n who had given them security.

To all expressions of condolence Lenz had made answer that he should be
able to stand his ground; but fearful and unexpected demands poured in
upon him. Every petty creditor clamored for the instant payment of his
farthing debt. All confidence, even in him, was destroyed. He knew not
which way to turn. The heaviest claim of all, and one which he could
not tell Annele, because she had given him fair warning on that very
score, was for the security on Faller's house. The poor fellow came to
him, quite beside himself with grief, to say that the owner of the
house no longer considered Lenz's security valid, and that with his
large family he saw no refuge open to him. Lenz promised him certain
help. His good name and that of his parents could not fail to be
honored. The world surely had not become so depraved as to have lost
all regard for long-tried honesty.

Annele, who knew only of the lesser debts, advised Lenz to go to his
uncle for assistance.

To his uncle indeed! The same disinclination to encounter disagreeable
sights which made Petrovitsch invariably leave the village when a
funeral was to take place, prompted him now to start off on a journey.
The day after the landlord's disgrace he had disappeared, leaving his
roadside harvest of unripe cherries to be gathered by the boys in the
street; nor did he show himself again till the winter was well on,
a new landlord established at the Lion, and the two old people settled
in a house near the city, adjoining that of their son-in-law, the
lumber-merchant.

The landlord had borne his fate with an equanimity almost deserving of
admiration. Only once, at sight of the engineer driving his two bays,
did his composure forsake him; but it was outside the town, and no one
saw how he stumbled and fell into the ditch and lay grovelling there
without the power to rise.

Petrovitsch took his walks now in another direction, and was no longer
seen on the path by Lenz's house, nor in the wood, little of which
indeed was now standing.

Lenz often spent half the night looking over his accounts and trying to
make both ends meet. A way was offered at last; but the money burned as
if hot from the Devil's mint.

Ernestine's husband appeared on the Morgenhalde with a stranger whom he
presented to Lenz as a would-be purchaser of his house.

"What!" exclaimed Lenz, in great surprise; "my house?"

"Yes: it is worth much less now, as you say yourself, tha