l be worse? You can torment me as you will; I am a weak woman,
unable to defend myself."

"A weak woman?" cried Petrovitsch, with unwonted sharpness. "A weak
woman? a pretty way, to drive a man distracted with your obstinacy, to
drop poison into his heart till he is on the verge of despair, and then
say, 'I am a weak woman!'"

"I might tell a lie," continued Annele, "and make promises for the
future; but I will not. Rather will I let myself be torn in pieces than
give up one jot of my rights. All I said was true, and that I knew it
was poison is also true."

"All true?" cried Lenz, pale as death. "Think of one thing you said:
that my good deeds were only a cloak for my laziness, and that I
ill-treated my mother. My mother! In one hour perhaps we shall stand
before her; how can you meet her face to face?"

Annele was silent. Petrovitsch, too angry to speak, sat pressing his
teeth against his lips, till at last he broke out: "Annele, if Lenz had
throttled you when you said those words, he would have been hung, but
he would have been innocent in the sight of God. You inn-keeper's
daughter, used to the wretched rabble that haunts a tavern, you have a
quick wit of your own, and hearing from some gallows-bird of a
postilion that the way to urge a horse in a race was to put burning
tinder in his ears, you laid your words like burning tinder in Lenz's
ears, and drove him mad. There is my hand, Lenz; you are a beggar for
kind looks and words, which is pitiful; but you have not deserved a
punishment like this, to be driven mad by a devil in your house. Give
me the child! you are not fit to hold an innocent child in your arms."

The little girl screamed as he snatched her from her mother. Lenz
interposed: "Not so, uncle, not so. Listen to me, Annele; I have only
kind words to speak. Annele, we are standing beside an open grave--"

Annele shrieked and covered her face with her hands. "You, too, are
standing by your open grave," he continued.

Without uttering a word Annele sank lifeless to the ground.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

VOICES FROM THE DEAD.

The lamp was thrown from the table and extinguished by Annele's fall,
leaving the four in total darkness. Lenz rubbed her with the brandy,
which happily was just under his hand, until she presently drew a
shuddering breath and placed her hand on his face. He laid her on the
bed in the next chamber, and hastened to strike a