ess in
sleep.

Annele had long been asleep. If he could but read her dreams! he
thought, as he watched her. If he could but find some help for her and
for himself!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A BEGGAR'S HAT, AND AN OLD MAN'S EARNINGS.

In this part of the country the frost, when it has once set in, holds
on unrelentingly for many months. The Morgenhalde alone makes a happy
exception to the rule. There the sun has sufficient power to make a
dripping from the roof, when all elsewhere is hung with heavy icicles.
But this winter even the sun in heaven failed to treat the Morgenhalde
with its wonted friendliness. There was no thawing outside the house
nor in.

Not only was the cold greater than it used to be,--that was easily
accounted for by the cutting down of the forest, whose tall trunks lay
scattered about, waiting for the spring floods to carry them down into
the valley,--but a weight as of frost lay heavy on the hearts of the
dwellers upon the Morgenhalde. Annele seemed to have lost the power of
rousing herself to life. Something had frozen up within her, which no
warm breath could have melted, had any such breath reached her.

Annele, the only child who had remained near her parents, felt herself
now the most cruelly deserted by their removal. The secret
mortification of being the only poor one of the whole family of sisters
seemed more than she could bear. She could do nothing to help her
father and mother; nay, might even be reduced to asking charity of her
sisters, to begging their children's cast-off clothes for her own
little ones.

She moved silently about her work, her love of talking all gone,
answering whatever question might be put to her, but nothing beyond.
She scarce ever left the house. Her former restlessness seemed to have
passed into Lenz. He so wholly despaired of accomplishing anything by
his old quiet industry that the chair on which he sat and the tools he
held in his hand seemed coals of fire to him. Petty creditors whom he
was unable to pay, and was obliged to put off with fair words, were
constantly annoying him. He, the Lenz who had only needed to say, "Thus
and thus it is," to command instant confidence, now had to make solemn
promises to this man and that, that his money should be paid him. The
greater was his anxiety lest he should be unable to redeem his word,
and the more did he exaggerate the danger that threatened his honor.
The though