A propos he had tried to hang together a few consolatory reflections on the consequences of the wet summer--the diseased potato crop, the rotten fruit, and to give voice to joyous thanksgiving that at last God had let the glorious sun shine on the harvest-fields. But this "drivel," as he expressed it, nauseated him. He was in a mood to thunder and bruise. He would like to have something to curse. "Shall I give them 'Hell' again, freshly furbished up?" he asked himself. But he had dealt with this subject only a fortnight ago. "I must let their burns heal first, and then I can go for them once more." Also, the Last Judgment; the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in its modern application to Berlin and the Social Democrats; the baby-farming murder case; the diphtheria outbreak; one and all had been used in previous sermons. He meditated and meditated; but the more he did so the worse his headache became, and the more irritably wiry his well-oiled hair. "Next time the lad shall not tempt me," he said, and savagely pushed back the cup of coffee and milk which had grown cold. The door opened, and Kurt, who had won his point and got a starched collar, came into the parlour, smiling amiably. "Have you slept well, papa?" he asked carelessly. The old man threatened him with his open hand. "I'll never do it any more on a Saturday night, you young dog," he roared at him. "How am I to compose my sermon on Sunday with a splitting head?" Kurt perceived that his father was not in a humour to be trifled with, and poured himself out some coffee from the big brown family jug in silence. The old man shut up the folio before him with a furious bang. At that same moment a sombre female figure passed by the vine-embowered casement, a cloud of black gauze flapping behind her. The Countess Prachwitz's low muffled alto sounded in the outer hall. The pastor pricked up his ears. "Get out with you," he commanded his son, and stood all expectation awaiting the entrance of the visitor, with his brows drawn together in straight lines and wearing his most scowling bull-dog expression. Kurt, subdued, with his coffee-cup in one hand and a buttered roll in the other, slipped out by a side door. He would have given something to catch a few crumbs of the conversation, for since his flirtation with little Elly his conscience with regard to Halewitz was anything but easy. The pastor and Countess Johanna were closeted together for more than an hour. The organ strains began to come from the church, and already the stream of worshippers was thinning, but the two still continued to converse in low eager tones. The pastor's wife had knocked twice warningly, and had twice been sent away. At last, when the clock chimed half-past nine, they came out into the hall, the countess with compressed lips and traces of tears about her eyes, the pastor with the dark frown of the avenger upon his brows.