The colonists’ jeers were silenced. As Walda passed down the aisle, the majesty of her carriage and the exaltation that was written on her face cast a fear upon the people. One woman who had but a moment before uttered bitter gibes kissed the hem of the white garment of the fallen prophetess. Hans Peter, who had been watching the proceedings from the limb of a tree, slid from his high seat and walked a few feet behind Walda. A hush fell upon the multitude. Standing with uncovered head, Gerson Brandt waited until the bier disappeared among the trees and the last glimpse of Walda’s white-robed figure was obscured. The distant bell of the meeting-house tolled. The sunset hour of prayer had come. Beneath the sky, dyed in crimson and purple, the people of Zanah bowed their heads. XIX For three days after the _Untersuchung_ Zanah was in mourning. The body of Wilhelm Kellar lay in the meeting-house, and there the colonists spent many hours in prayer and fasting. Gerson Brandt shut himself in the upper room where Wilhelm Kellar had been so long ill and where Piepmatz still hung in the big wicker cage. The school-master sat for hours looking towards the bluffs which shut out the busy world. He thought constantly of Walda. He had given her a pledge that he would make reparation for his part in the _Untersuchung_, but his heart rebelled against his task. He coveted Walda with all the strength of a nature in which the best human impulses had been thwarted. He knew that he must give up the woman he loved to the stranger in Zanah, but his soul cried out against the fate that took her from him. He looked back upon the years in Zanah, and he knew that she had become all of life to him. At first he was dead to the sense of his own unfaithfulness to the colony. Gradually he realized that his had been the part of the unconscious traitor. He felt relieved when he looked forward to his release from the irksome duties of a leader of Zanah.