ame on, Lenz changed his clothes and went down into the
valley.

All houses are open to him, Proebler had said. All houses? that is as
bad as none at all. Unless you can enter a house without interrupting
the inmates in their occupation; unless no glance, no expression asks,
What have you come for? what plan is on foot? unless you are made to
feel at home,--you have no house open to you. Lenz went in imagination
up and down the whole village, stopping at every door. Everywhere he
would find hands stretched out to greet him, but nowhere a home. Yet he
had one friend with whom he would be as much at ease as in his own
room. Pilgrim, the case-painter, had wanted to go home with him
yesterday after his mother's funeral, but fell back because he was
joined by his uncle Petrovitsch. The two despised each other for
different reasons; Petrovitsch Pilgrim, for being a poor devil; and
Pilgrim, Petrovitsch for being a rich one. To Pilgrim's, therefore, he
would go. His friend lived down in the valley with Don Bastian, as he
called him, a man who had been a dealer in clocks and made a
considerable fortune during a twelve years' residence in Spain. On his
return home he had bought a farm, resumed his peasant's clothes, and
retained no traces of his Spanish journey except the gold and a couple
of Spanish words which he liked to air occasionally, especially in
midsummer when the travellers from all quarters of the world returned
to their native valley.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LANDLORD'S DAUGHTER PLAYS HOSTESS.

In the public room of the Lion, at a table comfortably laid before the
balcony window, sat a young man alone, eating with that relish which is
the privilege of a stout young fellow in his twenties, after a day's
walk over the mountains. Sometimes, however, his eye wandered
thoughtfully from the viands themselves to the heavy silver plate on
which they were served. It was a remnant of the good old time, when
interest-bearing investments were not the only ones allowed. At last
the young man, who was no other than the engineer who had spent the
evening before at the doctor's, lighted a cigar and, drawing a brush
from his pocket, began smoothing his full, light beard. He had a marked
countenance. A high, full forehead projected from under his brown hair,
his cheeks were fresh, and there was an expression in his deep-set blue
eyes that inspired instant confidence.

A cool eveni