'Yes,' he hiccupped, with an oath, as he was taken in a droski across the Adolphs-brucke and the Nuerwall, 'I'll end it all, or know the reason why! I have played the whining fool too long. Am I to pass my days in slaving to study her whim-whams?--to overcome her prudery and sham scruples? Am I a fool or a boy? Of what or of whom am I afraid? I will now listen only to the dictates of my own mind.' He muttered much more to the same purpose aloud, and, quitting the droski at the corner of the Grosse Bleichen, thrust a double-mark into the driver's hand, and, without thinking of change, proceeded on foot to the house of Herr Wyburg. A mass with three pointed gables, and each storey overhanging the other on beams of timber, rose before him. All was dark in and around it when he approached the door, and, tipsy though he was, he could hear--he thought--the beating of his heart, and for a moment--but a moment only--an emotion of timidity, even of shame, came over him. 'Pshaw!' he exclaimed, with a malediction, and rang the bell. After some delay and parleying, he was admitted by the drowsy Lenchen, who surveyed him with more annoyance than respect in her visage; but he strode past her without a word, and ascended to Herr Wyburg's sitting-room. He found that worthy attired in his grotesque _Reiter-Diener_ costume, with his steeple-crowned hat and toledo on the table beside him. He was asleep in an easy-chair, and, after being at a funeral, had drank and smoked himself into a state of partial insensibility. 'I wish to see the Fraulein,' said Sleath to Frau Wyburg, who glanced at him inquiringly. 'She must be asleep,' was the answer. 'I must see and speak with her.' 'Ah, you have found her friends, then?' said Frau Wyburg, with one of her detestable leers. Sleath made no reply, but, snatching a candle from the table, proceeded at once towards the apartment of Ellinor, with a strange pallor in his face, his bloodshot eyes aflame, and his steps unsteady. He hesitated a moment, and then turned the handle of the door. It was locked on the inside, and refused to yield. He might naturally have expected this; but it served to surprise and exasperate him, for at that moment he was in the mood to fight with his own shadow. 'Ellinor, rouse yourself--I have news for you--news at last!' he exclaimed, and knocked on the door-panels more noisily than respectfully. But there was no response from within. He applied his ear to the keyhole; there was not a sound to be heard, and, as he had been given to understand that young girls generally slept lightly, it was impossible he could fail to waken her.