"How pretty and fresh our home was then, in the valley yonder! He was our neighbour's son, and honest, and industrious, and handsome. No one now-a-days is half so handsome. People may be offended with me if they like, but so it is;--but he--I cannot name his name, though everyone knows, all the same, that he was called Anton Striegler. He was resolved to go to travel, and so he went off to foreign parts with merchandise; and by the brookside he took leave of me, and said, 'Franzl,' said he, 'so long as that brook runs, I will be faithful and true at heart to you; and be you the same to me.' He could say all these fine words, and write them down too; that is the way with these false men; I could never have believed it. In the course of four years, I got seventeen letters from him--from France, England, and Spain. The letter from England cost me at the time a crown dollar, for it came at the moment when Napoleon did not choose us to receive either foreign letters, or coffee; so our Pastor said the letter had come round by Constantinople and Austria, but at all events it cost a whole crown dollar. For a long, long time after, I never got one. I waited fourteen years, then I heard that he had married a black woman, in Spain. I never wanted to hear any more of the bad man, and none could be worse. And then I took out of my drawer the fine letters, the fine lying letters that he had written to me, and I burned them all, my love going off with them in smoke, up the chimney." Franzl always finished her tale of woe with these heroic words. On this occasion she had a good listener,--there could not be a better; he had but one fault, which was that, in fact, he did not hear one word she said; he only looked intently at her, and thought of Annele. At last Franzl, through gratitude, began to talk of her. "Yes, yes, I will take care to tell Annele what an excellent creature you are, and how kind you have always been to me. Don't look so grave and gloomy,--you ought to be so merry. I know well--oh, heavens! but too well--that when we have just secured such great happiness, we seem quite upset by it God be praised! you are in luck;--you can stay quietly at home together, and can say good morning, and good night, to each other every day that God gives you. Now I must say good night! It is very late." It was past midnight when at length Lenz went to rest, and he fell asleep with a "Good night, Annele! good night, you dear creature!" He had strange sensations in the morning. He remembered what he had dreamt. His dream placed him on the top of the high rock on the crest of the hill behind his house, and he was always lifting his foot, and trying to soar into the air. "What nonsense to allow myself to be plagued by a mere dream!" So he tried to forget it, and, quickly effacing it from his memory, he looked at Annele's coin.