Such weather! I wouldn't send a dog out in such weather. It rained and hailed and blew all at the same time. Some of the gentlemen wore mackintoshes, and the water ran down the folds in rivulets. And it ran down their cheeks and into their beards--perhaps a few tears, too--because he left no enemies behind. Not he. There was only one chief mourner--what the world calls chief mourner--his son, a dragoon of the Guards in Berlin. Lothar was his name. He had come from Berlin on the day of his father's death, and he behaved like a good son, kissed his father's hands, cried a good deal, thanked me gratefully, and did a dreadful lot of ordering around--a lieutenant, you know--when all of a sudden--well, I was there--and we had arranged everything. As I looked out of the corner of my eyes at the handsome fellow standing there manfully choking down his tears, I thought of what my old friend had said to me the day before he died. "Hanckel," he had said, "take pity on me in my grave. Don't forsake my boy." As I said, that is what occurred to me, and when the pastor beckoned to me to come throw the three handfuls of earth in the grave, I silently sent a vow along with them, "I will not forsake him, old fellow, Amen." Everything comes to an end. The gravediggers had made a sort of mound of the mud, and laid the wreaths on top, since there were no women at the funeral. The neighbours took leave, and the only ones that remained were the pastor, Lothar and myself. The boy stood like a block of stone, staring at the mound as if to dig it up again with his eyes, and the wind blew the collar of his riding coat about his ears. The pastor tapped him gently on his shoulder and said: "Baron, will you allow an old man one word more----" But I beckoned to him to step aside. "Just go home, little minister," I said, "and get your wife to give you a glass of good hot punch. I fancy it's a bit draughty in that silk vestment of yours." "Hee, hee!" he said, and grinned slily. "It looks as if it were, but I wear my overcoat underneath." "Never mind," I said. "Go home. I'll look out for the boy. I know better than you where the shoes pinches _him_." So then he left us alone. "Well, my boy," I said, "you can't bring him back to life again. Come home, and if you want, I'll sleep at your house to-night." "Never mind, uncle," he said. That's what he called me because they had once nicknamed me uncle in a joke. His face was hard and sullen, as if to say, "Why do you bother me in my grief?" "But maybe we can talk over business?" I asked. He had nothing to say to that. You know what an empty house is like after a funeral, gentlemen. When you come back from the cemetery, the smell of the coffin still clings, and the smell of fading flowers. Ghastly!