"Now I have got you ... oh, thank heaven--now I have got you! Now everything will come right again--won't it? Tell me it was all only a dream--only madness! You did not know what you were doing--eh? You don't remember anything of it--eh? I bet you haven't any notion of it all--eh? Now you have woke up, haven't you--you have woke up again now?" Johannes digs his teeth into his lips till they smart and leans his face upon his breast. Then suddenly a thought takes possession of him and weighs him down and buzzes in his ears--a thought like a vampire, cold and damp, and beating the air with bat's wings.... In these arms Trude has rested this very day--this very day.... He jumps up abruptly. Away from this place, away from this atmosphere--else madness will really assail him! He rushes towards the door. One creak of its hinges, one click of the lock: he has disappeared. Martin looks after him, mute with consternation; then he says, as if to quell his rising fear: "He is too excited; he wants some fresh air. He will come back!" His glance falls upon the wooden clothes=pegs on the opposite wall. He smiles, now quite reassured, and says "He has left his cap here; it is raining outside, the wind blows cold; he will come back." Thereupon he calls the innkeeper, orders his horse to be put up and has some hot grog mixed for his brother, and a bed prepared for him. "For," he says with a blissful smile, "he will come back again." When everything is made ready he sits down on the bench and becomes lost in brooding. From time to time he murmurs as if to resuscitate his sinking courage: "He will come back!" Outside the rain beats against the windowpanes, autumn blasts are soughing around the housetop, and every gust of wind, every drop of rain, seems to proclaim: "He will come back! He will come back!" The how's pass; the lamp goes out.... Martin has fallen asleep over his waiting and is dreaming of his brother's return. In the morning the people of the inn wake him. Haggard and shivering he looks about him. His glance falls upon the empty bed in which his brother was to have slept. The first bed since six weeks!--Sadly he stands there in front of it and stares at it. Then he has his conveyance brought round and drives off. This year autumn has come early. Since a week there has been a rough north wind which cuts through one's body as if it were November. Gusts of rain beat against the window-panes and the ground is already covered with a layer of yellowish-brown half-decayed leaves off the lime-trees. And how soon it grows dark! In the bakery a light burns in the swinging lamp long before supper-time. Beneath its globe sits Franz Maas, eagerly reckoning up and counting. On the baker's table before him where as a rule the little white round heaps of dough are ranged, to-day there are little white round heaps of florins, and instead of the crisp "Bretzels" to-day the paper of bank-notes is crackling.