He had learned from the landlord that the carriage with the two ladies, if they returned this evening as the driver had told him, must pass this way, it being the only road still practicable; the shorter road through the lower ground was no longer passable. Ottomar wondered what the man meant by the lower ground. The situation was so entirely different from what he had heard described; the sea seemed to be breaking immediately behind the castle, though in the wet, grey mist which was driving in his face he could no longer distinguish individual objects. The castle itself, which must surely be close under his feet, seemed to be a mile off; he could hardly have seen it sometimes, if lights had not been constantly flickering in the windows. In the indistinct masses of building to the left of the castle, which must belong to the farm, lights also glimmered occasionally, shifting their places as if people were running about with lanterns; and once or twice he fancied that he heard men's voices and the lowing of cattle. It might be all a delusion of his senses, which were beginning to fail him, as he sat there unsheltered from the raging storm which was freezing the very marrow of his bones. He must go on, if he were not to die here like a straggler behind a hedge on the roadside. And yet he remained; but through his bewildered brain wilder and more confused images chased each other. There was a Christmas-tree with lighted candles, and he and Elsa came to the door hand-in-hand, and their father and mother stood at the table, on which there were dolls for Elsa, and helmet and sword and sabretache for him, and he threw himself joyfully into his father's arms, who lifted him high in the air and kissed him. Then the Christmas-tree changed into a lofty pine, and the crest of the pine was a blazing chandelier, under which he was dancing with Carla, in defiance of the Count, who looked on with furious glances, while the double bass boomed, and the violins squeaked, and the dancing couples whirled in and out: Tettritz with Emilie von Fischbach, that tall Wartenberg with little Fräulein von Strummin. Then it was a bivouac fire with the trumpets sounding to the attack at Vionville, against the batteries which thundered in return, and he called laughingly to Tettritz and Wartenberg, "Now, gentlemen, a bullet through the heart, or the cross on the breast!" and set spurs to his charger, which dashed straight forward with a wild neigh. Ottomar started to his feet and looked round him in bewilderment. Where was he? at his feet there foamed and hissed a broad eddying stream, and now he heard distinctly a horse neighing--close by him--in the hollow way, at the edge of which he stood, and below him was a carriage which was being backed by the resisting horses against the bank. With one spring he was behind the carriage and helping the coachman to turn the snorting horses; there was just room left. "Where are the ladies!" He had seen that the carriage was empty.