

It was a terrible moment. Every instant I expected to feel the crash of the collision.

But a minute passed, and with it passed the danger, for I knew that by this time the collision must have taken place, if we had not escaped it: and now resounded through the speaking-trumpet the order, "Stop her!"

I placed the lever in the middle and closed the throttle-valve. My prompt execution of an order which he had plainly heard brought the engineer at once to his senses. Now for the first time he seemed to understand what I had kept shouting to him while we were struggling together; a deathly pallor overspread his bearded face, as some one came rapidly down the ladder.

It was the captain, who wanted to see what upon earth was the matter below. Upon his good-natured honest face was still the trace of terror at the peril we had just escaped.

"We will look into this another time," said the captain, looking fixedly at the unfortunate man.

The captain knew his man. He saw that the man, whatever might have been his previous condition, was now thoroughly sober and fit for duty.

I followed the captain, but not without first casting a glance at the engineer, whose meditations upon the effects of Swedish punch were now at an end, and who, in desperation at the frightful results of his indulgence, cast a supplicating look at me.

I held it my duty to tell him the whole truth, accompanying it with an entreaty that the man might be forgiven.

"He has always been the soberest fellow in the world," said the captain. "This is the first time he has ever behaved so."

"I cannot comprehend it," said the captain. He spoke with me as if I was his equal.

"You have done me a great service," he continued. "Who are you? It seems to me I must have seen you before; and the ladies on deck have the same fancy."

This brief dialogue took place while we were going up the ladder. The captain could not any further indulge the curiosity that had visibly seized him; he had too much to do.

My first glance, as I reached the deck, was involuntarily directed towards the ship which had so nearly been our destruction, and which now was disappearing in the fog astern of us; my next sought Hermine, who, with her maid, was busy recovering the governess, who had fainted. A sense of satisfaction, almost exultation, filled my breast. Thus might a general feel who has won a battle that he might have lost without disgrace.

The poor governess was not the only victim of the terror with which the frightfully imminent peril had filled the passengers of the Elizabeth. Here and there sat a lady with a face as white as that of a corpse; even the men looked pale and agitated, and were just beginning to talk over the occurrence. And, in fact, the situation must have been in the highest degree alarming. The approaching ship--a merchantman of the largest size--had been so negligently steered that the Elizabeth, though her engines were reversed and the full head of steam turned on, only escaped the collision by a few feet. Then the shock that shook the boat, the cracking and creaking of the planks, the crash of some half-dozen of the paddles that snapped at once--one did not need Fräulein Amalie Duff's susceptibility of nerves to be overwhelmed at such a moment.

Even now the state of things was not agreeable. The large steamer rolled in the heavy sea all the more violently now the engine had been stopped, on account of the injury to the wheels. Happily the wind was favorable, and sail was quickly made, so that we were able to control her with the helm. All the spare hands were busy repairing the paddles as far as possible, and I had learned enough of the carpenter's craft to lend a hand at once. I was not sorry in this way to avoid the inquisitive eyes of Hermine, and of Fräulein Duff, who possessed the talent of recovering from a swoon as promptly as she had fallen into it, and was now engaged in a conversation with her pupil and friend, which it could scarcely be doubted had some reference to me.

"Look as much as you please," I said to myself "I am, in spite of all, no worse than many another upon whom you have cast or will cast your beautiful eyes."

And yet I was glad, as she seemed about to come over to the place where I was standing, that I could creep into the open paddle-box, where things looked queer enough. As there was a heavy sea running we were obliged to confine our repairs to the merest make-shift.

In an hour the work was done, and we were ordered to the forward deck, where the bowsprit of the passing ship had carried away a part of the bulwarks.

I congratulated myself, when I crept out of the paddle-box, that the deck was nearly deserted, and especially that Hermine was nowhere to be seen; but as I passed the forecastle she suddenly appeared before me with her governess. The meeting was not accidental, for the duenna at once stepped back, but the young lady remained standing, and, looking up with her great blue eyes into mine, asked boldly:

"How came you here? What are you doing here? Are you a sailor, or fireman, or what? And why? Can you do nothing better? Is this a fit place for you?"

These questions followed each other so rapidly that I contented myself with answering the last.

"But you look so--so black--so sooty--so frightful. I cannot bear such black men. You used to look much, very much better."

"You must come away from here!" said the young beauty, vivaciously. "This is no place for you."

"And yet it was very well that I was here to-day," I said with a touch of pride, of which I felt ashamed as soon as I had said it.

"I know it," she answered. "The captain told us. It is like you; but for that very reason you should not stay here. You are destined to something better than this."

"I thank you, Fräulein Hermine, for your kind interest," I answered gravely; "but what I am destined to, the result must show. In the mean time I must pursue my way, wherever it leads me."

She looked at me partly in displeasure, and partly, as it seemed to me, with compassion, and added quickly:

"You are poor: perhaps that is the reason you are here and look so--so--not nice. My father must help you: he is very rich."

"I know it, my dear young lady," I replied: "but just for that reason I do not desire his help."

A bright glow suffused her cheeks; her blue eyes flashed, and her red lips quivered.

I was still standing in the same place, when Fräulein Duff came suddenly from behind the corner of the forecastle, where she had been an attentive if an invisible witness of our interview. Her watery eyes, in which sympathetic tears were now standing, were raised to mine, and she whispered in her softest tones, "Seek faithfully, and you will find!" Then prudently avoiding a reply on my part, she hurried after her young lady.

I was below in the engine-room, where there was now enough to do, to my great satisfaction. I heard the noises upon deck, as the passengers hastened to leave the ship on board which they had passed so unpleasant a time. She also was leaving it--perhaps at this moment. It was very improbable that I should ever see her again. Why should I, indeed?

The question seemed a matter of course, and yet I sighed as I asked it of myself.

My leave-taking of the engineer was brief, but not unfriendly. He had already told me that he had "made it all right with the captain." He seemed at bottom a worthy man, and I parted from him with a mind at ease.

I had hoped to slip away from the boat unperceived, but the captain called to me as I was crossing the deck with my bundle. He told me that he had learned that I was the son of the late Customs-Accountant Hartwig in Uselin, whom he had known well. He had also heard of my misfortunes, but they were no affair of his. I had this day done the owners, and himself personally, an important service, and it was his duty to thank me for it, and to ask me if his owners and himself could not in some way testify their gratitude.

I said, "Yes; you can if you will take something more than common care of the man whose place I have filled today, and who would have done what I did had he been here."

The captain saw that it was no use to press me further; so he promised faithfully to comply with my request, and shook my hand heartily, saying that it would give him the greatest pleasure to meet me again.

This had occupied some time, and yet a carriage and horses, which I had noticed on the arrival of the steamer, were still standing on the wharf. Just as I approached them, however, they started off; but I caught a glimpse of a youthful face in a swan's-down hood vanishing from the window, from which it had been looking at something or some one on the wharf.

The luxurious carriage rolled away, and I gazed after it with a sigh. Not that I coveted the carriage with the two high-mettled bays. The distance from St. ---- to the capital was more than eighty miles, it was true, and I was obliged to economize the little sum I had saved up in the prison: but I knew that I could walk without much fatigue twenty-five or thirty miles a day, and I felt fresher and stronger than ever. It was therefore scarcely the carriage with the mettled bays for which my sighing heart was yearning.

CHAPTER XIX.

I had travelled during the day a long distance upon an interminable turnpike-road where the rows of poplars on each side stretched away until they met at the horizon in an acute angle which never widened, never came nearer, and whose unattainability was enough to drive the most patient traveller to desperation. The autumn rains had made the roads heavy and slippery to the feet. All the morning the wind had rustled with a melancholy sound in the half-leafless poplars, and about noon it had commenced to rain, and wet and dreary looked the sandy heaths and desolate fields on either side the road, while every human creature and every animal that I met wore a cheerless and dejected aspect. I had already given up the expectation of reaching the city that evening, so I felt it as an unhoped-for piece of good fortune when I saw a reddish-yellow glare of misty light rising above the horizon, which a solitary wanderer whom I had overtaken explained to be the reflection of the city-lights. And now indeed my enemies, the poplars, began to give place to suburban houses. The suburb was long enough, it is true, but houses can not hold out as long as poplars; and--"There is the gate," said at last my companion, and bade me good evening.

There was the gate. It was by no means imposing, and did not attract much attention from me. This, however, was excited by an accumulation of buildings immediately, to the left of the gate, which by their size, and the ruddy light shining through colossal windows, I inferred to belong to a large manufactory. A high iron railing divided the courtyard from the street, and in this railing was a wide gate, one side of which was standing open for the egress of the workmen, who were coming out, first one by one, then in groups, and finally in a compact throng. Outside the gate, they scattered in various directions, while some remained in groups about the gate, talking with animation. I heard the words "day's wages," "piece work," "quitting service," "notification," frequently repeated; but I could not catch the connection, and did not feel at liberty to ask any questions. Nearer to the railing, with her back toward me, was standing a young woman holding in front of her a little boy, who stood upon the stone foundation of the railing and held fast to the bars, gazing eagerly into the yard, down which dark figures were still coming, though in fewer numbers.

She turned her head and answered, "The machine-works of Commerzienrath Streber. Keep still, George; your father will be along directly."

The feeble light of a street-lamp fell upon her pretty round face. The commerzienrath's machine-works--George, whose father was coming directly--the good-natured bright eyes--the full, red lips--I could not be mistaken.

"Bless my heart alive!" exclaimed the young woman, hastily putting down the child from the railing; "is it you, Herr George? See, George, this is your godfather;" and she held up the boy as high as she could, that he might have a better view of so important a personage, "How glad Klaus will be!"

She put the boy down again, who no sooner felt himself at liberty than he began to try his best to climb up to the railing again. I took him in my arms. "Are you a giant?" asked the little man, patting my head with his hands.

At this moment a square-built, grimy figure came up, apparently rather surprised to see his wife in such familiar conversation with a strange man, who had moreover his George in his arms; but before either Christel or I could say a word he tore his black felt cap from his head, waved it in the air like a conquering banner, and shouted, "Hurrah! here he is! George has come!"

It was long since any human lungs had emitted a cry of joy on my account, and it was probably owing to this novelty that at the good Klaus's exuberant greeting my eyes filled with tears, so that the whole scene--the factory, the houses, the street-lamps, the passing carriages, the black workmen, and even the little group of friends at my side--swam for a moment in a misty veil.

This emotion passed in a few moments, and we went on together, Klaus holding the little George on one arm, and clinging to the great George with the other, while Christel walked before, every instant looking over her shoulder at us with a smiling face.

Happily the distance through the crowded street was not long, and we soon reached a large and, to my eyes, stately house, the inside of which corresponded but poorly to its exterior. The hall was dimly lighted, and the floors black with dirt from innumerable footsteps that seemed to have traversed it the same day. The yard into which we passed was surrounded by lofty buildings, behind whose windows, feebly lighted here and there, there did not prevail that peace which a lover of quiet would have preferred. The stone staircase which we ascended to one of these rear-buildings was very steep, and, if possible, worse lighted and dirtier than the hall we had just entered. Persons passed us at every moment, who seemed far more reckless of the rules of politeness than was pleasant. I felt rather uncomfortable as we climbed from one landing to another, following Klaus, who gave no signs of halting, and at last in desperation I asked if we would not soon be there.

"Here we are!" said Klaus, knocking at a door, which was immediately opened from within, and from which, as it was opened, issued that penetrating odor which arises in an apartment where all day long the process of ironing freshly-starched linen is kept up. Any illusion as to the origin of this odor was the less possible, as the irons were at this moment in operation in the hands of two young women, who, as well as the third who had opened the door for us, cast glances of curiosity at the new arrival.

"So it goes on the whole day," said Klaus, with a glance of profoundest admiration at his wife, who had joined the ironers; "the whole day--only in the evening she allows herself a quarter of an hour to fetch me home from the works."

"You are a lucky fellow, Klaus," said I, in vain trying to draw a full breath in this atmosphere.

"Am I not?" replied Klaus, showing all his teeth, which had lost nothing of their glittering whiteness; "but that is not much yet. You must first see her babies!"

"And mine, of course," Klaus answered, in a tone which implied that it really was not worth while to allude to so unimportant a particular. "You must first see them!"

"Yes; but the others! Her very image, every one! It is really ridiculous--really ridiculous," he repeated, with another glance of admiration at his little plump wife.

"You don't know what you are talking about, you stupid fellow," said the latter, turning sharply around, and laying a hand that bore traces of hard work, and yet was both white and small, on the mouth of her Klaus. "Let us go into the sitting-room. You must excuse me for keeping you here so long."

We went into the room, but Klaus did not rest until his wife had taken us into the chamber, where, beside two large beds, stood four little cribs, in which were sleeping four charming children, for my little namesake had by this time been put to bed by one of the young women.

"Isn't that too lovely!" said Klaus, drawing me from one blond head to another; "and all boys--all boys; but that just suits me: a girl I should expect to be exactly like her, and that is a simple impossibility--a simple impossibility."

Here Christel pushed me out of the bedroom, as she had before pushed me out of the kitchen.

"You stay here," she said to her husband, "and wash yourself, and fix yourself up decent, you great bear, as you ought when we have such a visitor."

"Whatever I do, pleases him," said Christel, shutting the door with mock-disgust at his black face.

"Yes: but sometimes he carries it too far. I often am ashamed, and wonder what people think of it. And he gets worse every year; I really don't know what I shall do when the children are older; I often think they will lose all respect for their father."

While Christel thus unbosomed her secret woe, she was neatly and deftly setting the table, while I, standing before the stove, in which a cheerful fire was burning, thought of by-gone times: of that evening when I met the Wild Zehren first at Pinnow's forge, and how Christel had set the table and waited, and how she afterwards besought me not to go with him. Had I then followed her counsel! All would have been different. Perhaps better, perhaps not. But so it had happened, and----

"That I will, Christel, that I will!" I said, seizing both her hands and pressing them with a warmth which seemed a little to startle her.

"How wild you are still," she said, looking up at me with her blue eyes in surprise, but with no mixture of displeasure. "Exactly as you used to be."

"Yes, indeed," she said; but her countenance took a serious expression, and she continued, looking at me gravely, "you know it then?"

She laid her finger upon her lips and drew me, with an uneasy look at the chamber-door, further back into the room.

"He must not hear it--he has not got over it yet, though it is now more than three months ago."

"What was three months ago, Christel?" I asked in some alarm, for the young woman had turned quite pale, and cast uneasy glances first at me and then at the bed-room door.

"I hardly know how to tell you," she said. "He lived at last entirely alone, for no one would have anything to do with him, and even the deaf and dumb Jacob left him. Nobody knew exactly how he lived; and for a week no one had seen him, until one day the collector came for the house-tax, and--and found him hanging in the forge, over the hearth, where he must have been hanging nobody knows how long."

"Indeed he did," said Christel. "And no one knows how he came to his death; whether he did it himself, or whether it was done by others; for they swore--at that time, you know--that they would settle with him one day."

"Here I am again," said Klaus, coming in in his best coat, and with a face as red as cold water, black soap, and a coarse towel, all applied in haste, could make it.

The supper, at which Christel's young assistants joined us, was soon over, and after the cloth had been removed, the girls dismissed, and Christel had mixed us a glass of grog, for which she had not forgotten her old recipe, Klaus and I fell into such discourse as naturally arises between old friends who have not seen each other for many years, and have gone through many experiences in the interval. I had to narrate to Klaus the story of my imprisonment from that time in the first year when he paid me that memorable visit, which was within a hair of bringing him into contact with the criminal law. Not that I could tell him, or even desired to tell him, everything, good fellow as he was. We do not admit our friends, even the most intimate, behind the inmost of the seven walls with which we prudently surround the citadel of our soul; but enough came to discourse to arouse the interest of the good Klaus to the highest pitch, and quite passionate was his sympathy when I came to speak of the last period of my imprisonment, when I fell into the hands of the new superintendent and his accomplice, the pious Deacon Von Krossow, and in seven worse than lean months had to expiate the seven years of fatness which I had hitherto enjoyed.

"The wretches! The villains! Is it possible? Are such things allowed?" the good Klaus kept muttering.

"Whether it is allowed or not, my dear Klaus, I cannot say; but that it is possible is only too certain. Under the most frivolous pretexts in the world I was deprived of my place as secretary, and treated as an unusually ill-disposed and contumacious prisoner; and as all that did not satisfy their vengeance, I was ordered seven months of disciplinary punishment beside."

"Sergeant Süssmilch? He would have sworn terribly, I promise you, if he had seen it. Fortunately, he went away with the family of Herr von Zehren a week after the death of the latter."

"I would never have done that," said Klaus with emphasis; "I would never have left you alone in their robber-den."

Then I told how I had been discharged at last, how my first visit had been to my native town, and the reception I met with there.

"Poor George! poor George!" said Klaus, over and over again, shaking his big head in sympathy.

"She did," I answered, pointing to the room in which Christel had been for the last five minutes busied in a vain attempt to quiet the wails of her youngest.

"Hush," said Klaus, "we must not speak of it so that she can hear; it is different with us men, but a little woman like that--it always has a dreadful effect upon her, poor thing: I am frightened whenever any legal paper comes in about the adjustment of the estate--you understand."

"God forbid," said Klaus. "They must have robbed him, or else he buried it; and either is very possible, for at last he did not trust in any human creature, and had little reason to, God knows. And he always had a secret way in everything. Just think; we believed that Christel had floated to land, as naked and destitute as a fish flung up by the tide, without the least possibility of discovering the name of the ship in which she was wrecked, much less her own. And what does she find in the great cupboard, opposite the door, you know, but a bundle of papers in a tin case, which evidently belonged to the same ship; these papers were the captain's, and his name is written in them, with the name of the ship, and how he was married, and that his young wife had given birth to a child at sea; and there was a slip of paper besides, saying that the ship could not now be saved, and that it was impossible to save their lives, so he would fasten the child and the papers, which he had put in a tin case, to a piece of cork, and trust them to the sea and to God's mercy. So there is no doubt that my Christel is this child of the Dutch captain, whose name was Tromp--Peter Tromp, and his ship The Prince of Orange, and he was on his way home from Java. But I am not the least surprised at it all," Klaus concluded; "I should not be surprised if I she had turned out to be the daughter of the Emperor of Morocco----"

"No; not even then," replied Klaus, with immense emphasis, after a moment's reflection.

"But that is not right," I said. "The papers might possibly lead to the discovery of a rich uncle, or something of the sort. Such things have happened before, Klaus."

"Doctor Snellius," Klaus repeated. "Your old friend in the prison. He is now the physician to the factory: did he never write to tell you?"

"No; or else the letter was intercepted, which is very possible. So he is your doctor, eh?--the doctor of the factory, I mean."

"Well, yes; I call him so, because he is always sent for when anything happens; but in truth he is, I believe, the doctor of all the poor in this part of the city."

"Heaven knows he has; but he will never grow rich with it, for he never takes a penny unless they can well spare it, which is not often the case, and frequently he gives them medicine besides. Ah, he has a noble soul; though he always seems as if he were going to eat you up, and the children scream whenever he comes in the door."

"Oh yes, of course: that is, we have really only called him in once--the last time--very much against Christel's will, who insisted that----but that you will not understand; a married man's cares, you know; and she was quite right, as it happened----"

"Well, I don't know," he said. "We feel somehow--we are living so happily now, and I always think things can not be better; more likely worse. If she really had a rich aunt--we always suppose it is an aunt--and she should leave her property to Christel, what in the world should we do with all the money? I can't think, for my part."

"Yes, that is true," cried Klaus, "I never thought of that. That would be something for you, sure enough. To-morrow morning I will advertise in all the papers: I'll bring the aunt if she lives a hundred thousand miles off."

"So be it!" said I, arising. "And now let us take a little walk. I must take a look at my new home."

There is probably no time in the twenty-four hours better fitted to impress a provincial with the greatness of a large city than the twilight of a gloomy autumn evening. In men of any liveliness of imagination the reality usually falls short of the fancy, but in an hour like this the reality and the fancy--what we perceive and what we imagine--blend indistinguishably together, and the barriers of the actual world seem broken down.

Such an evening was it when I strolled with Klaus through the streets of the city, which seemed enormous and gigantic in my eyes. Even now I can sometimes in the evening, and for a moment, behold it in the same light and with the same feelings as then. Coming from a region inhabited by workmen, we crossed in our walk one of the most brilliant quarters to reach the city proper, and returned through large squares, surrounded by magnificent palaces, to our own gloomy region again. And everywhere was the throng of hurrying crowds on the narrow sidewalks, and the rattle and thunder of vehicles, and the endless rows of lamps up and down the interminable streets, and the blaze of light from the shops illuminating the streets so that the figures of men, wagons and horses were strangely reflected from the wet pavement. Then the imposing masses of tall buildings, rising above one another like mountains; the sight here of a bronze equestrian statue upon a pedestal, high as a house, riding aloft through the night, and then of a giant figure pointing down at us with a drawn sword; wide bridges with balustrades peopled with white marble forms, and under whose arches rolled a black flood upon which quivered the reflections of a thousand lights; a glance into the shops where to uninitiated eyes the treasures of Arabia and the Indies seemed heaped up by fairy hands; dark yards, where, late as it was, mighty casks and chests were being piled by leather-aproned men--I walked, and stopped to gaze, and went on, and stopped again, staring, astonished, but not confounded, and altogether strangely happy. Was this the sea of ever-rolling life, engulfing itself and ever producing itself anew, towards which my teacher's prophecy had directed me--the sea whose mighty billows, if he had foreseen truly, where to be my home? Yes: this it was: this it must be. I felt it in the courageous beatings of my heart, in the power with which I clove this surge of men, in the delight with which I listened to the roar of this surf.

Part Third.

CHAPTER I.

In the machine-works of the commerzienrath a great boiler was being riveted. Three sooty workmen, with shirt-sleeves rolled above the elbows, and hammers in their strong hands, were waiting for the red-hot bolt which a fourth was bringing in the jaws of a pair of pincers from an adjacent forge. The bolt vanished into the boiler, and appeared in a few seconds through the rivet-hole; the cyclops grasped their hammers firmly, and, striking in measured cadence, finished the rivet-head. This hammering produced a tremendous noise.

And if any one had told a spectator, uninitiated to the craft, that in the hollow of the boiler upon which the heavy hammers fell with such deafening clangor, there lay a man upon his back who received the rivet in a pair of pincers, and with these exerted all his strength in resistance, while the hammers were ringing on the rivet-head, the uninitiated spectator would scarce have believed it, and he could not fail to consider the man in the hollow of the boiler as one of the most miserable and most to be pitied of mortals.

The riveting was finished, the hammers at rest; the man with the pincers crawled out of the belly of the monster. I need scarcely tell the reader who this man with the pincers was. Nor am I ashamed thus to appear before him, for he has very likely seen me in similar costume, though it is true that at this moment I present a rather frightful appearance. The lower part of my face, my neck and breast, are covered with blood, which during the last hour has been running from my nose and mouth. But the three with the hammers only laugh; and one, the foreman, says:

"Next time remember to keep your mouth open, comrade, no roast pigeons will fly into it."

Rather a poor joke, it must be owned; but the rest laugh, and I laugh too: for as the prudent proverb advises us to "howl with the wolves," so I have rarely been able to refrain from joining in any laughter, even when, as at present, it was at my own expense.

But despite the ardent zeal with which I entered into my new calling, I was not sorry that this work inside the boiler was but a temporary task, for which the foreman of my shop had lent me because another shop happened to be shorthanded, very unwillingly, and only at the order of the foreman of the works. To say that he did it very unwillingly sounds like a brag from one who like myself had only been a fortnight in the shop, and whose only work yet had been of the roughest sort, such as handling the sledge. Nor was it any merit of mine that the heavy sledge which others handled with difficulty was as light in my hands as an ordinary fore-hammer, and that my blow could easily be distinguished among the four or five that followed in regular cadence the foreman's stroke upon the glowing iron. It was no merit of mine; and yet in this place, where bodily strength played so important a part, it counted as a high one, even the highest. My foreman was proud of me; my fellow-workmen, in the most literal sense, looked up to me with admiration; and Klaus, whenever my name happened to be mentioned, showed all his white teeth, then shut his lips tight, held up his forefinger, and nodded mysteriously. I had strictly forbidden Klaus to indulge in these mysterious gestures, and Klaus had solemnly promised to avoid them, but in spite of all it was not his fault if all the two hundred hands in the establishment did not have the same exalted opinion of me with which his honest soul was overflowing.

"I declare," said Klaus--whenever I imparted to him some bit of information from my theoretical knowledge of machinery, or from my mathematical acquirements--"you know more about these things than any man in the works, the head-foreman and the engineers not excepted, and you deserve to be at least Chief of the Technical Bureau."

"No, Klaus, it is not true. In the first place, you far over-estimate my knowledge, and in the second place, one can be a very good theorist and at the same time a wretched bungler in practice. But I want to be both a good theorist and a skilful workman, and I must give many a stroke of hammer and of file before I get to be that. Just remember, Klaus, what a time it took you to rise from the common job-workman, who was glad if he could dress his round pliers decently, to the skilful machinist who can fit the straps on a connecting-rod as well as the best--"

"Forging is done everywhere at a fire, Klaus, and every piece must be hammered until it is finished; and so must a good machinist until he is finished; and there is much to be done before I can say that of myself, if I ever can."

I had good reasons for enjoining the honest Klaus to a silence which was so burdensome to him; for, beside the fact that he really had a ridiculously exaggerated opinion of me, his imprudence might be of serious inconvenience to me, and indeed might close against me the way which I was firmly resolved to tread. I wished to work my way up from the ranks in the calling to which I had devoted my life, remembering the saying of my never-to-be-forgotten teacher, that the true artist must understand the hand-work of his art. So for the present I was what I desired to be--a hand-worker, a laborer in the roughest work--and every one took me for just that, which was precisely what I wished.

My past history I had veiled under a simple story, which found ready belief with the simple fellows around me. I was the son of a seafaring man in Klaus Pinnow's native town. We had known each other from our boyhood; I had made up my mind to be a smith like him, and had worked awhile as an apprentice with his father. But ten years ago I had gone to sea, and had voyaged about the whole world as sailor, as ship's-carpenter, and, as ship's-blacksmith, and only returned home a short time before with the determination of quitting the sea for the future, and earning an honest living on land, for which purpose I was now learning the smith's craft regularly, which I had practiced as an apprentice.

I was seldom under the necessity of corroborating this story by accounts of my past adventures; and if now and then, when we were off work, some one more curious than the rest spoke of my travels, I understood enough of navigation and voyages, and had mixed too much with captains and mates, and read too many tales of the sea, not to be able to play the part of Sindbad for half an hour. One of my principal stories, the scene of which was laid somewhere in the Malay Archipelago, in which there was plenty of hot work and plenty of pirates knocked in the head, had procured me in the shop the nickname of "The Malay," which I bore until--but I must not anticipate.

I was all the more readily believed to be what I gave myself out for, as I conformed my habits exactly to those of the common workman. I was dressed neither better nor worse than the rest; I ate my breakfast from my hand, as did the others; I dined at a cheap cook-shop, in which some fifty other workmen took their dinners. The only luxury which I allowed myself out of the little money which I had brought from the prison was a better lodging than workmen of my class were accustomed to or could afford; and this deviation from the rule was due as much to necessity as to any consideration of comfort or taste. I could not, if I wished to prosecute my theoretical studies, live in a quarter where the streets were noisy until deep in the night with the rattling of vehicles, and too often with the uproar of drunken workmen in conflict with the police, and where, in the overcrowded houses, the ticking, pulsating, clattering clock of human life never stood still a moment.

For several days, during which I was Klaus's guest, I had looked about for a suitable lodging; and at last I found one.

Adjoining the factory was a large lot of ground, which was covered in the most singular way with buildings, some half-finished and others only commenced. According to the account of the old man who, in a half-finished porter's lodge, exercised a sort of guardianship over the place, the whole had been intended as an establishment to compete with Streber's. But the projector of the scheme had failed, the property was put up at auction and bought in by a wealthy creditor, who thought the best thing he could do with it for the present was to leave all things as they were.

"You see," said the old man, "he hopes that in two or three years the ground will be worth three times as much as it now is; and perhaps also that the commerzienrath must of necessity take the thing off his hands at any price, since it is of the utmost importance to him to keep a rival from starting up, so to speak, under his very nose. And then the commerzienrath has to put up new buildings, for they are so crowded they can hardly work, and where is he to build if not just on these lots? But he thinks it over, and my employer thinks it over, and now they have both been thinking it over for these two years. Recently he has been here again and looked over the place for the twentieth or fiftieth time, I believe; but it did not seem that he had come to any determination. Well, it is all one to me; and if you, sir, would like one of the rooms in the garden-house, your beard may be grown two inches longer before you have to move out."

The satirical old porter pleased me well, and the garden-house still better. True it was a mere boast when the man spoke of "one of the rooms," while in reality it had but one in which a human being could possibly live, while the others, without doors or windows, seemed rather to be a caravanserai for homeless cats: an appearance which I found afterwards to be fully borne out by the facts. The little house, which was probably originally intended for the residence of the owner or manager, was planned in a very pleasing Italian style. An easy flight of stairs led to the rooms referred to, in which, to judge from the spots of ink on the unscrubbed floors, and several three-legged drawing-tables, and other similar bits of ruinous furniture, the architect of the building must have had his office; on the other side was a balcony. In front of the stairs a grass-plot had been designed, but at present it was only a plot without the grass; and similarly a great free-stone basin in the centre lacked the Triton and the water; and the trellis, which ran up between the windows, as high up as the projecting eaves, lacked its Venetian ivy. But I cared nothing for these deficiencies; on the contrary I regarded them as pointing to a better future, and they harmonized thus with my own frame of mind, which also looked from a barren present to richer and fairer days to come. Then this ruinous lodging had the real practical advantage of suitable cheapness, and also that of securing me the quiet which was so necessary to my studies; and, to tell the whole, the old man had told me that the young lady who had accompanied the commerzienrath, and must have been the old gentleman's daughter, had clapped her hands when she saw the garden-house, and said it was charming, and she would like to live in it.

"She'd soon get out of that notion," said the old growler. "She did not look as if the owl was her house-builder, and Skinflint her cook; but for one of our--I mean of your--sort, it will suit very well."

"When you please; no one has been before you, so you will not have to wait for the tenant to move out."

So on the same evening I took possession of my new lodging, with the assistance of the good Klaus, whose head scarcely stopped shaking the whole time.

What did I want with such a tumble-down old ruin, where I might be murdered and not a dog bark? And how could I fancy such furniture: two worm-eaten high-backed chairs, an arm-chair about a hundred years old, a table with clumsy twisted legs, and a looking-glass with tarnished gilt frame? To be sure, I had bought the rubbish cheap enough of a dealer in second-hand furniture, but for very little more he would have given me things of a very different sort; but somehow I had always had a strange sort of taste in those matters, and he remembered that I used to have a lot of just such useless rubbish in my own room in my father's house in Uselin.

So the good Klaus grumbled and scolded, and even Christel was seriously out of humor with me for some days. She had discovered a room in her own house, on the courtside, up two pair of stairs, beautifully furnished, and having only the inconvenience that to get to it one had to go through the kitchen and the landlady's room. And the landlady was a particularly respectable tailor's widow of eighty-two, with an excellent unmarried daughter of sixty, who would certainly have taken the very best care of me.

The honest Klaus and the good Christel! I could not help them; I could not for their sakes change my nature, to which this striving for freedom and independence was an absolute necessity. In my garret in my father's house, in my room at Castle Zehrendorf, even in my prison cell, I had ever felt too deeply the luxury and poetry of solitude to be able to dispense with it now that I was a man.

And now again I was alone in my room in the half-finished garden-house, among the ruins of buildings, large and small, that never would be completed. In the evening, when I looked up from my books, no sound reached me but the hollow unceasing rumble of vehicles, like the distant roll of the sea, or the bark of the shaggy poodle that by day kept the old man company in the porter's lodge, and in the evening and all night long traversed the spaces between the ruins and the ruins themselves, in, as it seemed to me, an interminable hunt after cats.

And when occasionally, to cool my heated head, I stepped out upon the balcony, all again was deserted, vacant, and dark around, only here and there the light of a solitary lamp, and sometimes a red pillar of flame which rose from one of the furnace-chimneys of our works into the night sky, and reddened the edges of the dark clouds which a sharp November wind drove before it. Then, when I returned to my room, how cheerful looked my modest lamp, before which lay open my book with figures and formulas; how cosily the old carven oak furniture, which had so moved the spleen of the good Klaus; and above all, with what pleasure I contemplated the two small antique vases of terracotta upon the mantel-piece, and the beautiful copy of the Sistine Madonna, which hung on the wall facing my worktable. The picture and the vases had been taken from my cell when the new superintendent came, but upon my release I had demanded them with so fixed a determination that they did not venture to withhold them: so I had packed them carefully in a box and placed them in the hands of a person whom I could trust, to be forwarded to me whenever I should have fixed myself somewhere. This very day they had arrived, and to-night, for the first time, again I enjoyed the pleasure of gazing at them.

And while I contemplated these precious relics I reproached myself earnestly that I had never prevailed upon myself to visit or give any token of my existence to the dearest friend I had in the world, in the same city with whom I had now been living a fortnight. It seemed so entirely contrary to my nature not at once to obey the impulse of my heart, and that so urgent an impulse--not to hasten without delay to her with whom I had lived in closest friendship so many years of my life, and whose heart I was convinced beat as warmly for me as ever. We had not kept up a very lively correspondence during the year of our separation, but we had agreed when we parted that we would not write except upon some especial emergency, as anything like a correspondence carried on under the eyes of the new superintendent and Herr von Krossow seemed an impossibility. An emergency of this kind occurred, when the baseness of this well-matched pair procured me a seven months' addition to my term of incarceration: I wrote to her, simply acquainting her with the fact, and she answered with but a word: "Endure."

No, this was not the cause of my reluctance; and indeed it had but one, which I was unwilling to admit, even to myself I knew how the dearest, noblest girl had to work and to care for herself and for those dear to her. For a year it had been my dearest wish--indeed it often seemed to me the single aim and object of my life--to attain a position that would enable me to lift this load from her frail shoulders. And now, when she perhaps more than ever needed a friend, a supporter, I must appear before her in a condition in which, even if I needed no assistance myself, I was utterly unable to afford it to others. That might have been foreseen; as things were, it was inevitable, and yet----

But will she, then, will she ever accept my assistance? I interrupted the course of my thoughts as I paced up and down my room with my hands behind me, a habit I had caught from my father. Has she not given me a hundred proofs how jealous she is of her independence? And has she not given me especially to understand, even at our parting, that if she should require a support it should not be my arm?

I called to mind the last days that I had spent with Paula and her family. There were not many of them, for they had urged Frau von Zehren to make room for her husband's successor with an insistance that was really indecent. This successor, a major on half-pay, and a special pet of the pietistic president, had long waited for the place, and, so to speak, had been standing at the door. The brutality with which he took possession at once of the superintendent's house, without the least consideration for the bereaved family, was really unexampled. He had given the afflicted lady the alternative of removing with her family to one of the prison cells, which he magnanimously offered to have cleared out for their occupation, or of taking refuge in one of the wretched taverns of the town. Frau von Zehren, of course, had not hesitated a moment as to what was to be done; and thus within three days after the death of my benefactor all the old familiar faces had vanished from the house in which he had lived so long. All had gone. Doctor Snellius, in the very first hour in which he had the questionable honor of being presented to the new superintendent, spoke his mind to him in full; and when Doctor Snellius spoke his mind to any one whom he had reason to despise and abhor, you might rest assured that the individual addressed would not have the slightest ground to complain of any obscurity in the doctor's expressions.

Immediately upon his heel followed old Sergeant Süssmilch; and although the register of the old man's voice lay fully two octaves lower than the doctor's, yet the melody which both sang must have been the same; at all events the result in both cases was identical, namely, Major D. foamed with rage, then stamped with his feet, and ordered the insolent fellow to be put in the dungeon immediately. Happily, the old man had been prudent enough to ask for and to obtain his discharge before he thoroughly eased his heart to his new chief, who therefore, rage as he might, had no authority over the old man, and on Sergeant Süssmilch threats were thrown away.

How gladly would I have followed these enticing examples, and spoken my mind also to the new superintendent. Probably in my whole life I have never exercised such constraint over myself as in those days, when I saw this miserable creature occupying the place which that noble man had left; and in all likelihood I should not have succeeded, and should have plunged myself into far worse misfortune, had not a voice perpetually sounded in my ear which was more potent with me than the impulse of my heart. And this voice said: "You have already endured much, poor George; bear this also, though it be the hardest of all, and if you cannot control yourself, call to mind him who loved you as his own son."

I sat down to my book again and turned the leaves; but this night I could not fix my attention on even the simplest things. Old well-known algebraic formulas wore a quite strange appearance, and seemed to form themselves into the words: If he loved me as his son, and she was the best beloved of his children, should she and I not also love each other?

"Are you going to keep your light burning all night?" called the voice of the old watchman from below. "It is now one o'clock, and I am to wake you at five, and a nice job I will have of it!"

CHAPTER II.

In another shop of our establishment several men had been wounded, more or less dangerously, by the slipping of a belt. In our shop we had heard the news of the accident just before dinner, and the men were standing about the yard inquiring the particulars and talking it over. I had joined one of the groups, and was listening attentively, when I saw a little man pushing through the crowd, with his hat in his hand, and whose great bald skull emerging here and there between these dark figures resembled the full moon sailing through black clouds. This skull could only belong to one man. I hastened in pursuit, and overtook it by the gate at the moment when it was covered with a felt hat, which had not improved in appearance since I last saw it. I followed the felt hat a few steps in the street, and then with a stride placed myself beside its wearer.

Doctor Snellius brought his round spectacles to bear on me, and stared at me with a look of the profoundest astonishment.

"George, mammoth, man, how come you here, and in this questionable shape?" cried the doctor, holding out both his hands.

"Hush, doctor," I said, "I am here incognito, and must deny myself the pleasure of embracing you."

"Don't tell me you have run away, and that too after I expressly forbade you," said the doctor, in a low, anxious tone.

"Heaven be thanked!" he said; "not forgetting also to thank me, or rather her. How did you find her?"

"And you have been here two weeks? Shameful! incredible! Where is my lantern, that I may dash it to pieces, for now I give up forever the hope of finding a man. Go! I will never see you again."

"Whenever you will, or can: shall we say this evening? eh? A glass of grog in the old fashion, half-and-half, eh?"

And over a glass of grog, half-and-half in the old fashion. Doctor Snellius and I faced each other that very evening, in his more roomy lodging, and talked of by-gone times, of what we had gone through together, as two old friends talk who meet for the first time after long separation.

The doctor gave me a drastic description of his great scene with Major D., and how Herr von Krossow had come in, and how he had said that it was true that three made a college, but for the whole world he would not make a college with those two, and that he begged to take leave of them at once and forever. I answered, laughing, that I now could understand the vindictiveness with which I was persecuted by Herr von Krossow, whom I had never offended.

"You are mistaken, my dear fellow," said the doctor. "The reptile had other and better reasons for turning his fangs upon you. I can tell you now that there is no danger of your wringing the miscreant's neck. So now listen; but mix yourself a glass first--you will not get it down without a good swig. This it was: he had once before paid his court to her--to Paula von Zehren; and as he received one mitten, he thought he might venture to apply for the other. For this purpose he selected as the fittest time those days of grief and distraction immediately after her father's death, nor did he forget to remind her that the new superintendent was his good friend, and the president his cousin, and that through these two he held the fortunes of Paula and her family, so to speak, in his hands; for her mother's claim to a pension was, as she knew herself, open to dispute; but the thing could be managed; and although he had no property of his own, he had good connections, and by no means bad prospects, especially under the new king, who was in truth an anointed of the Lord. What do you think of that?" crowed Doctor Snellius, springing up and performing a grotesque dance through the room.

The doctor's statement filled me with astonishment and indignation. I had had no idea that the sanctimonious deacon had dared to raise his hypocritical eyes to Paula; and this suggested the thought that I might probably have been equally dim of sight in another quarter. I sank into a gloomy silence; but the doctor must have read my thoughts in my face through his great round spectacles.

"You are thinking that it cost her no great effort to dismiss the priest when her heart was already in the possession of the knight? I know we often spoke of it and made each other uneasy, but it was all nonsense, I assure you, all nonsense. Paula no more thinks of marrying the young Adonis than an old satyr like me."

The doctor gave me a side-glance at these words, and smiled sardonically as I involuntarily murmured a heart-felt "Thank heaven!"

"Don't rejoice too soon, though," he went on, and his smile grew ever more diabolic; "we must not praise the day before the evening, and you know my doctrine, that with men anything is possible. Arthur is really a most fascinating youth, and now he has worked himself into the diplomatic career, he may well die our Minister to London. It is the same trade, and that they understand--ah! don't they understand it? especially the old man, who really is a genius in the noble art. From his tailor, whom he cajoles until the man gives him credit again, up to the king, whom he without hesitation petitions for a subsidy that will enable him to pay his debts and push his Arthur in his new career, no man is safe from him--no man. I warn you button up your pockets when you meet the gentleman on the street."

"Of course, he lives here. The soil here is not so soon exhausted, and a great man like the Herr Steuerrath needs a wide field everywhere. Oh these brows, these brows of brass!"

"Why do we talk so much of such a crew?" I asked. "Rather tell me something about her. How does she live? How does she get on with her painting? Has she made great progress? And has she found sale for her pictures?"

"Made progress? Find sale?" cried the doctor. "Pretty questions, indeed! I tell you she is in a fair way to make her fortune. They fairly fight over her pictures."

The doctor, who had spoken in his shrillest tones, tuned down his voice a couple of octaves by an energetic "ahem!" and said:

"You are right; but it is no jest--merely a lie. As I see, however, that I have not made any progress in the art of lying, it is probably best for me to tell you, or rather show you, the truth. Come with me."

He lighted two candles that stood under the looking-glass, and led me into an adjoining room, which he had first to unlock.

"I have put them here," he said, pointing to the wall, which was hung with large and small pictures, "because they are not safe from the boys anywhere else. Now what do you think of them?"

Taking the candles from the doctor, and letting the light fall upon the pictures, I saw at once that they were all by Paula's hand. I had too long watched her studies, and too deeply entered into her way of seeing and of reproducing what she saw, to be liable to any error.

There were three or four heads, all idealized, the originals of which I fancied that I recognized; two or three genre-pieces--scenes from the prison, which I had already seen in the first draught; and finally a landscape--a great reach of coast with stormy sea--the sketch of which I remembered perfectly. At this time I understood but little of painting, and least of all did I know how to justify my opinion when formed. Now I can say that I really perceived a decisive improvement in these pictures--an improvement both in the technical execution and in the freer and broader style of treatment: especially did the heads strike me as exhibiting remarkable power, and I enthusiastically expressed my opinion to the doctor in the best words I could find.

"Yes," said he, leaning his head first on one side and then on the other, and contemplating the pictures with melancholy pride, "you are right; perfectly right. She is a genius; but of what use is genius when it has no name? The world is stupid, my friend; incredibly stupid: it can discover anything grand or beautiful soon enough when the one or two enlightened heads that a century produces have given their testimony to it, one after the other; then the thing is an article of faith that the boys recite from their benches and the sparrows chatter upon the roofs. But when the gentlemen have to pass judgment upon the work of an author whose name they have never before heard, or the picture of an artist who comes before them for the first time, then they are at the end of their lesson and do not know what to think. How long would these pictures have travelled from one exhibition to another, or hung in the dealers' shops, if I had allowed them to hang there? So they have all travelled into my possession, and not to America, England, and Russia, as the good Paula believes. But do not look so seriously at me. My part of Mæcenas did not last long; her last picture at the Artists' Exposition--you know it, and are in it yourself--Richard the Lion-heart sick in his tent, visited by an Arab physician: well, that picture, as I hear, has been bought by the commerzienrath--your commerzienrath--strange to say, for the man knows just as much about paintings as I do about making money, and Paula, by my advice, fixed its price at a considerable sum. You see I am now superfluous. Sic tansit gloria!"

The doctor sighed deeply, and then preceded me with the two candles in his hands, casting flickering lights upon his broad skull.

We took our seats again behind the glasses of grog. The doctor seemed disposed to drown the deep melancholy that had possessed him by doubting the strength of his potations, while I sat in deep meditation. The fact that the commerzienrath had bought Paula's picture set me to pondering. I knew of old how absolutely indifferent the man was to everything connected with art, and that the relationship had in any way moved him to the purchase was the unlikeliest thing in the world. It was therefore no very chimerical conclusion that the daughter had more to do in the affair than the father; and I confess that as I reckoned up the probabilities of this supposition the blood rushed to my cheeks. In fact the hypothesis stood or fell on a certain point, which was yet uncertain. I drew a long breath, took a deep draught from my glass, and asked:

"To you, my most esteemed friend; to you? Do not vex yourself with any doubts on that score," answered Doctor Snellius with a promptness that seemed to indicate that our thoughts had met in the same point. "The only fault I have to find with it is just this, that Paula seems to have fancied that she had only to take you as you were, and there was a king ready made. Have the goodness not to take credit to yourself for what is merely her poverty of invention."

"I think I have not yet given you any reason to hold me exceptionally vain," I said.

"No; heaven knows you have not; you deserve rather to descend to posterity in the character of St. Simon Stylites than as Richard Cœur de Lion."

"And so I am, my good sir," cried the doctor. "What kind of a crochet is it to live by the labor of your hands, when you can live by your head? Do you know, sir, that our departed friend said to me, not long before his death, that you had the most remarkable talent for mathematics he had ever known, and that you could at any time take charge of the highest class in a public school? Do you suppose that your head grows acuter just in proportion as your hands grow coarser? You will say, like the tailor to Talleyrand, il faut vivre; and a journeyman blacksmith will make a living easier than a teacher of mathematics. Well, have you no friends that could help you? Why did you not come to me at once? Why did you leave it for chance to decide whether we should meet or not?"

I endeavored to calm his irritation, showing him that I had taken my present course, not from necessity but conviction; but he would not yield the point.

"Why did you take the trouble to make a virtue of necessity? Necessity was your adviser, necessity and your confounded pride to boot. You would have set out in quite another way, if you had had any capital to back you."

"Don't you contradict me, you brainless mammoth! A friend who has capital that he places at our disposal is a capital of our own. I am your friend, I have capital, and I place it at your disposal. Who knows if in this I do not accomplish a work more pleasing to heaven than if I followed my old father's wishes and employed it in assisting orphan asylums and other such childish undertakings. You are an orphan; so in helping you I follow the words if not the intention of that pious man, and shall be perfectly easy in conscience on that score."

"Don't laugh, you monster!" cried the doctor. "You don't seem to comprehend that my proposition is perfectly serious. Take my money--there are fifty thousand thalers, or thereabouts--go into partnership with the commerzienrath; or better, found a rival establishment, and hoist him out of his saddle: in a few years you will be the first manufacturer and machinist of Germany, and----"

While the doctor thus spoke in feverish excitement the blood had rushed to his head in a really alarming manner. He suddenly checked himself, and it was not until long after that I learned what it was that required such an effort to suppress. It may be that my head, in consequence of my long sitting behind the grog, was by no means perfectly clear; at all events only thus can I explain the obstinacy with which I still contradicted the doctor and maintained that my sense of independence would never allow me to use the capital and assistance of another as the foundation of my fortune.

"Do you know what you are proclaiming in this?" cried the doctor in his shrillest tones, and wrathfully smiting the table--"that you will remain a beggar, a miserable beggarly fellow, as every one has done who was fool enough to try to drag himself out of the swamp by his own hair? No, no, my good sir; the art is to let others work for you. Whoever does not understand this, is and remains a beggar."

"Has he not in life and death proven the truth of it?" crowed the pugnacious doctor. "Do you call it living as a reasonable man, to leave the dearest we have on earth in poverty at our death? And what are the great results of all his long, self-sacrificing, heroic labor for the general good? He fancied, this high-priest of humanity, that his example would suffice to bring about an entire reform of the prison system. And now an old pedant of a king has but to shut his sleepy eyes, and the foundation of his edifice gives way; and as soon as he himself commits the folly of dying, it falls to ruin like a house of cards. If that be not folly I do not know how loud the bells must jingle."

"I know somebody whose cap is quite as well furnished," I said, looking the doctor full in the eyes. "What do you call a man who--as the only son of a rich old father who loves the son and lets him follow his own course, even though he does not comprehend it, with the certain prospect of a considerable inheritance--performs for years the laborious work of a prison-surgeon for the most trivial pay; who, after he has come into the possession of this estate, continues to labor as the physician of the poorest of the poor, and finally, because the weight of his wealth is too burdensome, throws it into the lap of the first man he meets, to die the same irreclaimable beggarly fellow that he has lived?"

"Did I ever pretend to be anything else?" asked my antagonist, not without some mark of confusion. "Oh yes, as if it were only the simplest thing in the world to be a child of prudence. To produce that result requires generations, for shrewdness must be bred in families, like the long legs of race-horses. Take the commerzienrath, who is a classic example how shrewdness grows and thrives when it is once properly grafted on a family stock: the man's grandfather was a needleman, who kept a little shop by the harbor-gate in S.; my own grandfather knew him well. He was a disreputable old fellow, who sold nails and needles in his front shop, and lent money on pawns in the back room. Then came his son, who was at least a head above his father, and could read and write, and calculate much better than the old man. He settled in your town and bought shares of ships, and finally whole ships, and paved the way for his son, who is the biggest of the lot. His flourishing period came in Napoleon's time. Napoleon and the blockade and the smuggling business made a rich man of him. Yes, smuggling--the same smuggling that cost your friend his life. When the Herr Commerzienrath was a smuggler, smuggling was a kind of patriotic work, and the poor devils who risked and lost their lives at it were martyrs of the good cause. God only knows how many men's lives he has on his conscience. And when afterwards the people who had got into the way of the business would not quit it, and indeed could not, or they would have starved, he was safe enough; he had brought his sheep out of the rain and could laugh in his sleeve. Then came the time of army-contracts, and that again was a good time for him; and thus this leech kept sucking and gorging himself with the blood of his fellow-creatures. Everything that he undertook succeeded; the needleman's grandson and broker's son has become a millionaire, has married a woman of noble birth, has titles, orders--all that the heart can desire. Look you, there is a child of prudence, whom I recommend to you as an example."

"What good is my friendship to you? My friendship at best is worth but fifty thousand thalers. You are quite right not to put yourself out of your way for such a trifle. Marry Hermine Streber--then you will know why you were a beggarly fellow."

"It seems that one falls into this category by having either a great deal of money or none at all," I said, hiding under a loud laugh my embarrassment at his brusque suggestion.

"Certainly," said the doctor, still heated. "Extremes meet, and for this reason I consider your destiny inevitable. The question only is, how to deal with the old man; with the daughter the business is half done, or more than half. Your meeting on the steamer was capital; and now this Richard the Lion-heart in effigy, as long as she has him not in propria personæ----"

"As you please," replied the doctor. "You know with such remarkable exactitude what is good for you that most likely you know this too."

The doctor had also arisen and was now walking up and down the room making frightful faces.

But I halted at the door and looked back once more at the singular man, who had thrown himself again into his chair and was watching me angrily through his round spectacles.

"Doctor, you said to me once that you could not well carry more than four glasses, and this evening you have drunk six. So I will ascribe the unfriendly way in which you dismiss me--for what other reason I cannot imagine--to the fifth and sixth glass; and now good-by."

I left the room without his making any attempt to detain me, and as I closed the door behind me I heard him burst into a peal of shrill laughter.

"This comes from a man's not keeping within his measure," I said to myself, excusing him.

But as I reached the street below, and the frosty night air blew upon my heated face, I began to perceive that I had not exactly kept within my own measure. My gait as I traversed the empty, badly-lighted streets, now swept by a sharp December wind, was less steady than usual, and strange thoughts passed through my head, and I had curious fancies, whose origin could only be traced to the glasses I had emptied. And once I had to laugh aloud, for I imagined I heard the voice of the short, fat commerzienrath saying quite distinctly: "My dear son, we must mind what we are about or we shall not get home at all, and our Hermine will be alarmed."

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

BY COPYRIGHT ARRANGEMENT WITH THE AUTHOR.

THE NOVELS OF

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN.

12mo, cloth, uniform in size and style, per vol., $2.00.

JUST PUBLISHED.

The above translated by Prof. Schele de Vere.

Translated by Wm. Hand Browne.

IN PRESS.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

LEYPOLDT & HOLT, Publishers,

Hammer and Anvil

A Novel

BY

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

Hammer and Anvil

A NOVEL

BY

Friedrich Spielhagen

FROM THE GERMAN

BY

WILLIAM HAND BROWNE

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

HAMMER AND ANVIL.

Part First.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Part Second.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.