"I am not afraid of you--I wish you would take me with you. Oh, take me!" But Death gently motioned him back. He was used to such appeals. "No, Johannes. Go now to your task. Seek and see! Ask me no more. Some day I will ask, and that will be soon enough." When he had disappeared, Pluizer behaved in a very extraordinary manner. He sprang over chairs, tumbled about the floor, climbed up the wardrobe and the mantlepiece, and performed neck-breaking tricks in the open windows. "Well, that was Hein--my good friend Hein!" said he. "Do you not think him nice? A bit plain and morose in appearance; but he can be quite cheerful when he finds pleasure in his Work. Sometimes, however, it bores him; for it is rather monotonous." "Who tells him, Pluizer, where he is to go?" Pluizer leered at Johannes in a teasing, cunning way. "Why do you ask that? He goes his own gait--he takes whom he can catch." Later, Johannes saw that it was otherwise. But he could not yet know whether or not Pluizer always spoke the truth. They went out to the street, and moved with the swarming throng. The grimy men passed on, pell-mell--laughing and chatting so gaily that Johannes could not help wondering. He noticed that Pluizer nodded to many of them; but no one returned the greeting--all were looking straight forward as if they had seen nothing. "They are going like fun now," said Pluizer, "as though not a single one of them knew me. But that is only a pretext. They cannot cut me when I am alone with them; and then they are not so jolly." Johannes became conscious that some one was following them. On looking round, he saw the tall, pale figure moving among the people with great, inaudible strides. Hein nodded to Johannes. "Do the people also see him?" asked Johannes of Pluizer. "Yes, certainly! all of them; but they do not wish to know him. Well, for the present I overlook this defiance." The din and stir brought to Johannes a kind of stupor in which he forgot his troubles. The narrow streets and the high houses dividing the blue sky into straight strips--the people passing to and fro beside him--the shuffling of footsteps, and the rattling of wagons, effaced the old visions and the dream of that former night, as a storm disturbs the reflections in mirror-like water. It seemed to him that nothing else existed save walls and windows and people; as if he too must do the same, and run and rush in the restless, breathless tumult.