Through these swarms of people a tall man walked slowly; his head had sunk on his breast. He did not hear the nightingale's note, and passed through the circle of dancing children without one sound of their happy voices falling upon his ear. He passed into the suburbs, slowly ascended a flower-crowned hill, and sat down on a bench. Beneath him the dark river rolled onward to the sea, and opposite him rose the mighty mass of the old cathedral. The river was covered with timber-rafts brought down from the mountains. On these rafts stood the little huts of their rowers, with small fires in them, at which the men were now preparing their suppers. He too had had to do with timber-rafts like these, and the money he had thus won had been spoken of as a theft. He got up hastily and hurried down the hill. His way lay through an alley of tall sycamores, and again he stopped, and wearily leaned against the trunk of a tree. Before him rose the chimneys of the manufacturing part of the town. He too knew what it was to build a tall pile like that. He had laid all he had at its base--his strength, his money, his honor. He had paid for it with sleepless nights and whitened hair; it was the tomb-stone of his race which he had raised on his estate, and what he now saw before him in the uncertain light was a monster church-yard, full of shadowy monuments, beneath which lay coffined the peace of mind of many wretched men; and nodding, he said, and started to hear his own words, "It is the last." He rose and went to his house. On his way thither he felt how comforting it was to think of that which would free him from such hideous pictures. He went in and smiled when the lamp shone on his face. As he stood in the hall he could hear voices in his wife's room. Lenore was reading aloud. He listened and heard that she was reading a novel. He would not frighten those poor women; but there was a back room apart from all the rest--he would go there. While he was still standing in the hall, the room door opened, and the baroness looked out. She gave an involuntary start when she saw him. He smiled and cheerfully entered the room, gave his hand to his wife, stroked Lenore's head, and bent down to see what she was reading. The baroness regretted that she had had her tea without him, and he joked her about her impatience for her favorite beverage. He went to the cage in which two foreign birds were sitting on the same perch, their small heads resting against each other, and putting his fingers to the wires as if to stroke them, he said absently, "They are gone to rest." Then taking the waxlight from the servant's hand, he moved toward his own room. As he took hold of the door-handle, he remarked that his wife's eyes followed him anxiously, and, turning toward her, he nodded cheerfully. Then he closed the door, took a polished case out of his writing-table, and carried it and the candle to the small back room. Here he was sure he should disturb no one.