“Now they may hear, now they may come!” His hand pulled at the valve of the steam-whistle, and shrilly the night echoed her cry: “I live! I live!” Then he folded his hands and murmured, softly, “O mother, you should have lived to see this!” And as he said so it suddenly occurred to him that this, too, was useless--that death was upon him also, crying into his ear, “You will die! will die! before having lived.” “I have still work to do,” he said, with moist eyes. “First, I will see my sisters happy, for if they remain poor they will be treated brutally; then I must see the farm right itself; then death may come.” And, like the black clouds around, years and years of struggling and years of care rose up before his eyes. With sleepy faces the inmates appeared at the gate of the shed; the sisters came, too, and stood anxiously clinging to each other, in the smoke and the glow of the fire, looking in their white dressing-gowns like two pale roses on the same stalk. “Here your future is being prepared, you poor things,” he murmured, nodding to them. When the foreman had come, Paul went into his father’s bedroom, who stared at him confusedly. “Father,” he said, modestly, though his heart swelled with pride, “the locomobile is in working order; as soon as the ground has thawed the work on the moor can begin.” The old man said, “Leave me in peace,” and turned his head to the wall. Next morning, when the locomobile was pulled out, a strange rattling, scrunching sound was heard on the threshold of the shed. “Something has got under the wheels,” said the foreman. Paul looked. There, in a heap of little fragments, broken in half, and pressed quite flat, lay--Elsbeth’s flute. A bitter smile came over his face, as if he meant to say, “Now I have sacrificed to you all that I have; now can you be satisfied, Dame Care?” Since that day he felt as if the last link between himself and Elsbeth was severed--he had lost her, like his dreams, his hopes, his dignity, his own self. With hurrahs, “Black Susy” wandered out onto the moor. CHAPTER XIX. Years went by. The sisters had already long been settled as happy wives, their dowry was paid, and the brothers-in-law had already begun to borrow from Paul.