Just as he arrived on the mountain ridge, day dawned, the stars in the sky grew pale, and Lenz gazed at the spacious snow covered region. Nowhere a symptom of life. Why should I live either? An expression taken from his sleepless nights, to signify total want of sleep, recurred to his memory--a _white sleep_--here it is! This feverish mood of his dreams made his cheeks burn, and an icy blast rushed over the heights. Lenz was startled out of his reverie, by the wind carrying away his hat down a steep precipice. Lenz was hurrying after it, but he suddenly saw that he was rushing to certain death. It crossed his mind that it would be a good thing if he were to lose his life by an accident; but he shuddered at such cowardly thoughts. The hail and snow continued incessantly, almost blinding him; even the crows in the air could scarcely guide their flight, being first hurled upwards, and then again dashed down, and those birds, usually flying along so steadily, fluttered their wings in wild terror and dismay. Lenz struggled manfully along against snow and wind, and at last he breathed freer. There the smoke from houses is rising. Lenz entered the first farmhouse. "Oh! Lenz! welcome! how glad I am that you have not forgotten me!" said a tall, stout woman, as he came in; she was standing at the hearth, and had just broken up a thick branch of a tree; "what have you done with your hat?" "Oh! now I recognize you--so it is you, Kathrine? You are grown stout. I come to you as a beggar." "Oh! Lenz, not so bad as that I hope?" "But it is indeed," said Lenz, smiling bitterly. He can even jest on such a subject. "You must lend me, or give me, an old hat, for the wind has carried off mine." "Come into the next room with me. My husband will be so sorry not to see you; he is gone to superintend timber being carted down the hill from the wood." Kathrine--for it was the Bailiff's daughter Kathrine--threw open the door of the adjoining room, and begged Lenz politely to go in first. The room was warm and comfortable. Kathrine was not offended by Lenz frankly owning that he had not come on purpose to see her, for he did not even know that she lived here; but he was heartily glad that chance had brought him to her house. "All your life long you were a truly good and honest man, and I am thankful to see that you are still the same," said Kathrine. She fetched an old grey hat, and a military cap of her husband's, and begged Lenz to take the cap, as the hat was too shabby, and not fit for him to wear; but Lenz chose the hat, though it was much crushed, and had no hatband. As Lenz was so positive, Kathrine brought her Sunday's cap with broad black ribbons, and cutting off one of the strings, she put it on the hat. In the meanwhile she spoke of her former home, and forgot no one.