"Let her but dare such a thing! With these hands of mine I will lift her up and carry her to my home! If Martha gives her consent, I wonder who should object." On tip-toe, so as not to wake his parents, he climbed up the stairs, which nevertheless creaked and groaned under the weight of his body. Before Olga's door he started back, for he saw the gleam of light which fell through the broken panel on to the corridor. No one answered to his knocking. Nevertheless, he entered. * * * * * A moment later the whole house trembled in its foundations, as if the roof had fallen in. The two old people, who had retired to their bedroom to recuperate their strength after those trying hours of the forenoon, started up in terror. They called the maids. But these had run off, so that the town should no longer be kept in ignorance of the newest details about the sad occurrence. "You go up," said the energetic woman to her husband, and tremblingly put out her hand for the little bottle of sulphuric ether which she always kept at hand. It was the first time in her life that she felt frightened. When old Hellinger entered the gable-room, he saw a sight which froze the blood in his veins. His son's body lay stretched on the ground. As he fell he must have clutched the supports of the bier on which the dead girl had been placed, and dragged down the whole erection with him; for on the top of him, between the broken planks, lay the corpse, in its long white shroud, its motionless face upon his face, its bared arms thrown over his head. At this moment he regained consciousness, and started up. The dead girl's head sank down from his, and bumped on to the floor. "Robert, my boy!" cried the old man, and rushed towards him. With wide-open, glassy eyes, Robert stared about him. He seemed not yet to have recovered his senses. Then he perceived one of the arms, which, as the body dropped sidewards, had fallen right across his chest. His gaze travelled along it up to the shoulder, as far as the neck--as far as the white rigidly-smiling face. Supported by the old man's two arms, he raised himself up. He tottered on his legs like a bull that has received a blow from an axe. "Good God, boy, do come to your senses!" cried his father, taking him by his shoulders. "The misfortune has taken place; we are men, we must keep our composure." His son looked at him vacantly, helplessly as a child. Then he bent over the dead body, lifted it up, and laid it across the bed, pushing the fragments of the bier to one side with his foot. Then he seated himself close to her on the pillow, and mechanically wound a coil of her flowing hair round his finger. The old man began to entertain fears of his son's sanity. "Robert," he said, coming close up to him again, "pull yourself together. Come away from here; you cannot bring her back to life again."