Petrovitsch was the first to rouse himself. He told of a house that had once been buried in this way, and of those who came to the rescue finding the bodies of four peasants with the cards still in their hands, crushed to death at the table round which they had been sitting. The old man shuddered as he told the story, and yet he could not keep it to himself; he must tell it and relieve his mind, though it should freeze the hearer's blood. But God would save them, he added, for the sake of the innocent child. He almost railed against the Providence which could doom the child as well as themselves to destruction. "She too is like a child again," replied Lenz. Petrovitsch shook his head and warned him not to trust to such sudden conversion. If ever they got out he must oblige Annele to sue daily and hourly for his love. Lenz disputed the matter with his uncle, who had never known what it was to be married; there was an angel in Annele, he said, that might well raise a man to a heaven on earth; the trouble had been that, in her frenzy, she had debased the good in her to the level of the evil. Petrovitsch only shook his head; he was evidently not convinced. Annele and the child awoke simultaneously with a cry of terror: "The roof is breaking in!" screamed Annele. "Where are you, Lenz? Keep by me; let us die together! put the child in my arms." When she was quieted, they all went together into the sitting-room. Lenz pounded up Cousin Ernestine's coffee-beans, and they drank their coffee by the light of the ghastly blue flame. The clocks struck. Annele said she should stop counting the strokes, and asking whether it was night or day; they were already in eternity. If the last cruel step were only over!--She had hoped for some answer to relieve her fears, her certainty of death; but none came. They sat for a long while in silence; words were useless. Lenz ventured at last to take advantage of the pleasant terms on which he and his uncle now stood, to ask why he had manifested such cruel reserve towards him. "Because I hated the man whose dressing-gown I now am wearing; yes, hated him. He treated me cruelly in my youth, and fixed the nickname of goatherd on me. Constant pressure leaves its mark on the hard wood, why not on a human heart? The thought that my only brother had rejected and banished me was always wearing into my soul. I came home in the hope of laying down the burden of hate which I had so long carried about the world. I can truly say, I hated him to his death. Why did he die before the word of reconciliation was spoken between us? On the long journey home I rejoiced at the prospect of having a brother again, and I found none. In the bottom of my heart I did not hate him, or why should I have come home? Never again in this world shall I hear the name of brother; soon elsewhere--"