A strangely happy feeling, mingled of sadness and joy, came over me, such as I had never known before. I could have thrown myself upon the earth and wept; I could have leaped and shouted in exultation. I could not then comprehend what it was that so singularly possessed me. Now I know well what it was: it was the sense of delight that must thrill through the fish when he darts like an arrow through the liquid crystal, the bird when he sweeps on expanded pinions through the air, the stag when he bounds over the wild plain; the rapture that thrills man's breast when in the full glow of youth and vigor he feels himself one with the great mother, Nature. The fore-feeling of this delight, the longing to taste it, are what drives the man from the narrow round of circumstances in which he was born, out into the wide world, across seas, into the desert, to the peaks of the Alps, anywhere where the winds blow free, where the heaven broadens grandly above, where he must risk his life to win it. Does this after-thought excuse the insolent obstinacy of which I had been guilty towards my father; and the terrible rashness with which I staked my whole future on a cast of the die? Assuredly not. I will excuse nothing, extenuate nothing; but simply narrate what happened to me and within me during these events and those that followed; only giving an explanation here and there when circumstances seem to require it. Let the story tell its own moral; only this will I add, for the consolation of thoughtful souls, that if, as cannot be gainsaid, my conduct deserved punishment, this punishment was dealt out to me speedily, and that in no stinted measure. But at the time the haggard form with the lame foot was still too far behind to cast the shade of her terrors upon me; two other figures, however, as I hastened with a quickened pace over the heath, appeared in sight, who had assuredly nothing spectral about them, for they were standing in a close embrace. They sprang apart, with a cry of alarm from a female voice, as, turning sharply around a hillock, I came directly upon them. The maiden caught up a great basket, which she had set upon the ground, having just had other employment for her arms, and her companion gave an "Ahem!" which was so loud and so confused that it could only have proceeded from a very innocent breast. "Good evening," I said; "I trust----" "Good Lord! is it really you?" said the man. "Why, Christel, only think it's him!"--and Klaus caught Christel Möwe, who was about taking to flight, by her dress, and detained her. "Oh! I thought it was _him_!" stammered Christel, whose mind did not seem entirely relieved by the discovery that if they had been espied it was by a good friend.