but he could not be clear about anything. That was not
generally possible, he had read in one of the books, and the statement
pacified him. He had read all kinds of theological books, had easily
and trustfully given himself up to the echo of words heard in
childhood, but it had not gone deeper. Now that they ought to prove
their worth, they left him in the lurch. He turned over the pages, he
read and prayed and sought, and found nothing to relieve his need.
Discouraged, he pushed the books away from him, and some of them fell
over the edge of the table on to the brick floor.

In the night that followed Konrad had a dream, vivid and clear as never
dream had been. It was a dark country, and he had lost his way. He
wandered about amid cold, damp rocks, and could not find a path. Then
his fingers felt a thread; he seized it, and it guided him through the
darkness. The land grew brighter and brighter; the thread brought him
into his sunny native valley, to the place with the old gabled houses,
to his father's house which stood amidst the fruit-trees, and the
thread to which his fingers still clung involuntarily led him into the
room where it had been spun from his mother's distaff. And there she
sat and span the thread, with her pale face and soft wrinkles and kind
eyes, and directly the boy stood near her she told him tales of the
Saviour. He listened to her and was a happy child. That was his
dream. And when he awoke in the prison cell, his mother's gentle voice
still sounded in his ears: "My child, you must cling to Jesus."

Konrad was taken every day for half an hour into the dirty and sunless
courtyard. But he dreaded that half-hour. It stirred a vain longing
for light. And the rough and insolent fellow-prisoners with whom he
was brought in contact! He preferred to be alone in his quiet cell.

During his imprisonment he had often asked for work, but was always
informed that nothing of the sort had been provided for by the
authorities. Besides--work was an honourable thing, and it must first
be proved that he was worthy of it. But now it was not a time for
work, rather a time for preparation. What could he do in order to get
through these days? Or what could he do in order to keep the days from
flying so quickly? Look how a flash of lightning seems sometimes to
pass over the floor. Then it is gone again. High up in the opposite
wall, on which the sun sometimes shone, was a casement window, and i