Berger had risen, and Oswald had followed his example. The former was entirely filled with the recollections which had just passed before his mind's eye, clothed by his powerful imagination with all the accuracy and clearness of reality; the latter thought of nothing but what he had just heard; and thus both hardly noticed the road which led them gradually higher and higher through the dark pine forests. Thus they found themselves suddenly upon the bare top of the mountain, which the people of the neighborhood call the Lookout, and which is by far the highest all around among all the brothers and sisters. The sun had set, but the western sky was still glowing in all the splendor of the evening glory, and a faint reflex gave even to the eastern horizon a faint, rosy tinge. Here and there one of the higher mountain-tops, steeped in purple, looked after the parting light of the day; but the larger valleys were already filled with gray shadows of the evening, and whitish mists floated in the narrower glens. The pine-trees, whose heads rose from below to a level with the travellers' feet, stood calm and rigid, like a breathless multitude in anxious expectation. Berger gazed into the glow of the setting sun, resting on his stick, and watching it as every instant some tinge vanished and another turned pale. Oswald's eye hung upon his features, which seemed every moment to become more and more spiritual. Was it the effect of the ghastly light, or merely the expression of what was going on within? Suddenly Berger dropped his cane, spread out his hands as if in prayer, and said: "Mother Night, all-powerful original Night, from whose bosom the creature tears itself away in mad desire to live, only in order to return after long wanderings, penitent and humiliated, to your faithful maternal heart, I hail you, even in this faint, earthly image! Yon bottomless bourn of oblivion, yon sweet cradle of unbroken rest, how I long for you with my whole heart! Oh, take it from me, this intolerable burden of life; spare me the daily returning grief to open these weary eyes to a light which they hate; take from me this remnant of dust, which weighs me down with its sinfulness, and which becomes only the more painful as it daily dwindles away! Let it, oh, let it quickly be consumed! I know I could quickly come to you if I but took a single step beyond the edge of this rock; but even if my bones were broken into atoms below, my soul would find no rest, for it has still a few drops left in the cup of life; perhaps--who can tell?--the very bitterest of them all. No! no! get thee away from me, Satan, who allurest me down into the abyss! The abyss is not death; life in all its splendor, is true death. I know thy old tricks; thou didst try them with the carpenter's son of Nazareth! But he rebuked thee and thy temptations--honor, power, and the favor of women--all he rejected, in order to hunger, to thirst, and not to have where he might lay his