As soon as he had had breakfast Everett walked out to the timber-land where the _Untersuchung_ was to be held. The elders had chosen a strip of woods near the lake as a place for the ceremonies of the inquisition. The road leading to it was that over which Everett had walked with Walda the first day she visited the cemetery to pray at the grave of Marta Bachmann. About two hundred yards from the shore of the lake a large clearing had been made. A rude platform for the elders had been built between the lake shore and rough benches, which had been arranged in orderly rows beneath the intertwining trees. Everett saw that the line of poplars was beyond the place where the path led into the out-door chapel. Hidden there he could easily escape detection, and he would be near enough to hear most of what was said from the platform. He walked to the farther shore of the little lake, and lay down upon the ground to wait as patiently as he could for the laggard hours to pass. The quiet beauty of the day appealed to him, and, thinking of Walda, he was finally lulled to sleep. It was mid-day when he awoke. He sauntered back to the scene of the _Untersuchung_. He made a seat for himself at the foot of one of the poplars where the vines were thick. Through the screen of leaves he saw the people slowly gathering. The women occupied the benches nearest him. By two o’clock all the colonists had assembled. The thirteen elders formed a solemn row, Adolph Schneider holding the middle place, with Wilhelm Kellar at one end of the platform and Gerson Brandt at the other. After a droning hymn and a tedious prayer, those who were candidates for preferment in the colony went before the elders. The men first were catechised by Adolph Schneider, who did not rise from his chair. Everett was astonished to see how few signified ambition for colony honors. When the women’s turn came the applicants greatly outnumbered the men. In both cases those who pleaded for advancement boasted of spiritual conflicts and victories. Their sing-song voices maddened the impatient lover. At last, when he had begun to fear that Walda would not be summoned until the next day, Everett noticed that the people, who had sat stolid and unmoved through the hours of dreary recitative, stirred with something like interest. Everett pulled himself to his feet, and, looking down the road, saw a sight that made his heart beat.