l of silence Lenz arose,
saying he would go on digging at the place where he had found his
uncle, for if he could dig through to the mountain, he should be able
to crawl out and summon help. Annele had her hand stretched out to
detain him, imagining the horror of having him buried in the snow, and
she and Petrovitsch too weak to dig him out. She had her hand stretched
out to detain him, but passed it over her face instead, and let him go.
He soon returned, however, and reported the snow to be so loose that
every space filled in again as soon as cleared. There was reason to
fear, also, that the snow still continued to fall. The best he could do
was to shovel out again what he had been obliged to bring into the
house, and push a clothes-press against the entrance, where the
battered door no longer served as a protection.

His wet clothes had to be changed for his Sunday suit; it was no
wedding garment he put on.

"Five years ago to-day," he murmured, "many sleighs stood before the
door of the Lion inn; would that the guests were here now to dig us
out!"

Petrovitsch had awaked from a short sleep, but still lay quiet in bed
in the sleeping-room. He thought over with calmness all that had
happened. Haste and complaints were here equally unavailing. Yesterday
he had recalled his whole past life, had lived it over again in a few
short moments, and here was the end. He accepted it with indifference.
How to conduct himself towards those in the next room was the question
that chiefly occupied him. At last he called Lenz and asked for his
clothes, as he wished to get up. Lenz advised him to remain where he
was, for the sitting-room was cold and his clothes wet, there being no
way of lighting a fire. Petrovitsch, however, still desired to get up,
and asked if there was no comfortable dressing-gown in the house.

"One of my father's," replied Lenz; "will you have that?"

"If there is no other, give me that," said Petrovitsch, angrily, while
in his heart was a sorrow, almost a fear, at the thought of wearing
what had been his brother's.

"You look quite like my father in it," cried Lenz; "quite like him,
only a little smaller."

"I had a hard youth, or I should have been larger," said the old man,
looking at himself in the glass, as he entered the room. The cry of the
raven in the kitchen startled him; he imperatively ordered Lenz to kill
the bird. Lenz's chief occupation, however, for the time was to keep
the peace between