and
was crouching on the stairs, pale as a ghost.

When Edwin, leaning on Marquard, entered the tun, Madame Feyertag was
kneeling beside the bed rubbing Balder's cold temples with some
stimulant. Marquard permitted her to go on, and for some minutes
closely examined the motionless body. Then he turned to Edwin, who had
sunk down on the foot of the bed. "Poor boy!" said he. "Come, Edwin, be
a man! It was only a question of weeks. He's passed into the other
world quickly and painlessly. Look at the calm face."

A loud burst of weeping interrupted him. Herr Feyertag, with gentle
violence, led away his kind-hearted wife, who sobbed as hopelessly as
if she had lost a child of her own; the head journeyman, with tears
streaming down his face, softly followed them; he first tried to say
something to Edwin, but checked the words that were on his lips. When
he returned to the workshop, he sat down on a stool and buried his face
in his hands. Half an hour later, when the apprentices stole in to
continue their work, prepared for violent reproaches, they found the
choleric fellow in the same attitude. He seemed completely transformed;
but when toward evening, the youngest apprentice began to whistle
softly to himself, he rushed at him like a madman and called him a
heartless toad, for screwing up his mouth and whistling wedding tunes
on such a day.

Over the house there was a hush, as if with the fading away of this one
life all the joy of existence had vanished. Every one went about on
tip-toe and closed the doors noiselessly. When, toward evening, the
maid-servant went to the pump, she looked up to the open windows of the
upper room, wiped her eyes, and stealing away with the empty pail,
brought the water from one of the neighboring houses.

In the afternoon, Mohr came, and an hour after him, Franzelius, both
entirely ignorant of what had happened. But Herr Feyertag sat in the
shop and beckoned to every one who entered the house, in order to keep
troublesome visitors away from Edwin. Mohr did not utter a word and no
change of countenance betrayed his emotion, so that the worthy
shoemaker shook his head, as, muttering something in a low tone, the
young man left the shop, to go up to the tun. But it was a long time
before he reached it. He first slipped into Christiana's room, and
sitting there in the darkness let the first passion of grief rage
itself calm, before he ventured to go to Edwin. Franzelius, on the
contrary, had t