THE more I saw of Marc the better I liked him. Every day I respected and admired him more. I secretly made him the model which I did all I could to copy. In every situation which troubled and puzzled me in my character of schoolboy, I would ask myself the question, “Now in my place what would Marc do?” and that decided me. One night when my father was reading his newspaper in the dining-room, I sat beside my mother talking quietly to her, and, as was my wont, extolling my hero Marc: for the hundredth time did I draw his picture in vivid word-painting for my mother’s edification. She listened as usual and smiled. Presently I noticed that she began looking about her as if she had lost something. She searched in her work-basket, on the floor, in the table drawers, and at last she tapped her forehead and said: “To be sure! I remember now, I must have left them in the garden.” “What is it, mamma?” I asked. “My scissors; I went into the garden this afternoon and was working there. I must have left them on the bench, or perhaps they fell under it.” She turned to go out of the room; as she did so I followed softly, and without her seeing me I opened the door which led from the corridor into the garden and went out. It was very dark. I saw little squares of light thrown through the kitchen window on the gravel; and that seemed to be the only light I could see anywhere. There was no moon, and no stars. I hesitated for a moment, one moment only, and then I said to myself, “What would Marc do? He would go and find his mother’s scissors, I am sure; _I_ will go then: yes, I will certainly go.” But as I made an uncertain and trembling step forward, my courage almost forsook me: it seemed as if it was not I walking there in the dark. I heard the loud beating of my heart, each throb was painful! I heard a surging in my ears and I held my breath involuntarily. All sorts of vague forms floated before my eyes. Something, surely, moved amongst the dead leaves to the right, I thought. I passed by quickly. But something is surely stealing along at the top of the wall to the left? Here I stopped, and waited a moment. What could it be? Something, I felt certain, was watching me, following every movement! However, on I went, and arrived at last, more dead than alive, at the wooden seat under the large cherry-tree. I passed my hand rapidly over the seat—no! the scissors were not there. “They must, then, be upon the ground,” said I to myself, and I said again, in a whisper, “What is easier than to pick them up? I must of course feel for them under the seat. Of course I must pick them up.”