He turned quickly round and saw another shadowy couple, who seemed to sink into the ground behind a bush. “The whole heath seems alive to-day,” he murmured, and added, smiling, “of course, it is mid summer night.” Soon after him the twins came home with wild hair and flushed faces. They declared the vicar had told them their fortunes by cards till midnight. They would soon get husbands. Giggling, they slipped away into their bedroom. CHAPTER XII Old Meyerhofer revelled in happiness. The promise of the rich Douglas to participate in his undertakings had raised his chances suddenly to a giddy height. The ears which for him heretofore had been closed began to listen to his explanations with eagerness, and in the public houses, where until now he had been received with a half ironical, half pitying smile, he was now considered a great man. “He will join me with half his fortune,” he related, “we are already in communication with Borsig, in Berlin, who is going to furnish us with the necessary machines, we have written to Oldenburg for a technical director, and every day we have inquiries at what price we are able to sell the peat blocks per million.” The consequence was that they pressed him to begin issuing his shares and when they gathered round him and asked him to reserve so and so many shares for each, he drew himself up proudly and said they would probably remain in private hands. At home he was busy designing the new headings for the note paper of the future firm, and the borrowed money jingled in all his pockets. Four weeks had passed since that midsummer night, when there came from Helenenthal two cards of invitation one for Meyerhofer junior and the other for the young ladies. “For a garden party,” they said. “Aha! they court our favor already,” the old man cried, “the rats smell the bacon.” Paul went with his card--which bore Elsbeth’s hand-writing--behind a haystack, and there studied each letter of it in solitude for wellnigh an hour. Then he went up to his garret and stood before the looking glass. He found that his whiskers had grown in fulness and only at the cheeks still showed thin places. “It will do very well,” he said, in an attack of vanity, but when he saw himself smile he wondered at the deep sad lines which ran from his eyes, past his nose, down to the corners of his mouth. “Wrinkles make one interesting,” he consoled himself by thinking. From this hour he exclusively thought about what role he was to play at the party. He practised before the looking glass making stylish bows, and every morning looked at his Sunday suit, and tried to hide the shabbiness of his coat by brushing some black color over it. The invitation had caused a great revolution in his mind It was for him a greeting from the promised land of joy, which he, like Moses, had never seen but from afar. It was not for nothing that he was twenty years old.