Leo sat cowering in his seat. He felt as if a heavy cold stone rested on his head, so that his neck involuntarily bent under the burden. His breast seemed to contract. He fumbled nervously with the white waistcoat which still gleamed as immaculately fresh as in the early morning sunshine, but to his distorted vision there were now daubs of yellow dirt upon it. He felt as if he must defend himself, or, at any rate, speak to some human being. So he bent down to Elly and whispered, with a faint smile-- "The old fellow makes it warm for us with his curses." Elly looked at him for a moment with big, vacant eyes, and then turned to her hymn-book again. The pastor resumed his petition. His exhortations became more and more fervid, his voice more and more broken with tears, and the whole time his eyes never left Leo's face. Even if it had not been so perfectly natural on this occasion for the dependent parson to refer in his discourse to the powerful Church patron and landowner, there could have been no manner of doubt for whom his sermon of vengeance and penitence was intended. But outwardly, at least, Leo was on his guard against betraying the horrid suspicion which long since had become a certainty in his heart. The words of the peasant orator, like waves of flame, rolled over him, rising and falling with deadening regularity, till at last they filled and oppressed his brain. Yet he still fought with all his might to master the tormenting thoughts rising within him, to trample them down with brutal scorn. But it was in vain. The pictures of his vanished youth, which his whilom tutor skilfully interwove with his scriptural phantasies, were too forcibly driven home for his relaxed soul to resist them. And then suddenly he started, as if a whip had lashed him. The word "Jonathan" descended from overhead, uttered in a tone that was alike caressing and threatening. He knew why the old pastor leaned his bulky form far over the edge of the pulpit, as if he would have delighted to fly at the unrepentant sinner's throat, knew well why his fat fingers pointed at him, why the plump, bull throat twisted and craned in demoniacal contortions. The zealot had now played his last trump, and would have liked to strengthen the effect with the power of his fists. But this he dared not do. Jonathan! The mere mention of that name had been sufficient to conjure up before Leo's mental eye the vision of his friend in the _rôle_ of an accusing angel. He gazed at him with his luminous eyes--he, the betrayed and deceived--and, between the thunder claps of the Brenckenberg lungs, his voice, sad and low, asked perpetually-- "Why hast thou done this thing?" Then was heard a cry from a woman's mouth, a half-stifled gurgle of fear. Johanna had fainted. Enveloped in her heavy, black veil, she lay, a motionless heap, on the red tiles in the shadow of the pew. XI