for you see, unluckily, I was not killed."

"Thank God! Thank God! How I have wondered! How I have thought--well,
how did you come here?"

"I coveted a place in one of those graves, and couldn't have it," he
said, bitterly. "It was a little thing to be denied, but fallen men must
do without much. I saw boys falling around me, whose mothers and sisters
are mourning for them yet."

"Oh, don't."

"Well--Friedel and I are working in Berlin. We shall not stay there
long; we are wanderers now! There is no room for us. I have a short
holiday, and I came to spend it at Elberthal. This evening I set out,
intending to hear the opera--'Der Fliegende Hollaender'--very
appropriate, wasn't it?"

"Very."

"But the storm burst over the theater just as the performance was about
to begin, and removed part of the roof, upon which one of the company
came before the curtain and dismissed us with his blessing and the
announcement that no play would be played to-night. Thus I was deprived
of the ungodly pleasure of watching my old companions wrestle with
Wagner's stormy music while I looked on like a gentleman."

"But when you came out of the theater?"

"When I came out of the theater the storm was so magnificent, and was
telling me so much that I resolved to come down to its center-point and
see Vater Rhein in one of his grandest furies. I strayed upon the bridge
of boats; forgot where I was, listened only to the storm: ere I knew
what was happening I was adrift and the tempest howling round me--and
you, fresh from your devotions to lull it."

"Are you going to stay long in Elberthal?"

"It seems I may not. I am driven away by storms and tempests."

"And me with you," thought I. "Perhaps there is some meaning in this.
Perhaps fate means us to breast other storms together. If so, I am
ready--anything--so it be with you."

"There's the moon," said he; "how brilliant, is she not?"

I looked up into the sky wherein she had indeed appeared "like a dying
lady, lean and pale," shining cold and drear, but very clearly upon the
swollen waters, showing us dim outlines of half-submerged trees,
cottages and hedges--showing us that we were in midstream, and that
other pieces of wreck were floating down the river with us, hurrying
rapidly with the current--showing me, too, in a ghostly whiteness, the
face of my companion turned toward me, and his elbow rested on his knee
and his chin in his hand, and his loose dark hair was blown back from