n it was
before the wood was cut down. It stands in a very precarious position,
but that can be partially remedied by precautionary measures."

"Who told you I wanted to sell my house?"

"Your wife."

"My wife? Annele, come here! Did you ever say I wanted to sell my
house?"

"Not exactly. I only told Ernestine that if her husband should hear of
a good hotel, in a favorable situation, we should like to buy it, and
then sell our house."

"It would be much wiser," suggested the shopkeeper, "to sell your house
first. You would easily find a suitable hotel, if you had the ready
money to pay for it."

Lenz turned pale as death, and with difficulty brought out the words,
"I shall on no account sell my house."

The two men departed, complaining bitterly of those shiftless persons
who did not know their own mind from one day to another, and put others
to a vast amount of needless trouble.

Lenz with difficulty commanded his rising passion.

Annele paid no heed to the frequent glances he turned upon her when
they were left by themselves, but preserved a sullen silence. At last
he spoke.

"Why did you play me such a trick?"

"I have played you no trick. This is a thing that must be done. We
shall have no peace till we leave this place. I will stay here no
longer. I want to be mistress of a hotel. You will see that I can earn
in a year three times as much as you with your barrel-organs."

"Do you think you can force me to it?"

"If I could, you would have reason to thank me. You seem quite unable
to help yourself out of your old ruts."

"I am not; I am out of them already," he said in a hollow voice, as he
hastily put on his coat and left the house.

Annele ran a few steps after him.

"Where are you going, Lenz?"

He made no answer, but kept steadily on up the mountain.

Arrived at the highest point he turned and looked behind him. There lay
his old homestead, stripped of its shelter of trees, naked and bare as
he felt his own life to be. He turned away and hurried on. Abroad,
abroad into strange lands he would go, and never come back till all in
himself and in the world was changed.

He ran on and on, an almost irresistible impulse all the while tempting
him back. He sat down at last on the stump of a tree, and covered his
face with his hands. It was a still, soft afternoon of late autumn,
when the sun's beams still fell kindly on the earth, especially on the
Morgenhalde, and spread lovingly over the fall