"Good morning, Mr. von Rambow," said a kindly human voice beside him.--Alick pulled the handkerchief off his face and threw it over the pistol.--"You're up very early," said Zachariah Bräsig, for it was he, and as he spoke he sat down on the grass beside Alick, "but perhaps you're going to fish too?" Laying his hand on the handkerchief and pistol, he added: "Ah, I see you're going to practise pistol shooting." And rising he asked, "do you see that mark on the pine?--Slang's going to have the tree cut down--Now, I bet four pence that I hit it, and I never bet more than that"--bang! and missed it; bang! missed it again, and so on every time till he had fired off all the six shots the revolver contained. "Who would have thought it? Missed them all! I've lost my bet so, here's the four pence. It's a good-for-nothing thing," he exclaimed, throwing the revolver far into the lake, "and it's better there, for children and young people might get hold of it and imprudently shoot themselves dead with it."--Alick felt his thoughts in a strange whirl. Between him and the firm determination he had come to after much internal conflict and painful thought; between him and the dark portal through which he had made up his mind to pass although unsummoned, stood a common man, a mere clown as he had often called him in his thoughts, and withal a man who was as self-satisfied and impudent as a juggler at a fair. He sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "Sir!"--"And you, Sir!" cried Bräsig.--"What are you doing here?" asked Alick.--"And what are you doing here?" retorted Bräsig.--"You're a meddlesome fool!" cried Alick.--"And you're much the greater fool of the two!" cried uncle Bräsig, "You were about to do the most horrible of all deeds here, in your thoughtlessness. You have forgotten everything: Your wife and your child. H'm! you thought it a small thing to do, and then you'd be free. Am I not right? Who's the fool now?"--Alick was leaning against a pine-tree, one of his hands pressed upon his heart, and the other shading his eyes from the sun, while the "clown" who had prevented him entering the gates of death stood before him, fishing-rod in hand.--"Look you," continued uncle Bräsig, "if you had come here three minutes before I did"--these were the three minutes he spent weeping and praying at his wife's door--"you would now have been lying there with a hole through your head, a horrible example to all, and when you appeared before the throne of God, our Lord God would have said to you: You didn't know, Tom Fool, what your dear good wife did for you to-night, and Mr. bailiff Hawermann, and Mrs. Nüssler, and Mrs. Behrens, and Moses, and--and the others. If our Lord God had enlightened you on this subject, do you know where you would have felt yourself to be? In Hell!"--Alick had taken his hand down from his eyes, and was staring hard at Bräsig: "What? What are you saying?"--"That £4650 have been got for you this very night, that Moses is raising the