The door of the cottage was locked, the green blinds were closed, the steps and the veranda carefully swept, as directed by the strict regulations of old Baumann, who was now ruling supreme. He sat down outside, lost in thought and resting his head in his hand. In the branches of the beech-tree overhead, a little bird was twittering his monotonous song in ever-repeated melancholy.... How lonely he felt--how lonely and forsaken! Like a child which on its way back to beloved parents has lost its way on the great heath. Here, at this very place, he had been seated, the night before the party, with Melitta; she had rested her head on his shoulder and her lips had whispered the sweetest, most precious words of love. Now all was silent--so silent that he could hear the beating of his own heart. Longing thoughts of the absent one passed through his soul, as birds in their flight to the South pass through the blue ether. A ray of the sun, which made its way, hot and piercing, through the foliage, admonished him that it was time to go on. He was not in a hurry, it is true. It was an early hour of the afternoon, and he was likely to find some place or other where he might stay over night. Thus he sauntered through the forest on a path which he had not trod before, and which led him, before he was aware of it, down to the beach. Now he followed the strand, sometimes high up on a bluff, if the sea washed the foot of the chalk cliffs so as to leave no path; at other times on the clean shingle of the narrow beach. Here and there a brook came rushing out from the interior of the island, breaking its way through the tall ramparts, and covering by its moisture the whole dell with an almost Southern vegetation. But, with the exception of these few green oases, the eye saw nothing but bare rocks, sterile sand, the monstrous blue ocean, and here and there a white summer-cloud immovable on the blue sky, while below a lonely sail would dot the wide expanse. And with this monotonous view harmonized the monotonous music of the breakers, interrupted at times by the cry of a gull or the melancholy piping of a sandpiper.