In the mean time she tried to be calm and quiet. Not till late at night, did Lenz return from the town with an adverse decision. There was no legal right on this property to the shelter of the wood; and when Lenz awoke in the morning, and heard the strokes of the axe on the hill behind his house, every stroke seemed to cut into his flesh. "I might as well die at once," said he to himself, despondingly, as he went to his work. The whole day he never said a word, and not till night, when he put out the light in his room, did he say aloud:--"I wish I could extinguish my life like this." Annele pretended not to hear him. Annele had as yet shed no tear, either for her own misfortunes, or the misery of her parents. With the exception of bewailing the fate of her children, when she first heard what had occurred, she was calm and composed. When, however, morning after morning, no more newly baked white bread came from the village, when she placed the loaf on the table beside the coffee, bitter tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on the bread: she cut it off before Lenz saw it, and swallowed the bread steeped in her tears. CHAPTER XXVII. EVERYTHING GONE. The Commissioners of Bankruptcy dragged everything into open day, and then came to light all the "Lion's" secret doings. The Landlord then appeared in all his iniquity. In order to give security to people who, being strangers, were cautious in their dealings with him, he had deliberately deceived those who were connected with him, and dependent on him. Even his own postilions had lost their hardly earned savings. Poor clockmakers went up and down the village, complaining that the Landlord had robbed them of months and years of their lives, and they would all have been ready to swear that he was the most upright man in the whole country, far or near. The Landlady fared no better, in spite of her affectation of entire innocence. She had always made a great show in her house, and talked so big, and been so condescending to everybody! The Landlord had only deceived by his silence, and gloried in being called an honest man right and left, and correct and accurate into the bargain.