For he could no longer shut his eyes to the fact that he was losing his friend, his boyhood's comrade and well-beloved who, ever since he could remember, had been first in his thoughts, who had been his pride and glory and rock of strength, who seemed to embody all the health and physical power that fate had denied to himself. He no longer understood him. The laws that governed his emotions were strange to him, and what once had seemed to him like a perfect, rushing harmony of Mother Nature's, now was like a shrieking confusion of discordant notes. Whether it was himself who had changed so much, or the other, he couldn't say; he was only clear on one point, that every fresh utterance of Leo's estranged and hurt him. No one knew better than his friend how dear the small step-son had been to his heart; but on the day of the funeral he had got a letter from Leo so stiffly and frigidly expressed, that it might have been the conventional condolences of an absolute stranger. It was indeed a melancholy home-coming for Ulrich. No one met him at the station. But the station-master, who recognised the baron as he flashed his lantern upon him, helped him out of the railway-carriage, and spoke a few words of respectful sympathy. The old coachman, Wilhelm, seated on the box, wiped away his tears at his master's approach, and when he laid his hand on his shoulder and said to him in a low voice, "Ah, Wilhelm, we shall not see our boy again," he nearly let the reins slip out of his weather-beaten hands from emotion. Ulrich had brought back with him Paulchen's trunks and play boxes, and these were piled high on the back seat of the sleigh. Among them were the two big Christmas parcels of toys which the little fellow had looked out for so expectantly on Christmas Eve, and gone in search of. They had been delivered the next day by the pleased postman. The sleigh glided on through the moonless night. On the plain the whiteness of the snow made a faint glimmer; the poplars bordering the road emerged in blurred outline one after the other out of the dark. Ulrich fancied that from behind each tree Paulchen must appear and call to him, "Take me home. I am afraid; so afraid. Take me home, please." Then came the long bridge which had been Paulchen's delight. It was a hundred and fifty paces in length, and had balustrades of black and white palings, on which he had always said that he wanted to climb when he was "big enough." Underneath the bridge, where it was often dry enough to walk, there was an echo, and when a carriage passed overhead it was like the rolling of thunder. And a little further on was the chief wonder of the road, a windmill that stood on a roof. Think of it! a windmill high up on a roof! Forlornly it spread its snowy wings now, like the ghost of a giant stretching its arms into the grey night sky.