A gust of wind which sighed through the rustling trees roused him from his painful reverie. He started up with a shiver. His limbs trembled as if in a fever. He shut the window, and threw himself in the darkness--the light he had brought with him had gone out long before--upon the bed. It was the very same one in which he had so often slept when a boy and a youth, and it stood in the same place. He had noticed that when he entered the room. Now he thought of it again, and remembered the last time he had lain here--ten years ago, in the early morning after the night, the first part of which he had spent in the beach-house with Cousin Boslaf, and a few hours after, when they were awake below, he was to go down and bid them farewell forever--then too he; had turned his burning head first on one side and then the other upon the pillows, and had been unable to find rest anywhere. "After wandering through the wide world so long to be whirled back to this little room, the same as I was then! No, not the same! Poorer, much poorer! When I wandered away, away, away, Coffers and chests were heavy; As homeward I turn my steps to-day, Everything is empty. "Empty, empty!" he murmured, as if his burning, wakeful eyes could read the cheerless words from the white wall opposite to him, on whose bare surface the first gray light of dawn was struggling with the darkness of night. CHAPTER XI. A succession of quiet days had passed over quiet Dollan, and each one was to have been the last Gotthold spent upon the estate, but there was always some reason why another was added. Once it was the unfinished sketch, which must be more nearly completed; then Gretchen wept so bitterly because Uncle Gotthold was going that morning, when it was her birthday; on Thursday the rye was cut, the farm hands had a little festival in the evening, and had arranged all sorts of amusing sports in which, through old Statthalter Moeller, they begged Gotthold to help them a little; on Friday a young architect arrived, who wanted to show a plan for the new house, and Brandow was very anxious to have Gotthold's opinion about it; the next day his departure could not be thought of, because Brandow would be absent on business all day long, and the day after the Herr Assessor Sellien had promised to come with his wife, and Otto and Gustav Plueggen, Herr Redebas, from Dahlitz, and several other neighbors would arrive; there was to be quite a little company; Brandow had written to everybody that Gotthold would be there, everybody was anticipating the pleasure of meeting him, and, in a word, nothing could be said about going away before Monday, and on Monday they would discuss the subject again.