So many crosses in the Venn, so many human beings who have met with a fatal accident. Kate listened to the men's stories with a secret shudder--could the Venn be so terrible? and she questioned them again and again. Was it possible that the man from Xhoffraix, who had driven off to get peat litter, had been swallowed up there so close to the road with cart and horse, and that they had never, never seen anything of him again? And that cross there, so weather-beaten and black, how had that come into the middle of the marsh? Why had that travelling journeyman, whose intention it was to go along the high road from Malmedy to Eupen, gone so far astray? Had it been dark or had there been a heavy fall of snow so that he could not see, or was it the cold, that terrible cold, in which a weary man can freeze to death? Nothing of the kind; only a mist, a sudden mist, which confuses a man so, that he no longer knows which is forward or which is backward, which is left or which is right, that he loses all idea of where he is going, gets away from the road and runs round in a circle like a poor, mad, terrified animal. And all the mists that rise in the Venn when daylight disappears, are they the souls of those who have never been buried, and who in garments that are falling to pieces rise every night from their graves, which have neither been consecrated by a benediction nor by holy water and in which they cannot find rest? That was a fairy tale. But was not everything there as in the fairy tale? So quite different to everywhere else in the world, in reality ugly and yet not ugly, in reality not beautiful and yet so exceedingly beautiful? And she herself, was she not quite a different being there? Did she not wander about full of hope, in blissful dreams, like one to whom something wonderful is to happen? It was in the sixth week of their stay at Spa. The nights were already as cold as in winter, but the days were still sunny. It was always a long journey up to the inn even for the strong Ardennes horses, but Paul and his wife were there again to-day. Would they have to leave soon? Alas, yes. Kate had to confess it to herself with sorrow. Everything was very autumnal, the heather had finished flowering, the air was raw; the grass that had already been frozen during the night rustled under her feet. They could have found use for their winter clothes. "Ugh, how cold," said the man shivering, and he turned up the collar of his overcoat. He wanted to twist a shawl round his wife's neck, but she resisted: "No, no!" She ran on in front of him through the rustling heather with quick steps. "Just look."