hey follow. We'll go first up the high road by the Lautenhof. To-morrow
will be a fair-day. People will come early from the villages and tread
down the snow, so the dogs will lose the scent. If it would only snow."

Before the smithy, the doctor held out his hand to Adam, saying: "We
part here, friend."

"We'll go with you, if agreeable to you."

"Consider," the other began warningly, but Adam interrupted him, saying:

"I have considered everything; lost is lost. Ulrich, take the doctor's
sack from his shoulder."

For a long time nothing more was said.

The night was clear and cold; the men's footsteps fell noiselessly on
the soft snow, nothing was heard except the creaking of the sledge,
and ever and anon Elizabeth's low moaning, or a louder word in the old
woman's soliloquy. Ruth had fallen asleep on her mother's lap, and was
breathing heavily.

At Lautenhof a narrow path led through the mountains deep into the
forest.

As it grew steeper, the snow became knee-deep, and the men helped the
little horse, which often coughed, tossing its thick head up and down,
as if working a churn. Once, when the poor creature met with a very
heavy fall, Marx pointed to the green woollen scarf on the animal's
neck, and whispered to the smith "Twenty years old, and has the glanders
besides."

The little beast nodded slowly and mournfully, as if to say: "Life is
hard; this will probably be the last time I draw a sleigh."

The broad, heavy-laden pine-boughs drooped wearily by the roadside, the
gleaming surface of the snow stretched in a monotonous sheet of white
between the trunks of the trees, the tops of the dark rocks beside the
way bore smooth white caps of loose snow, the forest stream was frozen
along the edges, only in the centre did the water trickle through
snow-crystals and sharp icicles to the valley.

So long as the moon shone, flickering rays danced and sparkled on the
ice and snow, but afterwards only the tedious glimmer of the universal
snow-pall lighted the traveller's way.

"If it would only snow!" repeated the charcoal-burner.

The higher they went, the deeper grew the snow, the more wearisome the
wading and climbing.

Often, on the doctor's account, the smith called in a low voice, "Halt!"
and then Costa approached the sleigh and asked: "How do you feel?" or
said: "We are getting on bravely."

Rahel screamed whenever a fox barked in the distance, a wolf howled, or
an owl flew through the treetops, bru