roars within it. In a moment it is all a
burning mound; the red flames flash aloft into the blue air, high above
the wood which is now no longer visible. A thick black smoke ascends up
into the clear air, where it rests like a cloud. Out of the flames,
and even out of the smoke, the wind carries away large masses of fire,
which, crackling and cracking, are borne on to the wood, and which fill
the spectator with apprehension of their falling upon the nearest trees
and burning up leaf and branch.

"Let us go further off," said Sophie; "the heat is too great here."

They withdrew to the ditch.

"O, how many nuts!" exclaimed Wilhelm; "and I do not get one of them! I
shall go after them if they be ripe."

"But you have grapes and other beautiful fruit!" said Eva smiling. "We
have our beautiful things at home!"

"Yes, it is beautiful, very beautiful at home!" exclaimed Wilhelm;
"glorious flowers, wild nuts; and there we have Vesuvius before us!" He
pointed to the burning pile.

"No," said Sophie; "it seems to me much more like the pile upon
which the Hindoo widow lays herself alive to be burned! That must be
horrible!"

"One should certainly be very quickly dead!" said Eva.

"Would you actually allow yourself to be burned to death, if you were a
Hindoo widow--after, for instance, Mr. Thostrup, or after Wilhelm," said
she, with a slight embarrassment, "if he lay dead in the fire?"

"If it were the custom of the country, and I really had lost the only
support which I had in the world--yes, so I would!"

"O, no, no!" said Louise.

"In fact it is brilliant!" exclaimed Sophie.

"Burning is not, perhaps, the most painful of deaths!" said Otto, and
plucked in an absent manner the nuts from the hedge. "I know a story
about a true conflagration."

"What is it like?" asked Wilhelm.

"Yet it is not a story to tell in a large company; it can only be heard
when two and two are together. When I have an opportunity, I shall tell
it!"

"O, I know it!" said Wilhelm. "You can relate it to one of my sisters
there, whichever you like best! Then I shall--yes, I must relate it to
Eva!"

"It is too early in the day to hear stories told!" said Louise; "let us
rather sing a song!"

"No, then we shall have to weep in the evening," replied Wilhelm. And
they had neither the song nor the story.

Mamma came wandering with Vasserine, the old, faithful hound: they
two also wished to see how beautiful the burning looked. It succeeded