Lenz had never before been the last guest in the inn. He could not make up his mind to get up and go home. The great clock in the public room struck the hour noisily and admonishingly, the weights rattled angrily, but Lenz did not hear. The landlord was the only other person in the room, his wife having long since gone to bed. He left his seat at the adjoining table, where he had been reading the paper, and signed to Annele to put up her work. She could not have understood him, for she went on talking eagerly. He put out his light with a clatter, but even that failed to rouse the pair. He walked up and down the room in his creaking boots; Lenz paid no attention. Never before had the landlord's presence been thus ignored. He struck his repeater; Lenz gave no heed. At last--for mine host was not accustomed to put restraint upon himself for any man--he spoke: "Lenz, if you mean to spend the night here, I will show you a room." Lenz roused himself, shook hands with Annele, and would have liked to do the same with the landlord; but that was too great a liberty to take unless invited. Revolving many thoughts in his mind, he left the house, and silently took his way homeward. CHAPTER XIII. LION, FOX, AND MAGPIE. In the early winter, as in the early spring, the Morgenhalde was the pleasantest place in the whole country. Old Lenz was right in saying that the morning sun lay on his house and meadow all day long. But little fire was needed half the day. Flowers blossomed in the garden behind the house long after they had disappeared everywhere else, and put out their leaves again in the spring, when everything else was bare. This garden was as sheltered as a room, and in it grew, what was rare in those parts, a chestnut-tree, which attracted many an unwelcome squirrel and nutpecker from the neighboring forest. The house protected the garden on one side without keeping from it the sun after ten o'clock; and the mighty forest which covered the upper part of the steep mountain seemed to take special pleasure in both house and garden, and had stationed two of its tallest pines as sentinels at the gate.