“You must lock the gates to-night,” he said, before he left the yard, for he had a dull presentiment that he would only come home late at night, were it only for the sake of roaming about in the snow. The white heath lay silent. Deep under the snow lay the withered flowers, and where a juniper-bush had stood before there was now a little white heap that looked like a mole-hill. Even the stems of the pollard willows were white, but only on the side against which the wind had blown. Painfully he walked on across the snow-covered heath, at every step sinking in over his ankles. From time to time a crow flew through the air with heavy wings, fighting with difficulty against the snow-storm. There was no path or road to be seen.... The three long fir-trees, which in the distance stood out against the sky like black phantoms, were the only sign by which he could direct his footsteps. The golden streak, which for a few moments had flamed upon the horizon, vanished; lower and lower the shadows were sinking, and when Paul had reached the wall of the cemetery, which towered above him like a ghostly rampart, it had become quite dark; but the freshly-fallen snow gave an uncertain light, so that he hoped to find his mother’s grave soon. The gate was snowed up--the snow had been heaped up by the wind; nowhere was an entrance to be discovered. So he groped his way with difficulty along the hedge, from which, here and there, a black twig stretched forth its sharp thorns out of the white covering, till his arms sank deeper into the snow without meeting any resistance. From there he forced his way to the inner cemetery. The firs greeted him with a hollow moan, and a raven which had been sitting in the snow flew up noiselessly and circled round their tops restlessly, like a poor soul that cannot find peace. When he saw the snow-covered plain in its pale uniformity lying before his eyes a terror overcame him, for he saw no sign by which to distinguish his mother’s grave. There was no cross on the mound, for he had not had money to buy one, but the mound itself lay dead under the levelling expanse of snow. A torturing anxiety seized him; he felt as if he had now lost the very last thing that he possessed in life. And with a trembling hand he began to grope about in the snow, from one mound to the other--a long row, from among which, here and there, a wreath or a little cypress-tree stood out in the dusk. “Here rests this one, here that one.” He knew almost every grave and who reposed beneath it.