The schoolmaster felt like a hero, as he tramped home through the snow. He was her knight; he had just paid that vulgar, disgusting fellow out. Jokisch had received the first and last kick from him as they all together had conveyed the heavy man to the door. "Throw him out, that slanderer!" This [Pg 66] time they had all made common cause, all except the gendarme, who had retired at the very last moment. He always did so when there was any quarrelling going on in the private room at the inn, otherwise he would have been obliged to write down the names of these disturbers of the peace. The stars shone down on the schoolmaster as he walked home all alone; the cold wintry sky looked like a huge glass bell that had been put over the flat country. The stars gave light; he could easily discern the empty village street, which was as wide as the widest street in a big town--so wide that it made the low cottages on either side look twice as low as they really were. Böhnke stumbled along as though he were intoxicated. But that was not the case, for he never drank too much, whatever the others might do. He was tormented with an ambitious longing to win this woman. Mrs. Tiralla was always very kind to him; he thought he had noticed that she also looked upon him as a kindred spirit. To-morrow he would see little Rosa--that dreamy child who would sit with a vacant stare on her face and not know what the others had been talking about--and he would tell her to remember him very kindly to her mother, and to ask her if she wanted anything to read during these long winter days. She could take her choice among his books. He would gladly lend her them all, in spite of the many hardships he had had to undergo in order to procure them. She had certainly borrowed a volume from him almost three years ago; she had had it almost the whole time he had been in the neighbourhood, and he would probably never see it again. But he did not mind that. To-morrow he would again place his library at her disposal. The best thing would be to write her a note and give it to [Pg 67] the child. He wrote a most beautiful hand, it looked like print. How the other people in this neighbourhood did scrawl!