y to her."

"No, thank God! I have not."

"Very well, then, show that you are a man, and give over crying and
sobbing. In all my life I never saw anything like the way you cried in
the churchyard."

"Indeed, uncle, I really cannot say all I felt. I wept for my mother,
but for myself also. When our choir sung those hymns, which I usually
sung with them myself, and there was I, dumb and desolate, I felt as if
I were also a corpse, and they were singing me into my grave, and that
I could not raise my voice."

"You are--" said the old man, but he gulped down what he was on the
point of saying, and strode on in front; his little dog, who trotted
along before him, looked into the old man's face, and shook his head;
he had never seen such an expression before in his master's face.

After a time the old man stopped of his own accord, and said: "I am
going to turn here. I have only one thing to say to you: don't take any
relation of your mother's to live with you, whom you must send away
afterwards. They would forget all the kindness you have shown them, and
only be indignant because they could not stay with you for ever. Above
all, don't give away any of your property, come who may. If you intend
to make any presents, wait till a few weeks are past. Take the keys
into your own keeping when you go home; now God bless you, and be a
man!"

"God bless you, uncle!" said the young man, and went on towards his own
house. His eyes were still fixed on the ground, but at every step he
took he knew where he was; he knew every stone on the path. When he
came opposite the house, he felt as if he could not possibly cross
the threshold. To think of all that has happened there, now past and
gone--and what may the future have yet in store! But it must be borne.

The old maid was sitting in the kitchen beside the cold hearth, holding
her apron to her eyes, and when the young man came up to the house, she
said, sobbing: "Is that you, Lenz? God help you!"

The room seemed so empty, and yet everything was in it just as usual;
the work bench, with five partitions for the five workmen, beside the
straight rows of windows, and the materials for work hanging on the
walls by hooks and straps; the clocks ticked, the turtle doves cooed,
and yet everything looked so empty, and dead, and deserted. The easy
chair stood there with outspread arms, waiting. Lenz leaned on it and
wept bitterly; then he raised his head, and turned to the bedroom. "It
ca