Paul meanwhile visited all the festivities and dances in the neighborhood. Any one who saw him appear in that merry crowd with his sombre brow and his scared, searching look, asked himself indeed, “What does he want here?” And many gave him a wide berth, as if a shadow had fallen on their joy. Paul was quite clear about what he was doing. He had heard that the Erdmanns let no festivity pass without going thither to be merry as wildly as possible. “I shall know how to meet them,” he said to himself; “the night is a dark and the heath lonely. They will look into my face and the face of death under God’s open sky.” Two days after his last visit to Lotkeim he had driven to the town and bought a revolver; a beautiful six-shooter, one with a long slender barrel. Like a wild animal he lurked about at night in the bushes and hidden paths of the heath when he thought they would pass. But they did not come. They seemed to have become suspicious, and therefore stayed at home; or, what was still more likely, their money had come to an end. “I can wait,” he said, and continued this mode of life; and when he occasionally spent the evening at home, and sat together with his sisters at the supper-table--a sad, silent meal--he felt terrified each time when he looked up and found his mother’s features reflected in the two pale, haggard young faces. It drove him out of the house again. It was Shrove Tuesday, the last night of the carnival, that a grand ball was to be given in the town-hall by the land-owners of the neighborhood. “I shall catch them there,” he said to himself, for he had heard that both the brothers were to be stewards of the festivity. When dusk approached he ordered his sledge, hid the revolver in the boot of it, and set out on his way to the town. The sun had been shining all day, and now the sky was all aglow with the last rays of the setting sun. The heath lay shrouded in a blue-gray mist, and sparkling ice-crystals were flying through the clear winter air. When he passed Helenenthal he saw two sledges moving towards the manor-house laden with fir branches. “It seems to me they are going to have a festivity there,” he murmured, looking after the sledges; and with a sombre smile he added, “I need not be jealous, for to-day I, too, hold a festival.” At six o’clock he arrived in the town, procured himself an entrance-ticket, and remained crouched in a corner of the inn till nine o’clock, absorbed in his own dark thoughts. When he entered the dancing-room, which was all stir and confusion, he hid himself in the shadow of a pillar, for he felt as though the murderous thoughts that filled his soul were written on his forehead, clearly visible to everybody.