It had become quite quiet; an angel flew through the room--; for a short time only: angels do not stay long here below; I know it for I stood with my head against our tall brown clock and cried and listened to the ticking of the pendulum--a short time! I looked up: the old Amtshauptmann was looking out of the uppermost window at the grey heavens, my mother and the Frau Amtshauptmann were crying, Mamsell Westphalen too; she had taken Fritz Sahlmann by the hand, and at the last stroke of the angel's wing she said;-- "Go up to the Schloss, Fritz, and put on dry clothes; Hanchen can give you your Sunday suit." "I will be off to Gülzow, Herr Amtshauptmann," said Luth, "and Tröpner can go round to Pribbenow, and then we can't both miss the Herr Burmeister." The Amtshauptmann nodded his head, walked up to my mother, against whose knees I had laid myself, and said,--"You and the boy, here, have good cause to thank God to-day, my friend." CHAPTER XV. How the Colonel was obliged to turn away at Fieka's words, and Fieka at Heinrich's. Why the Herr Rathsherr cursed all thin people; and the Miller wished he were a crow. When Fieka and Heinrich arrived at the Windmill-hill, she looked round on all sides, and, in a few moments, caught sight of her father as he sat with his companions under the mill-shed. "There's my father," said she to Heinrich. "Well, then," he replied, "we'll turn up here to the right of the pass, towards the ploughed field. It will be hard work; but there's no getting through 'Breakneck.' We shall get to the mill this way, and you can speak to your father then." "Stop," cried Fieka, "don't turn up to the right towards the mill; turn down to the left, away from it; I don't want to speak to him.--Look there now! He has seen us; he's making signs to us!" "Fieka," said Heinrich, doing as she told him, "what are you doing this for? Why do you want to get out of your father's way?" "Because I can't help him till I have given the Colonel the letter. Who knows, how the French might take it, if I spoke to him? There might be some dispute, and if we were taken before the Colonel so, it's not likely he would look on us with much favour. And then too, why should I be holding out hopes to my old father, when they are so far off? It's enough for the moment that he knows we are near him." The cannon were now gradually got out of their bed of mud, and the procession began to move on once more. The prisoners were led along one side of the pass; and Heinrich drove along the other--as well as he could over old Nahmaker's ploughed field. Fieka looked out for the Colonel. "I shall know him again when I see him," she said to Heinrich. "He has a kind face for all that it looked hard when he commanded them to take the Burmeister."