g so on your death-bed, and should cry out for water, and there
should be no one to understand you!-- Now the time was come. Home,
home, home! Thanks to a good constitution, I quickly recovered and
proceeded to carry out my fixed resolution. Perhaps my brother would
humble himself and acknowledge his injustice to me; then I would stay
by him till I died. How much time might still remain to us? What was
the whole world away from those of our own blood? On the way,--for I
actually set out at last,--I was like a child who has been lost in the
wood and runs crying home. I often had to remind myself how old I was.
Hatred of my brother revived in my heart and tormented me. It was like
a severed artery that will not heal: a touch, a thought, brings the
bad, black blood again.

"I reached home.

"The mountains seemed to be rising and running to meet me, as I entered
the valley.

"I drove through the different villages. There was where such and such
a one lived; I could not think of the names till I had passed. The road
was broader and more convenient than it used to be, and followed the
valley instead of going over the Woltending mountain. I was in a
strange land and yet at home. Mountains that used to be thickly wooded
were now as bare as a Turk's head. There had been a terrible sacrifice
of trees. I entered the village on a beautiful summer evening at
haying-time, just as the bells were ringing. They seemed voices not of
this world. I had heard many bells in the forty-two years I was abroad,
but none like these. Involuntarily I took off my hat; it was so good,
so heavenly to feel my native air blowing about my head! I know not
what echo it woke within me. The gray hairs on my head seemed growing
young again. Most of the persons I met on the way were strangers to me.
You, doctor, I recognized from your resemblance to your father. No one
knew me. I drew up at the 'Golden Lion' and inquired if Lorenz Lenz of
the Morgenhalde was at home. At home? He had been dead these seven
years. A thunderbolt falling at my feet could not have more confounded
me. Fortunately I recovered myself before my agitation was observed.

"I went up to my room, and late at night walked through the village,
meeting many familiar objects that convinced me I was once more at
home. All was still about my parents' house. The pine trees at the back
of it, that were hardly twice as tall as I when I left home, were now
giants, ready to be cut down. I half res