Then awakened out of such strange dreams, she again quietly continued her work, and at last looked about the room with a self-satisfied air, since it had now assumed quite a different appearance. Having carefully put out the fire on the hearth, she sought her modest couch that she had prepared in the recess on the farther side of the large room. Through the narrow port-holes in the thick plank wall there stole in streaks of the moon's rays, spreading about her a faint twilight. It was easy to breathe in the fresh forest exhalation which blew in at the openings and played about her cheeks. The brook purled uninterruptedly. From time to time there was a rustle, first gentle, then swelling out, and then again holding back like the tones of an organ. It was the solemn music of the primitive forest. She had already noticed this music on her journey when, sleeping under the trees on gathered moss, she, with dream-veiled, half-open eyes, saw Lambert sitting at the camp-fire. She could now also hear his step as he made the round of the gallery above. Conrad's tread would be heavier. Once he stopped directly over her head. Was he looking in the distance for the blood-thirsty enemies? or was he listening to the mocking-bird's wonderful song which she had for some time noticed coming from the forest in soft, sobbing tones, as the nightingale had warbled, over in her German home, in the linden tree at the gable of the parsonage. Then again it, shrieked like a vexatious parrot, or laughed like a magpie. This sounded quite ludicrous. Then it was no more the mockingbird's twofold, demon-like singing, but two human voices, and Lambert spoke in excited, suffering tones: "Catherine, can you forgive me?" and Conrad laughed, saying: "Catherine is not at all angry," and she had to smile, and with a smile on her lips she fell asleep. Meanwhile, as Catherine had correctly supposed, Lambert, walking slowly over the floor of the gallery, kept watch, though Conrad, recurring to what he had reported, assured him that, for the present, the danger of which he had before spoken did not exist, and that he had only mentioned it that he might have good grounds for leaving. He then became very angry as Lambert replied, "I do not know what you mean," threw himself on the bed in the watch-chamber and declared that he was too tired to say another word. However he did not sleep, for as Lambert, after an hour, softly walked past the open door of the watch-chamber, he thought he heard his name spoken. He stopped and looked in. "Did you call me, Conrad?" "Yes," replied Conrad, who had raised himself on his elbow, "I wished to ask you something." "What?" "Are you then not married?" "No; why?" "Oh! I only asked; so good night." "Conrad, dear Conrad, I wish with all my heart to tell you everything." But Conrad had already sunk back on the bear skin and had fallen asleep, or pretended that he had.