When the early hours of evening were over and midnight approaching, Dietegen began to make good his promise. He started unobserved, took his sword and a flask of choice wine along, and climbed from the high slope down into the valley and so to town, and there he swung himself fearlessly over the graveyard wall, strode across the graves themselves, and at last stood in front of Kuengolt's new abode. She sat breathlessly and shaking with fright upon her straw mattress, behind the curtain, and listened with freezing blood to every noise, even the slightest, that struck her ear. For even before this ghostly hour of twelve she had undergone several convulsions of dread and unreasoning fear. In the deadhouse, for instance, a cat had slyly climbed over the bones, and these had clattered somewhat. Then also the night wind had moved the bushes growing over the tombs, so that they made a weird noise, and the iron rooster that served as a weather vane on top of the church roof had creaked mysteriously, making an awful sound never heard in daytime. So that the girl was in a frenzy of terror. When she therefore heard the steps nearing more and more, Kuengolt had a new fit of fright, and shook like a leaf. But when he stretched his hands through the iron bars of the fence and pushed back the curtain, so that the full moon lit up the whole dark space around her, and in a low voice called her name, she rose quickly, ran in his direction and stretched out both hands to him. "Dietegen!" she exclaimed, and burst into tears, the first she had been able to shed since that ominous day; for until that hour she had lived as though smitten with paralysis, dazed and benumbed. Dietegen, however, did not take her hand, but instead handed her the flask of wine, saying: "Here, take a mouthful! It will do you good." So she drank, and also ate of the dainty wheaten bread of her father's house that he had brought along. And by and by her courage was restored, and when she clearly perceived that he had no mind to converse any more with her, she retired silently to her couch and cried without a stop, till at last she sank into a quiet sleep. But he, the young man, in his narrow youthful ideas and in his inexperience of real life had made up his mind that she was a being turned completely to wickedness and evil, and one that was unable to do right. And he served as her sentinel during this and other nights, seating himself upon an ancient gravestone leaning against the wall solely out of regard for her departed mother and because she had saved his own life. Kuengolt slept until sunrise, and when she awoke and looked about she observed that Dietegen had softly stolen away.