Annele smiled, and said it had been so ordained; and that it was well she should bear about with her a lasting token that she had been in the jaws of death, and must now be doubly good in the world. "You forgive me, too, don't you, Franzl? I assure you I thought of you at the hour when death seemed very near." Franzl burst into tears. It was indeed wonderful to see the transformation that had taken place in Annele. When she heard the church bells ringing for the first time, she took her little girl in her arms, and, making her clasp her hands, she exclaimed, "Oh, my child, I little thought we should ever hear these sounds again!" And when Franzl brought in the first pailful of water, she cried, "Oh, how pure and refreshing spring water is! I thank our Heavenly Father who gives it to us!" While the men had almost entirely recovered the awful hours when they had been momentarily exposed to destruction, Annele seemed to herself to have risen from the dead; she was now mild and gentle, and every hasty word went to her heart, so that Franzl often lamented to Pilgrim, and said, "I fear Annele will not live long, there is something so holy and unearthly in her look." The escape of the inhabitants of the house on the Morgenhalde, was the cause of an event passing almost unperceived, that would otherwise have been a source of much talk and discussion. On the second day after Lenz's rescue, the body of a man was found in a wooded ravine near Knuslingen, buried under the snow frozen. It was that of Proebler. No one regretted his fate so much as Lenz, for he could not help thinking that it was his voice he had heard calling him, the night he left him; and he suspected something more in the death of the miserable old man than other people imagined, but he kept these thoughts to himself. Annele prospered in Petrowitsch's large house, and was soon as fresh and blooming as ever. They remained till late in the summer with their old uncle, till their own house was repaired and restored. Petrowitsch was not unfrequently rather crabbed. It made him very angry to see little Wilhelm jump on chairs and sofas, where Bueble, however, might stretch himself at his ease. Petrowitsch could not get rid of a bad cough he had got, from being buried in the snow. The physician advised him to visit some baths, but he refused to go. He did not say so, but he thought, if he was to die, he would rather die at home, and then all longing for home would be at an end. He often went with little Wilhelm to the Spannreute, the hill behind the house, where a vast number of well-grown larches had been planted to shelter the house, and deep trenches dug. One day he said harshly to the boy: "Wilhelm, you are just like Bueble; you can't go on the straight path, you are not content with that. You are only happy when rushing about, and jumping over hedges and ditches; that's your grand pleasure! Yes, Bueble, you are just as bad; you two are capital playfellows!"