Frau Helena had joined her daughter, who stood in the open doorway looking down, beyond the dark steps leading into the garden, to the river Aar, lost in vague, dream-like thoughts, such as are wont to succeed a festive day when the soul is once more free to retire into itself. She gently laid her hand on her daughter's hair, and the sweet child silently leaned her head down on the mother's shoulder, as though to seek shelter from the vivid flash of lightning that suddenly rent the black cloud above them. "Come in, child," said the mother, "we shall soon have rain." The daughter shook her head without saying a word. She was now gazing steadily on the clear space of sky at the horizon, where the snow peaks of the Oberland far away from the range of the thunder-cloud, rose glittering in the moonlight, a wondrous spectacle indeed. "Dear little mother," at length she said, "how vast the earth is! Yonder they neither see nor hear anything of the storm that rages here. And yet still further off, in that star just above the Rothhorn, they would know nothing of it if our earth were to be shivered to atoms!" Her mother made no reply. Her thoughts were--she herself did not know where, but well she knew with whom--with the one they had always flown to at the approach of bad weather for many years past; because, while the sky was growing dark, she could not tell whether her boy had a roof over his head or not. "How the river feels and answers to the storm!" resumed the girl. "One might really fancy one saw the surface shudder with terror as the lightnings flash down. And yet they can go on dancing and fiddling in the tavern on the little island yonder. They must be a godless set." "They will soon leave off," said the mother, "it will be too bad even for them. No human being is so hardened but what the hour comes when he hearkens if God warns him. But let us come in. The drops that fall are large as hazel-nuts." "Look, mother," said the daughter holding her back, "there is something not right going on there. The door of the tavern is suddenly thrown open--people are rushing out--there is a girl in their midst--something flashes like a sword-blade--listen! they are quarrelling--oh, what wild unruly creatures!" The thunder now paused, and a sound of angry voices as well as of breaking glass was plainly audible, while a single clarionet, undisturbed by all the noise and confusion, went shrilly on playing gay dancing tunes. "I would give a hundred crowns," said Frau Helena with brows knit, "if that sink of iniquity yonder were removed from the town. I really might be driven to think of changing my house in my old days, merely to escape hearing and seeing such things as these."