t have her Gottlieb! Was it really such
madness, if one--? And Anna Maria stretched out her arms and sprang into
the little decaying boat by the bank.

"Anna Maria! Anna Maria!" called a man's voice just then, through the
still garden.

"Klaus!" she murmured, as if awakening; she tried to answer, but no
sound came from her lips. With a shudder, she climbed out of the
floating boat and turned her steps toward the house.

CHAPTER V.

Spring had come again. Two years had passed since that evening. In Buetze
Manor-house there was a vaulted, out-of-the-way room, which was entered
by a low, small door at the end of a dark passage; the windows looked
out upon the garden. Tall trees forbade entrance to the light, which had
to seek admission through an artistic old lattice-work as well. This had
been the lumber-room from time immemorial. All sorts of things lay,
hung, and stood there, in perfect confusion. Old presses and chests, old
spinning-wheels with yellowed ivory decorations, and dark oil portraits
on which one could hardly detect the trace of a face; a huge bedstead
with heavy gilt knobs--a French general had slept on it in the year
nine, and the late Herr von Hegewitz had banished the bed to the
lumber-room as a desecrated object after that, for it had originally
been made to shelter a prince of the royal family for a night. The wings
of the gilded eagle who sat so proudly at the top were broken off, and
his beak held now only a shred of the crimson curtain, as the last
remnant of former splendor. Fine cobwebs reached from one piece of
furniture to another, and yellowish dust lay on the floor, a sign that
the wood-worm was undisturbed here.

Here Anna Maria stood and looked about her, as if in search of
something. She scarcely knew herself just why she had come in here; she
had happened to go by, and then it had flashed across her mind that it
might be well to give the old lumber-room a breath of fresh spring air,
and she had taken the bunch of keys from her belt and come in. The young
linden leaves outside let one or two inquisitive sunbeams through the
window, and myriads of grains of dust floated up and down in them. It
was so quiet in the room, among the antique furniture. Anna Maria was
just in the mood for it; she sat down in an arm-chair and leaned her
head against the moth-eaten cushion, her eyes half-closed, her hands
folded in her lap.

She felt so peaceful; the old furniture seemed to preach to