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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse.

The brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Shall I do it all the same?" he thought, when he had stood for some while in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what would happen when he had done it and both were lying dead before him.

"Either I must shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters behind me in misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself tip to justice to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as great."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do not murder us!" cried the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You shall keep your promise, as I will keep mine," said Paul. "I wish you could find courage to defend yourselves, so that at last there might be a clear account between us.... But perhaps it is best as it is....

And now repeat after me what I say: 'We swear before G.o.d and by the memory of our mother that we will redeem within three days our promise given to your sisters.'" Trembling and faltering, they repeated the words after him.

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

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

"Good-evening," and drove away.

"So that is how to do it," he murmured, throwing the pistol down in the snow and looking after the sledge with folded hands. "If you rely upon what is right and honorable, and wish, in the goodness of your heart, to turn everything to good, you are called a coward and treated like a dog.

But if you treat others like dogs from the first, without considering whether you are in the right or wrong, you are called brave, everything succeeds with you, and you are a hero. So that is how it is done."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is the matter, children?"

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

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

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

"Won't you come into the house?" Katie asked, sucking her ap.r.o.n.