te. All might
be lost, all hope of having a home again, if he ventured to leave his
house or his bench.

For weeks he did not enter the village, while Annele was much with her
parents.

A fatality at length forced him from home. Pilgrim fell dangerously
ill, and night after night Lenz sat by his bedside. A painful duty it
was, for not even this act of friendship escaped the poison of Annele's
tongue. "Your attentions to Pilgrim," she said, "are only a cloak for
your lazy, slipshod ways. You flatter yourself you have been doing
something in the world, while you have been doing nothing and are
nothing. You are a regular do-little."

His breath came short as she spoke, and there fell a stone upon his
heart, which nevermore departed, but lay there like a dead weight.

"You will tell me next that I ill-treated my mother; that is the only
unjust taunt you have not cast at me."

"You did; I know you did. Your cousin Toni, who went to America, has
told us a thousand times that you were the greatest hypocrite in the
world, and that he often and often had to make peace between your
mother and you."

"You only say that to drive me mad again, but I care nothing for your
words. Why do you choose a man in America for your witness? Why not
some one here? You only want to goad me. Good night."

He passed the night with Pilgrim, who was now recovering, and of course
happy in the feeling of returning health. Not wishing to sadden him,
Lenz listened patiently to his accounts of the experiences his illness
had brought him. "I came to understand how a bird can keep forever
twittering on two notes. There is a state between sleeping and waking
in which one tone is all-sufficient. For four weeks only a couple of
words have been running in my head. Man has no wings beside his two
lungs, and with one lung I can eat potatoes for seventy-seven years. If
I had been a bird, I should have kept piping: One lung, two lungs, two
lungs, one lung, just like a hedge-sparrow."

Few were the tones ringing in Lenz's heart, but they were too sad for
any human ear.

"The Bible," continued Pilgrim, cheerily, "has been my helper again,
and has firmly decided me to live a single life. There it is plainly
said that in the beginning man was alone upon the earth, woman was
never alone; from which it follows that man is able to live by
himself."

Lenz smiled, but the words smote him.

Sad, pale, and worn with watching, he went home the next morning to h