my blood! Everywhere are we fettered and hemmed in; our way goes through dust and mire; we are heavy laden, and must bear the burden. Like the day labourer, longing for rest at even, man arrives at the end of his journey. Revive, my heart, and bear her and me from misery and decay.'

CHAPTER VII.

THE AGREEMENT.

It was long past midnight; there was profound silence in the forester's cottage. The good-natured wife watched by the sick woman. Johannes sat in the room below, in the large easy chair belonging to the forester. He was weary; he looked out of the window and waited for sleep to come to him. The moonlight cast an awful brightness over the wood; a broad gleam glittered in the rainpuddles. The trees bent their tops together, and rustled in the stillness.

He had ridden more than four miles on horseback. He had requested to have the Count's riding-horse, and he hoped that he had not ridden him to his injury. The groom from the castle was in readiness in the spacious stable of the hotel to rub the horse down and to cover him with cloths. The man was out of humour at the peremptory order of his master's guest; much as he had vented his indignation at his impudence to his fellow-servants, he had been obliged to obey.

Johannes had been at the old forester's.

He had wanted to induce him to receive Maria at his house, and to afford her the protection which he could himself give but with peril. If it were possible, Johannes wished to avoid the miserable Palladio. It was apparent that his meeting with Maria's lawful tormentor would have serious consequences for him. Had it been possible he would have consigned her to the Count, and she should have gone in the yacht to England. He could have afterwards told the gentlemen everything, but for the moment they were neither of them there. He had altogether a feeling of reluctance to the idea; it appeared to him as if he should perhaps have to turn his back upon Europe. Johannes bit his lips as he rode back again from the old forester, who would hear nothing of his former foster-daughter.

'Let her go to the Count's castle; what does she concern me?' The forester had no good word for Maria. Johannes had not told him what right she had to a part of the property which the old man was enjoying, for he perceived that these claims would not serve her as a recommendation. Love of money seemed to have deprived the old man of his natural good-nature. He accumulated and scraped together like a marmot, which cannot

heap up stores enough against the ice of winter. 'Money is a touchstone,' thought Johannes; it brings the lowest stratum to the top, and it opens the most secret recesses.'

Here, therefore, everything was in vain. Doctor Olaf would have the sense to see,' said the forester, that it did not become an honest man and the father of a family to afford assistance to a woman who had run away from her husband. His honour the Count would be soon coming home; the princess would not be eaten up before then, even if the man did keep her a little strictly. She could go to law if she were badly treated. The magistrates would be just as good for her as for other people. Moreover, a husband had the right to chastise his wife gently with a stick as thick as his little finger. That is old German law,' continued the forester. He would not say that the Herr Doctor was disgracing himself, but he must be astonished that he should like to suggest to him anything of the kind, especially when he knew how maliciously the woman had treated him who had once so befriended her.'

Johannes felt that the old man had right on his side. The ride home was long to him. He knew not what he was going to do; and at any moment Schäbli might arrive.

There was no sleep for him in the easy-chair in the close room; moreover, the day began early in the forester's cottage. The dogs barked and bayed; the forester's voice sounded loudly across the court-yard, and huntsmen and farm lads had their respective work assigned them. Maria had had a restless night. The forester's wife was weary, and complained of the disturbance in her household, which, with the number of people she had to provide for and keep, she could not endure for more than this one day. The pastor's people had a house full of children. Johannes knew not what to do with Maria. Fortunately, the physician whom he had sent for arrived from the adjacent town. He gave it as his opinion that the sick woman was suffering from consumption, but that she might recover under careful nursing. The man belonged to a race which was not excited to reflection by anything unusual. Johannes himself felt the necessity of being careful as to what he said about Maria. It had, however, occurred to him that he could find an asylum for her in the house of the former captain of the smuggling vessel. The physician spoke well of the wife, and praised the husband, whom he had not known in his former history or trade. Johannes knew that he could depend upon the captain; he relied on