"No. Still I am glad we tried to free ourselves, though it did not please God to give us success. We can feel self-respect. Even our enemies must, I think, reluctantly respect us." "Not they! Mark you, Theresa: I believe that when people lose self-respect, they also lose by degrees even the perception of what is respectable. Sometimes, o' nights, such big, swelling thoughts fill my head,--I think, 'Surely, what we have done, this Anno Domini Nine, will _live_? people will talk of it hereafter, when we have long been dead and buried?' And then I think, 'Ah, no! See how the emperor,--"our Franzel," as we used fondly to call him, who was most of all beholden to us, and who put us up to what we did,--'see how he has fallen off from us, like a snow-drift from the hill-side, that the river in the ravine below sweeps away for ever! See how it's the fashion already--how it was the fashion, even while we were winning glorious victories--for the Austrian counts and barons to look down on us, with a contemptuous pity, as a set of honest-hearted loggerheads!'--I say, you sir!" shouted Rudolf, interrupting himself, as he caught the twinkle of an eye gazing in upon them through a chink between the logs; and rushing out, he collared the spy, and gave him a good shake. "Why, how now?" cried the intruder, who proved to be Franz. "What's this for?--what have I been a doing?" "Spying and prying," said Rudolf, bluntly. "Spying and prying?" quoth he. "Why, what have I come this long way all across the snow for, but to ask after the Sandwirth, and to offer Theresa a root of the gems-wurz, which, if he eats before sunrise, will make him bullet-proof? There now!" And Franz drew himself up like a man aggrieved. "Thanks," said Theresa, carrying her milk-pail towards the dairy; "but how am I to get it to him?" "Oh, _you_ know where he is!" said Franz, insinuatingly. "No, I don't," said Theresa, who therein, as far as her personal acquaintance with the locality was concerned, spoke the truth. "Will you like me to look for him, then?" said Franz, slily. "No, I should not," answered Theresa, very quickly; adding, "I don't want you to meddle at all in our affairs." "Well, certainly, one has not much encouragement to do so, except for good-will," said Franz, following her into the house, and putting his cold hands on the stove to warm them; "they're likely to do what I am doing now--burn their fingers." Rudolf's mother, who had come to be a companion to Theresa in her parents' absence, now poured out the porridge, and summoned the family to breakfast. Theresa said to Franz, "You'll join us, I suppose?" to which reluctant half-invitation, he replied by drawing a stool to the table, and taking his share with the rest. He pricked up his ears to catch any allusion to the Sandwirth, but none was made. A cloud had settled heavily on them all; but they had already learnt the needful lesson of silence.