rough the graveyard, towards the bleak fields and
the marshland which surrounded the dreary northern town.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST STEP

'Happy the nations of the moral North!
Where all is virtue, and the winter season
Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth.'

_Don Juan_, Canto II.

WILHELMINE walked on for some twenty minutes, the cold morning air
bringing a bright colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. Her
gait was one of her greatest charms; it never seemed hurried, and yet the
long, even steps carried her swiftly onwards. There was vigorous
elasticity in her tread; she walked freely and with perfectly assured
balance, her shoulders thrown back and head erect. It was in a measure
this walk of hers which caused the townsfolk to call her 'the proud
hussy,' though they were careful not to let her hear their disparaging
remarks, for they feared the compelling power of her strange eyes. It was
whispered that it was dangerous to offend her. 'Though, of course,' they
declared, 'we do not really believe in witchcraft and such Popish
abominations, still it is certainly true that Hans Frisch, the
blacksmith's child, who threw a snowball at her last winter and had the
misfortune to hit her on the face, went home, took to his bed, and nearly
died of convulsions.' Of this talk Wilhelmine was unaware, though,
knowing the effect of her eyes upon people, she would often voluntarily
narrow her lids, causing the pupils to contract. She practised this feat
before the mirror, but she was careful not to do so at night, for it gave
her an uncanny feeling, and she sometimes succeeded in frightening
herself, as she did others. That cold morning, while she walked, there
was none of all this in her face; she was merely a gloriously healthy
young being rejoicing simply and naturally in the morning freshness and
in the pulsing of the blood in her veins. She was feeling the elation of
health, and it chased away her morbid fancies in spite of the dreariness
of the wet fields around her. Indeed, it needed the buoyancy of youth to
counteract the profound melancholy of the Mecklemburg lake-country in
winter. The enormous flat fields stretching away in unbroken monotony,
the road very straight, with a division of colour in the middle where the
summer road marched with the winter road; the former merely a soaking
mud-bog, the latter hard and stony. On each side of the highway a