an end to
his life. Then he stood erect and took a fresh cigar.

He went down into the park; the trees were quivering noiselessly in the
early dawn, and their leaves rustled and whispered when the morning
sunbeam stirred them into music and motion. The birds were carroling;
they had their home and their family, and to them no child was
missing----

Sonnenkamp wandered hither and thither. This soil is his, these trees
are his, everything is green, blooming, breathing a fresh life. Does he
still breathe for whom all this had life, for whom it all was to live,
for whom it was planted and set in order?

"Why is it? why is it?" shrieked Sonnenkamp through the park. No reply
came from without; perhaps one came from within, for he pressed both
hands, doubled up, against his breast.

He came into the orchard. There stood the trees, whose branches he had
shaped according to his pleasure; they stood in full blossom, and now,
in the first morning beam, the blossoms were falling down like a low
rustling rain upon the ground, that looked white as if covered with
flakes of snow.

The lighter the morning became, the more confident did Sonnenkamp feel
that Roland was floating there a corpse in the river, which was now of
a reddish purple, a stream of blood; the far-extending water was
nothing but blood! He uttered a deep groan, and stretched out his hand,
as if he must grasp and throttle something. He seized hold of a tree
and shook it, and shook it again and again, so that there was scarcely
a blossom left upon it; he stood there covered all over with the
petals. And now he broke out into a scornful laugh.

"Life shall not vanquish me! Nothing! Not even thou! Roland, where art
thou?"

At this instant he saw a white form, with a strange head-covering,
glide through the orchard, and vanish behind the trees. What is that?
He rubbed his eyes. Was that a mere fancy, or was it a reality?

He went after the apparition.

"Stop," he cried, "there are steel-traps there, there's a spring-gun
there!" A woman's voice uttered a lamentable, shriek. Sonnenkamp went
up to her, and Fraeulein Milch stood before him. "What do you want here?
What's the matter?"

"I wanted the Herr Major."

"He is still asleep."

"I may also tell you," Fraeulein Milch began, composing herself, "it
leaves me no rest."

"Out with it,--no preliminaries!"

Fraeulein Milch drew herself up haughtily and said,--

"If you are in that humor, I can go away as I