Solemn, yet nerve-racking moments, the details of which Reinhold's tearful eyes could not grasp nor retain! But to Justus' keen artist's eye, one touchingly beautiful picture followed another--but, none more touching or beautiful for him, who knew these persons and their relations so well, than the last--the General almost carrying the exhausted Valerie down the steps, her head shrouded in a heavy veil of lace--she had come down from her sick room only for this occasion; while Uncle Ernst's strong form, still standing there, bent over to kind little Aunt Rikchen, and, to quiet her, stroked with his strong hand her pale, troubled, tear-stained face. "Do you know," whispered Mieting; "they now feel what we felt when we stood before the dead angel--that they must love each other, you know." Half an hour later the funeral procession moved out of the castle gate, from one of whose turrets a large German flag, and from the other a black one, fluttered in the evening breeze; over the bridge of boats it passed, up the deep road, turning to the right along the gently sloping road to the cemetery which extended from the highest point to the chain of hills that formed the shore, a few hundred steps distant from the village--a long solemn procession! The village children, strewing the way with evergreen, went on before the caskets--before the one decked with palms, where lay the maidenly form of the beautiful heroic girl, borne by strong pilots and fishermen who would not surrender the honor of carrying their Commander's kinswoman to her last resting place; before that of the man, decorated with emblems of war, for whom she had died, and whom a kindly fate had allowed to die as a brave man, worthy of the decorations which he had won in battle, and which the Sergeant-Major of the company bore on a silk cushion after him--worthy he, that the trim warriors who had seen him in the days of his glory should lift him now on their shoulders, so often touched by his friendly hand in the hot hour of battle, and by the flaming bivouac-fire on the wearisome march to the great rendezvous. After the caskets, the two fathers; then Reinhold with Else, and Justus with Mieting--Sidonie and Aunt Rikchen remaining with Valerie; the President and Colonel von Bohl, Schönau and the brilliant company of the other officers, and neighboring noblemen with their ladies; von Strummin and his spouse, the Wartenbergs, the Griebens, the Boltenhagens, the Warnekows, and the rest, the descendants of the old hereditary families; the endless train of country folk and sea folk, with the heroic form of brave Pölitz, and the stout figure of the chief pilot, Bonsack, at their head.